Jeff Lynne picks his two favourite Beatles albums
The Birmingham legend Jeff Lynne set out on his musical journey in 1963 at age 16. After humble strides with formative bands, including The Andicaps and The Chads, Lynne delved into pop-rock, heavily influenced by British invasion-era luminaries, especially The Beatles. Little did he know then that his journey would lead him to collaborate with George Harrison, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, and Roy Orbison as part of the legendary supergroup Traveling Wilburys.
By the late 1980s, Lynne had solidified his status as a star in his own right, serving as the frontman and creative force behind the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO). During ELO’s peak in the 1970s, Lynne honed his skills as a producer, contributing to the band’s immense success.
After producing most of his own hits for ELO, Lynne agreed to produce Harrison’s 1987 album, Cloud Nine. This success allowed him a platform from which to enter a lucrative spell in production, featuring collaborations with Paul McCartney and Bryan Adams. Lynne also co-produced for The Beatles’ retrospective Anthology series, most recently working on the band’s last ever single, ‘Now and Then’.
Although Lynne would become better acquainted with The Beatles, especially Harrison, throughout the 1970s, he first met the band in the late ’60s while they were still an item. In a past documentary (see below), Lynne revealed that, while working on the ELO debut, his engineer invited him to watch the Fab Four record at Abbey Road Studios.
“The engineer said, ‘Anybody wanna go down to Abbey Road [Studios] 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 fairly 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”.
Adding: “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.”
Summarising the surreal experience, Lynne noted that it was one of the most important moments of his career. “It was the biggest thrill ever because I got to see something I never dreamed possible,” he added. “Going in there and getting into that space, it’s scary. Because it’s all the history, you know, the atmosphere of the place.”
In 2012, Lynne was challenged by The Quietus to pick out his 13 all-time favourite albums. As a bonafide Beatlemaniac, he managed to squeeze two Beatles records on the list alongside picks from his Traveling Wilburys bandmates, including Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever and George Harrison’s Cloud Nine.
First shedding light on The Beatles’ 1966 pre-psychedelic masterpiece, Revolver, Lynne said, “This is pretty amazing”.
Adding, “How did it sound back in ’66? Way better than everything else, I would say. It stood out like a sore thumb, really. It was so tight and beautiful and punchy. It was the punchiest thing around. It was powerful, and it seemed to me majestic.”
For his second Beatles selection, Lynne flicked back to the very beginning of The Beatles’ catalogue. “Oh, this is brilliant,” Lynne beamed, picking out 1963’s Please Please Me. “And the sound George Martin got on it! I love the opening drumbeat and the bleed with all the drums leaking onto the guitar mics and sometimes onto the vocals if they did the whole track live. The sound of it, to me, was real, raw excitement.”
Continuing, the ELO frontman picked out a favourite from the album as one of the greatest rock songs ever recorded. “I think ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ was probably the greatest ever English rock’n’roll song,” he opined. “I would imagine that it’s as good as any old American rock’n’roll song, like the real thing. The real stuff. As good as a Chuck Berry tune or something. It was as solid as anything I’d ever heard or better.”
Listen to The Beatles’ ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ below.
