The album Jeff Lynne said frightened him to death: “I just dove in”
There was an extravagance to the very best Jeff Lynne music. When ELO were at the peak of their powers, reeling off tracks like ‘Mr Blue Sky’, they set a precedent for textural yet luscious arrangements.
It made for an understandably fatiguing approach for Lynne. Buoyed by the experimentation of The Beatles, he would continue to push at the very edge of his ideas, rampantly throwing in violins, cellos and synthesisers to make whatever idea he was cultivating as ambitious as possible.
Naturally, this appetite for experimentation meant his best work came inside the safety of a band. Lynne never used his groups as a platform to grow his own profile, and instead relished the cocoon-like safety of a wider project. While he may have been the de facto leader of ELO, Roy Wood and Bev Bevan carried the heavy load of the ideas with willing strength, while The Traveling Wilbury’s saw the heady realms of genius at his fingertips.
When it came to The Traveling Wilburys, Lynne and Harrison were kindred spirits if you will. Musicians who understood the egoless approach to creation, and so both wholeheartedly bought into this supergroup’s mantra of song first. And so unsurprisingly, it brought out the very best of Lynne, adding melodies to a rich tapestry of instrumentation or providing humble harmonies to a killer Tom Petty track.
But then, like all of his peers, Lynne ventured into solo artistry. While he was certainly capable of doing so, and to a great degree, it was undoubtedly nerve-wracking territory for him as the weight of his individual ideas would only fall onto his own shoulders.
So on his second solo outing, 2012’s Long Wave, he set to flip his creative approach and record a list of cover songs. In a bid to unburden himself from the self-imposed pressure of his original ideas, Lynne breathed new life into a string of 1960s hits.
Nevertheless, Lynne confessed that the record still pushed him creatively, but in a way that didn’t foster desperate frustration. He explained, “I feel I really stretched myself on the new album, Long Wave. I’d been doing just my own music for such a long time, I wanted to do something with these classic songs that used to frighten me to death when I was a kid. I like my versions better than the old ones because, without those fancy arrangements, suddenly these tunes sound so accessible. I brought them right up to the ’60s!”
It was a sense of creative confidence that only comes with age. A mixture of appreciation for his musical peers and comfort in the knowledge that his career and legacy no longer hinge on rampant innovation.
In fact, he confirmed that his life shift allowed for the cover album to be recorded. In reference to the songs, he said, “I used to hate them as a kid, but I have come to love them now. The arrangements were too complicated, too flowery, and frankly, had put me off from learning them. It’s only been in the last few years that I have recorded these songs. I just dove in and learned the basic song and tried to understand them and see if I could make it work.”
While it will likely never make it into the top three records when discussing the lifelong legacy of Lynne the artist, it’s undoubtedly an important record that brought closure to the past, and an opening to a more relaxed and self-assured future.
