When Jeff Lynne covered the song Roy Orbison called his absolute favourite: “A great production”
When it comes to musicians who have earned the right to label themselves as the complete package, there aren’t many in better stead than Jeff Lynne. Not only is he a standout performer, an even more impressive songwriter, and the owner of a seemingly innate ability to conjure up arrangements and produce flawless-sounding records, but he’s perhaps one of the most universally admired figures to have ever graced the world of popular music.
For a good chunk of his career, most of Lynne’s plaudits came as a result of his work leading Electric Light Orchestra to chart success, but the later periods of his career saw him form the Traveling Wilburys alongside some of his greatest competitors when it comes to songwriting prowess, as well as establishing himself as a producer for hire and a solo artist.
However, when you’re so adept at working on original material, is it something of a cop-out to record covers of someone else’s work? It may feel necessary to pay tribute to the ones who have inspired you at times, and some artists might simply be after a break from the sound of their own ideas. But when Lynne covers a song, he does so with purpose and a sense of true admiration for the original performer.
While he’d be more than qualified to try his hand at covering many artists’ work, it was when he attempted to bring new life into the work of his closest friends and collaborators where he truly shone, perhaps due to the artistic connection he already had and the deep understanding of what it is that made their work so special not just to him, but to them as well.
When he released Long Wave in 2012, a solo comeback record of sorts, having not released an album under his own name since 1990’s Armchair Theatre, he chose to try his hand at covering some of the tracks that had inspired him throughout his life, with everything from Chuck Berry to Rodgers & Hammerstein to Charles Aznavour, but it was his interpretation of Roy Orbison’s ‘Running Scared’ that he was most proud of.
Speaking to Classic Rock Revisited during the press tour for Long Wave, he spoke with great passion about how much of an honour it was to cover his dear friend’s work. “When you tackle these old, beautiful songs, then you have to treat them with total respect,” he told the publication. “The fact that I knew Roy very well made that even more important. One night, Roy and I were talking and he told me that ‘Running Scared’ was the favourite song that he ever did, of his old stuff. It was great to hear that.”
He would continue by saying that he worried about releasing his own interpretation and that he wasn’t sure if it would live up to the strength of the original. “I know that I can’t come close to his version, so, once again, I had to do my own version. I think it ended up being a great production.” While Orbison would sadly have never heard Lynne’s cover, having passed away several years before its release, he would undoubtedly have been proud to hear a dear friend and collaborator reinterpret his work faithfully and with such passion, but there was never any doubt that Lynne would be able to achieve that.
