Jeff Lynne on why working with Roy Orbison was “bittersweet”
Jeff Lynne was living the dream by the late 1980s. The former Electric Light Orchestra leader had found a second life as a record producer, eventually notching collaborations with everyone from Tom Petty to George Harrison. In fact, he got to work with both at the same time, along with Bob Dylan and Roy Orbison in their supergroup, The Traveling Wilburys.
Orbison was a particularly massive influence on Lynne. It was Lynne who facilitated Orbison joining the band (Harrison recruited Dylan), and immediately after recording the group’s first album, Vol. 1, Harrison and Lynne teamed up to record a comeback album for Orbison.
“This is a bittersweet thing because he was such a big hero to me,” Lynne later told Rolling Stone while recalling the album’s production. “I used to listen to him for hours and hours as a kid. I produced three tracks on his last album (Mystery Girl) and co-wrote three tracks with him. I wrote ‘You Got It’ with Roy and Tom Petty.”
Orbison had not released an album of original material for over a decade. “For years before this, he’d just been going through the motions of recording and not working with people who were empathetic with him or who had put enough care and love into the music,” Lynne added. “I reminded him of who he was and how great he was, and that’s why I got a great performance out of him.”
After riding high on the success of the first Traveling Wilburys album, hopes were high for Mystery Girl to have a real pop impact. Devastatingly, Orbison died of a heart attack just one month before the album’s release. ‘You Got It’ landed at number nine on the Billboard Hot 100, giving him his tenth and final top ten hit.
“It was just dreadful when I heard he had died,” Lynne recalled. “I got a call at like six in the morning, and all I heard was ‘Mr. Orbison has died,’ and then they hung up. I still have no idea who called me. I had to get up and listen to the radio to see if it was bullshit or real. It turned out to be real, unfortunately. ‘You Got It’ had just come out when he died of a heart attack at his mother’s house. He was a beautiful guy, as well as the best singer I’ve ever heard.”
Check out ‘You Got It’ down below.
