The 1976 song Jeff Lynne could never fully enjoy: “It’s probably not as good”
The art behind any great ELO song was for Jeff Lynne to have every single instrument sounding perfect.
He was a child of the studio, and the work was never completely done in his mind until he had a record that he felt could stand alongside the best pop records that he heard when he was a kid. But even if there were moments where he knocked it out of the park, there were more than a few songs where he felt like he didn’t get it as perfect as he should have when working on the record.
But even though every rock and roll band truly shows their stuff on the live stage, that wasn’t exactly the case for Lynne. There was no way for him to capture the same sense of grandeur when he didn’t have a full orchestra to work with onstage, and even if he had the time and the resources to make the biggest rock and roll songs that he could, it would have been impossible to create the same experience of hearing ‘Mr Blue Sky’ unless he exclusively played in massive theatres.
Then again, the orchestral pieces were only one part of his sound. Despite being one of the central figures in baroque music, Lynne knew that he could create a good pop song when he could, and even though ‘Can’t Get It Out of My Head’ was his first chance at hitting the big time, the strings were often taking a back seat to the strumming guitars and the harmonies that he layered over top of everything.
And by the time he worked on A New World Record, he felt like he could finally make the kind of pop music that he had always dreamt of. The Beatles’ influence was almost too on-the-nose in some spots, but even if the orchestral touches weren’t in the song, ‘Telephone Line’ would still be considered one of the best ballads of the 1970s. But for a tune that was all about heavy guitars, Lynne felt that ‘Do Ya’ left a lot to be desired.
Compared to everything else on the record, though, this was one of the best rock and roll productions that he ever made. He had already done his homework by making the song with The Move back in the day, but when left to his own devices, the guitars practically sound like walls of sound hitting your eardrums, only this time they have even more force than what Phil Spector had in mind in the 1960s.
Everything sounded perfect, but Lynne felt that he still preferred the original version of the tune that The Move made, saying, “I always liked the song, and I always thought I wish I could, y’know, just redo it. And just have… just so somebody could hear it. ‘Cause no one ever heard it, really. [Imitating someone:] ‘No, I never heard of that one.’ And I was always really pleased with the tune. And so, I rerecorded it. Y’know, in hindsight, it’s probably not as good as the first one – version I did. Um, technically it’s better, but there’s something missing, I think, like the spontaneity of the original version.”
The nostalgia factor might be playing a role in why Lynne felt that way, but a lot of the re-recordings that he did even later down the line sounded fantastic. ‘Mr Blue Sky’ does sound a little bit thin to modern ears, and when you hear Lynne working his magic across the version that he did in the 2010s, the whole thing feels much more extravagant, especially when you think about how long he’s been singing and can still manage to hit every note pitch-perfect every time he plays.
But even if ‘Do Ya’ has a little bit of an asterisk next to it, it was never going to dissuade the rest of the world from wanting to check it out. All of Lynne’s fellow Wilburys were in love with the tune from the moment they heard it, and it was that kind of production that made him one of the most sought-after producers for years afterwards.
