“No foresight”: Why Jeff Lynne found his hero tedious to work with
Creating art of any form is difficult. Often, though, the struggle of craft and creation leads to the greatest pieces of work, particularly in the world of music. Rising from the ranks of a humble upbringing in Birmingham, Jeff Lynne knew this all too well.
Nevertheless, Lynne wasn’t prepared to make things easy for himself when he did break through. There was once a time when artists would record directly to acetate, and that recording would then be pressed for the general market, but those days have long since passed. Since the advent of rock and roll, music production has become an essential – if, at times, tedious – aspect of the industry, something that the ELO man is all too aware of.
The Electric Light Orchestra was formed in 1970 in the wake of the countless production techniques and methods that had been pioneered during the 1960s by figures like Phil Spector or The Beatles. As you can imagine, therefore, skilled production became an intrinsic aspect of ELO’s inherent sound, reflecting the complexities of Jeff Lynne’s songwriting. In fact, the entire landscape of progressive rock, with which ELO was closely associated, was indebted to the world of production for tying these far-out musical narratives together.
Beginning with 1973’s ELO 2, Lynne produced the vast majority of his own work, becoming an incredibly skilled, sought-after producer in the process. The groundbreaking sounds of his band and how those records were produced ballooned the songwriter’s reputation, both as a musician and a producer. Before too long, Lynne was taking on production work for vast swathes of other artists, ranging from Roy Orbison to Paul McCartney. Nevertheless, not every production project was a joy for Lynne to work on.
By 1988, Lynne had become so admired as a producer that he was brought on board to work with The Beach Boys songwriter Brian Wilson on his debut solo album. Of course, Lynne has met his fair share of iconic figures over the years, particularly during his time with The Traveling Wilburys during the late 1980s, but working with the Pet Sounds songwriter proved to be a much more difficult task than the ELO singer was prepared for.
Lynne’s contributions to the album lay solely with the song ‘Let It Shine’, which he co-wrote with Wilson. Reportedly, though, The Beach Boys songwriter was not a huge fan of the song, and various production staff on the album complained that it sounded too much like an ELO track rather than something Brian Wilson should be singing on. Inevitably, this made the production period less than enjoyable for Lynne.
“It was a tiny bit difficult, yeah,” Lynne later confirmed in a 1990 interview with Q Magazine, “but only because of the way it was structured, with all the doctors and that stuff, and you have to go through this chain of events before you do anything.” Explaining the difficulties of this ‘too many cooks’ approach, the producer continued, “Like you’d lay down a tape, a little rough thing of a song that I wrote with him, and suddenly someone’s got a copy of it, and they’re playing it to the record company saying, ‘Look at this! What’s he trying to do!’”
Summarising the production of ‘Let It Shine’, the musician said, “No foresight whatsoever. I knew what I was going to do with it, but it’s like giving somebody an unfinished thing that only you know what it is. It’s a cryptic sort of thing.” However, the ELO songwriter did, at least, seem pleased with the final product. “They tried to cut it off at the pass, but I finally got it finished, and it was really good,” he shared, “I was proud of that piece of work; his singing is good and everything.”
All the same, it was the honour of a lifetime for Lynne. “I like every track on Pet Sounds,” he told the Quietus. “I think they’re all equally as good. I couldn’t even pick one out if it because the arrangements were so unusual at the time. I remember it was ’66 and in some parts it sounds like an old dance band. I’d think, ‘wow’! That’s so old fashioned yet so brand new at the same time.” It’s easy to see how that blend took root in the mix of neo-classical and futuristic pop in ELO’s sound later down the line.
As Lynne added, “The arrangements were weird with these big harmonicas and funny, deep saxophones and plain little paper cups and playing the drums on them. What the hell was that? Brilliant! Brian [Wilson] was absolutely marvellous.” Perhaps with that level of invention, Wilson was never going to be all that easy to work with.
Despite the difficulties of working with Brian Wilson and his team, ‘Let It Shine’ ended up being a stand-out track on Wilson’s solo album, seeing The Beach Boys founder take on that distinctive Jeff Lynne sound. While the album as a whole seemed to go down well upon its release, the benefit of hindsight shows us that the project was largely doomed from the start, with outside interference limiting the potential of the music.
It is not a bad record by any means, but it certainly does not live up to the discography of The Beach Boys.
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