The George Harrison album Jeff Lynne picked over Paul McCartney’s
The ELO bandleader Jeff Lynne found his vocation in the 1960s. A childhood fascination with music gained momentum in his teen years, fuelled in no small part by the emergence of The Beatles.
Although the Birmingham musician would ultimately achieve widespread fame for a disco-infused approach to rock in the ’70s, his early bands, The Andicaps and The Chads, would model their sound on rhythm and blues, much like their Liverpudlian idols.
Despite ELO’s polished orchestral pop becoming his trademark, Lynne never lost sight of the songwriting principles that first drew him to The Beatles. Melody, harmony and economy remained at the heart of everything he produced, whether for his own band or the many artists who later sought out his unmistakable studio touch.
Lynne first met The Beatles in the late 1960s while they were still just about able to function together in a studio. In a past documentary, Lynne revealed that, while working on the ELO debut, his engineer invited him to watch the famous four-piece record at Abbey Road Studios.
“The engineer said, ‘Anybody wanna go down to Abbey Road and watch The Beatles recording?’ And I was making my very first album at about 20. I went, ‘What?! Can’t you see we’re busy?'” Lynne remembered joking. “I said, ‘Yeah. Let’s go,’ and I was down there in about ten seconds.”
Lynne recalled that the security was pretty relaxed. “Once you got past the bloke on the door, it was a bit dodgy; it was like going to this palace of recording,” he continued. “And this was just at the time I was wanting to be a producer, I was making my first album”.
“I sort of crept in and said, ‘Hello, John. Hello, George.’ It was so scary, just unbelievable, surreal. It was like a dream, hanging out in all this wonderment. We got chucked out of there after about ten minutes, but I couldn’t sleep for nights after that, just reliving it,” he added.
Summarising the experience, Lynne noted that it was one of the most critical moments of his career. “It was the biggest thrill ever because I got to see something I never dreamed possible,” he noted. “Going in there and getting into that space, it’s scary. Because it’s all the history, you know, the atmosphere of the place.”
Crucially, this was Lynne’s first contact with George Harrison. Following his most emphatic tenure with ELO, Lynne branched out into production. While producing Harrison’s 1987 comeback album, Cloud Nine, Lynne befriended a kindred spirit and within a year, he had joined Traveling Wilburys with Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Roy Orbison.
During the late ’80s, Lynne expanded his production portfolio with work on Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever and Roy Orbison’s Mystery Girl. 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.
In 1997, he produced Paul McCartney’s solo album Flaming Pie and is now considered the heir to George Martin’s title as The Beatles’ producer, most recently working on the band’s last ever single, ‘Now and Then’. It’s safe to say a teenage Lynne would double-take to see such a track record.
In 2012, The Quietus challenged Lynne to pick out his 13 all-time favourite albums. As a bonafide Beatlemaniac, he squeezed two Beatles records onto the list: Revolver and Please Pease Me. Lynne also reserved one spot for a Beatles solo LP, honouring his close friend Harrison and their collaboration Cloud Nine over McCartney’s Flaming Pie.
Looking back, Lynne’s career feels remarkably full-circle. What began with a nervous ten-minute visit to Abbey Road eventually led to him working alongside George Harrison, producing records for Paul McCartney and helping complete the final Beatles release. Few musicians have gone from devoted fan to trusted collaborator so completely, making his admiration for the band’s catalogue feel less like nostalgia and more like the foundation of an extraordinary career.
Listen to ‘Got My Mind Set on You’ from Cloud Nine below.
