The ELO song Jeff Lynne wrote in response to an argument with his father
The Birmingham-born rock legend Jeff Lynne began his musical career in 1963, aged just 16. His early bands, The Andicaps and The Chads, stuck devoutly to classic rock ‘n’ roll inspired by the British Invasion era and its esteemed proponents, The Beatles. Little did Lynne know then, but his subsequent musical journey would find him sharing stage and studio with not only George Harrison but Tom Petty, Bob Dylan and Roy Orbison as a member of Traveling Wilburys.
By the time Lynne was rubbing shoulders with the Wilburys in the late 1980s, he had cut his teeth as a producer, with George Harrison’s Cloud Nine, Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever, and Roy Orbison’s Mystery Girl under his belt. As the 1990s dawned, Lynne stepped up to the plate to his biggest production task yet: joining George Martin on the credits for The Beatles’ 1995 compilation Anthology 1.
So, in the words of David Byrne, “How did I get here?” Jeff Lynne enjoyed his commercially rewarded lurch to superstardom in the 1970s as the frontman of the Electric Light Orchestra, often abbreviated to ELO.
Although ELO soared to unprecedented heights in 1977, following the release of their most popular album, Out of the Blue, home to ‘Turn to Stone’, ‘Mr. Blue Sky’ and ‘Sweet Talkin’ Woman’, the band first broke through to mainstream success in 1974, thanks to Eldorado.
Eldorado was ELO’s fourth studio LP, but their first concept album, following a character conceived by Lynne and inspired by James Thurber’s short story, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. The album’s pivotal success was in no small part reliant on the highly accessible lead single, ‘Can’t Get It Out of My Head’, for which Lynne perhaps owes his father recognition.
During a past interview with Uncle Joe Benson on the Ultimate Classic Rock Nights radio show, Lynne revealed that he wrote the anthemic single to prove a point following a disagreement with his father. Amid a heated discussion about music, Lynne recalled that his dad said, “That’s the trouble with your tunes…they’ve got no bloody tune!'”
Taken aback but inspired by such a remark, Lynne decided to bounce back with ‘Can’t Get It Out Of My Head’, “Just to show him I could write a tune,” as Lynne put it.
The song’s title doesn’t refer to the argument, however. Instead, tying into the album’s wider concept, Lynne wrote it about “a guy in a dream who sees this vision of loveliness and wakes up and finds that he’s actually a clerk working in a bank,” he explained on VH1’s Storytellers. “And he hasn’t got any chance of getting her or doing all these wonderful things that he thought he was going to do.”
Listen to the ELO classic below.
