The Beatles album Jeff Lynne thought was “way better than everything else”
Jeff Lynne and The Beatles shared a special sonic connection. Psychedelic free spirits who still managed to stay firmly tied to their roots, The Beatles were individually some of the biggest forces in rock music—but together, they created a firestorm. In many ways, Lynne landed the dream job of any Beatlemaniac, starting off as a devoted fan before eventually working within their orbit.
Although Lynne had been enraptured by their spirit ever since the debut days of Please Please Me, the future ELO frontman would first come to call The Beatles colleagues in 1968, when his precursor band The Idle Race were invited to watch the Fab Four record The White Album at Abbey Road. It was a transformative experience for Lynne, to say the least.
John Lennon would later go on to describe ELO as “sons of The Beatles”, and all of this cumulatively, from style to sonic influence, had a significant impact on Lynne. It seems almost cruel in that case to press him to pick just one top album from the Liverpudlian legends’ illustrious discography, but nevertheless, one seminal record “stood out like a sore thumb”, to use his own words.
Aside from the heights of Please Please Me, which holds a special place in his heart for marking the beginning of his Beatles love affair, it was Revolver that took the prime position of being Lynne’s all-time favourite for reasons too many and massive to count. In 2012, Lynne extolled the greatness of Revolver to The Quietus by saying: “This is pretty amazing. How did it sound back in ’66? Way better than everything else, I would say. It stood out like a sore thumb, really. It was so tight and beautiful and punchy. It was the punchiest thing around. It was powerful, and it seemed to me majestic.”
As the early rumblings towards the world of psychedelia, it’s easy to see why Lynne found the album so pivotal. Revolver wasn’t quite the full explosion of kaleidoscopic colour as would later be witnessed on the likes of Sgt Pepper, but their whirling first flirtations with the avant-garde encompassed pioneering musical techniques like backmasking and varying tape speeds – or varispeeding, for those in the know – that made obvious imprints on Lynne’s sonic mind.
Later on, in 1970, as the ELO steam train chugged into life and The Beatles ground to a halt, it was obvious in a musical capacity that this was the passing of a torch. In many ways, the Fab Four probably couldn’t have been more delighted with the custodian of their lineage, given that Lynne had already played a role in their collaborative world and would continue to do so throughout the rest of their solo tenures.
But all that was a relative pipe dream for the Brummie musician way back in 1966. He was already beginning to make currents, but with The Beatles’ backing and an army of sonic ingenuity behind him, the tidal wave of ELO was truly beckoning on the horizon.
