The ELO song Jeff Lynne knew was a classic from the start: “I was thrilled with it”
Some songs take years, decades even, to amass a reputation as being a ‘classic’ beloved by all, while others seem to arrive as pre-packaged classics, with longevity and lasting genius built-in. Back in the 1970s, the fingertips of Jeff Lynne were responsible for more than a few of those white whale tracks.
Logically, the emergence of a new decade should make no real difference in day-to-day life, but when 1969 turned into 1970, the music world witnessed a definite cultural shift – “where the wave finally broke and rolled back,” as Hunter Thompson famously put it.
The age of ‘peace and love’ counterculture had changed the course of musical expression forevermore, but rock and roll couldn’t exist indefinitely while tripping on LSD and talking about political resistance. A new sound was needed for this new cultural age, and Jeff Lynne was more than happy to provide the goods.
From the moment Electric Light Orchestra dropped their brilliant debut single, ‘10538 Overture’, in the summer of 1970, you could tell a new musical era was kicking off. Lynne’s lot carved out this massive, wide-open sound – pulling in everything from his undying love of The Beatles to the fresh grooves of funk and the wild turns of prog-rock. As far as he was concerned, no source of inspiration was off-limits, and it’s no surprise that it all led to him churning out a string of absolute belters.
Not all songs are created equal, though, and there are a few of those Jeff Lynne classics which stand head and shoulders above the rest. After all, when a band’s discography stretches over half a century and countless different styles, it is difficult to succinctly sum it up. In other words, the repertoire of ELO does not start and end with ‘Mr. Blue Sky’. In fact, some of Lynne’s personal favourites go far beyond the confines of that admittedly iconic effort.
Back in 2016, for instance, the songwriter revealed some of his favourite ELO tracks to Rolling Stone and, among the likes of ‘Mr. Blue Sky’, a particular stand-out came with the band’s 1973 single ‘Showdown’. Marking a definite shift in the sound of Lynne’s outfit, the song expertly blended their typical prog-orchestral atmosphere with heavy overtones of funk and R&B excellence. With that mix, the track was always bound to be a triumph, and Lynne was aware of its potential right from the beginning.
“I wrote ‘Showdown’ in my mom and dad’s front room in Birmingham,” he recalled of the song’s humble origins. “I made the riff up, and I was thrilled with it. I knew it was going to be a hit even after I had just done a few notes of it.” Ever the visionary, the single did end up reaching number 12 in the UK singles chart, acting as a fitting farewell for the band’s time with the Harvest label.
“When we cut it, the engineer said, ‘This is a classic.’ I was thrilled to bits,” Lynne added. Ultimately, though, there is no deep meaning behind the track, other than its musical appeal. “It’s one of my favourites, though the lyrics don’t mean anything, really,” the ELO songwriter revealed,” concluding: “It’s just a story, a made-up scenario. A lot of people ask me what my songs mean, and I have no idea. It means something different to me every time I sing it.”
Despite the brilliance of the song, along with its immediate popularity, the track never appeared on any of ELO’s studio albums in the UK, although it was included on the US version of On the Third Day. Perhaps as a result of that omission, the song largely remains one of ELO’s more underrated anthems, even if it is one of Jeff Lynne’s most beloved.
