Jeff Lynne on the ELO song that reflected his own unhappiness: “I sound really desperate and lonely”
To the untrained eye, Birmingham is a somewhat unexotic corner of the UK. However, following its crucial role as an industrial hub, the city is famed as a fertile artistic breeding ground with members of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and the Electric Light Orchestra to its name. Jeff Lynne, one of the area’s most beloved musicians, is famed as the frontman of ELO but also found success as a top-flight producer.
As a producer, Lynne worked with George Harrison on Cloud Nine, Brown Wilson on his eponymous debut album and Paul McCartney on Flaming Pie. Each success in his career seemed to lead to a higher peak of collaborative grandeur. This chapter seemed to reach a climax when Harrison put Lynne’s name forward to work on The Beatles: Anthology alongside George Martin.
Ever since he was a teenager, Lynne dreamt of being a Beatle, and in his career with Traveling Wilburys and as a producer, he came as close as one could get. “I was recording with the Idle Race in London in 1968,” Jeff recalled in a 2020 conversation with Classic Rock. “A friend of our engineer phoned the studio to say he was working on a Beatles session at Abbey Road.”
Lynne was just 20 years old when he first saw The Beatles in person, and they didn’t know him from Adam. “I was blown away,” Lynne reflected. “Nobody had heard it yet, but there I was in Abbey Road, actually listening to it being made. I stayed for maybe half an hour, then I thought it would be polite to leave because you feel a bit of a dick in that company.”
Although Lynne had to leave after just a few minutes, he saw quite clearly that what he wanted was within reach that day. His dream unfolded over the ensuing decade, beginning with his success leading ELO. The band’s early material lay somewhere between prog-rock and glam-rock’s glittery sheen. However, over time, Lynne steered ELO towards a disco-inspired aesthetic fit to rival The Bee Gees.
ELO’s most popular spell was associated with ‘Blue Sky’ optimism and danceable grooves that seemed to portend Lynne’s imminent production career. However, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows for Lynne. In the mid-1970s, he endured separation and subsequent divorce from his first wife, Rosemary Adams, an affliction intensified by the abrasive light of burgeoning fame.
During a nadir in his personal life, Lynne poured his emotions into the emotional 1977 single ‘Telephone Line’, which also appeared on the album A New World Record. “I can remember writing this on an old, out-of-tune upright piano. I somehow squeezed this song out of it. I sound really desperate and lonely on this one, and maybe I was. It’s about trying to find a girl every night and you just can’t get through to her. It was a scenario I thought of, but maybe it was prompted by the fact that I wasn’t happy at the time.”
It is apparent that Lynne wrote the song in the closing days of his relationship with Adams, reflecting a breakdown in communication. Musically, Lynne gravitated towards the mournful ballad to offer balance to the parent album, which featured more upbeat tracks like ‘Livin’ Thing’ and ‘Rockaria!’. “When I was a kid, I loved the plaintive songs of Del Shannon and Roy Orbison,” Lynne added. “They wrote songs that were really sad, and those were the best. I thought I was writing those sorts of songs. People tell me the song gives them a boost, but I never dreamed I was doing that for anybody.”
Whether or not these plaintive songs helped Lyne’s fans, they seemed to help him get through tough times in his personal life. Two years later, he married his second wife, Sandi Kapelson, with whom he stayed through his years of eminence as a producer before their divorce in 2017. He is now happily married to Camelia Kath.
