The album Jeff Lynne called his “favourite” he ever made
It’s safe to say that Jeff Lynne has practically won the musical lottery when it comes to classic rock.
Not everyone has the ability to name-drop the number of legends that he has worked with, and even if he’s leaving the road for good, there’s no telling what he can still do in the studio if he has the right idea. He could turn anything into gold when he had the right idea, but his best times were when he worked with someone else by his side.
Then again, it’s not like his solo track record was bad, either. Even if Roy Wood was a decent foil for him in the early days of ELO, everyone’s going to remember the group as a vehicle for Lynne’s fantastic songwriting. He didn’t need anyone else’s input to make his own lineup of classics, and given the amount of work he put into making records like Out of the Blue and A New World Record, he was never going to rest until he had the perfect take for every song.
While that made it difficult for him to reproduce everything live, it didn’t matter as long as he had the production gigs to fall back on. He normally felt more at home behind the board, and while any producer is trying to make a name for themselves half the time, it’s the ultimate compliment when people like George Harrison ask you to produce their record. And while Cloud Nine sold well, that was the tip of the iceberg for Lynne, because you could find him working with Roy Orbison, the Traveling Wilburys, or the remaining Beatles for the Anthology.
Anyone would have easily retired after doing the impossible for the Fab Four, but before Lynne even got the call to work with his biggest heroes, he felt right at home chopping it up with Tom Petty in between breaks in the Wilburys. Petty had been itching to do an album on his own without the Heartbreakers, and after a couple weeks of working with Lynne, Full Moon Fever took all the joy that they felt in the Wilburys and translated that into working on their own masterpiece.
Not all of the tracks are the liveliest in the world, but Petty knew that he was on the cusp of something great. No one would have thought to release a song like ‘Free Fallin” as a lead single, but when looking at how his voice and Lynne’s production worked off each other, you’d have to rub your eyes and make sure you weren’t looking at the second-generation version of John Lennon and Paul McCartney or Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
Despite the legends he worked with, Lynne had no problem calling Full Moon Fever his personal favourite, stating, “I was a great collaborator, I discovered. It wasn’t like I imagined. And, of course, Full Moon Fever was a big, big hit. That’s still my favourite album that I’ve ever done”. But being a collaborator was far from the only reason why the album worked so well.
Compared to every other record that Petty put out around that time, you can hear the pure joy from beginning to end. Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) wasn’t any fun for anyone involved, so hearing tunes like ‘Runnin’ Down A Dream’ and ‘I Won’t Back Down’ made him into the kind of pop music legend that didn’t need his fellow Wilburys to prop him up as one of their own.
Although Lynne does have more than a few moments in his discography where he has reached perfection greater than this, there’s no doubting why Full Moon Fever takes the cake as his favourite. Anyone could have made a half-decent record with their friends, but rarely has any record sounded this good while also feeling like it was recorded over a weekend.
