The artist who walked out on Electric Light Orchestra: “There was no notice”
Being a part of a band like Electric Light Orchestra feels like being in a committee of musicians rather than a group. There were still members of the band that played music, but some of the biggest parts of their sound came from when everything was orchestrated rather than anyone improvising a line or finding the perfect lick to go into a track. Everything existed within Jeff Lynne’s head, but becoming one of the biggest musical geniuses of his time also meant leaving some good friends in the lurch.
Then again, Lynne was never meant to stay very long in his old bands. The Move had a knack for making fantastic takes on power pop, but there was always that production guru that was waiting to burst out of the band. And by the time most people heard ‘10538 Overture’ on the band’s first album, they knew they were listening to Lynne finally unchained, almost like he realised he could do anything behind the board.
But Lynne wasn’t the only Move member who came on during the band’s early days. Roy Wood had been the co-mastermind throughout many of their early albums, and looking at the way both of them interacted, they were practically the British rock equivalent to Steely Dan, using every member of the band as another coat of paint when painting their sonic masterpieces across every album.
Despite the band becoming synonymous with their otherworldly aesthetic later, Wood should be commended for helping deliver that sound. There are still pieces of the band’s work that sound like traditional pop music, but on those first albums, Wood would help them spread out a little bit more, especially on their longer songs where he made the listener feel like they were soaring through the cosmos.
“He said, ‘I’ve got this other group, see ya!'”
Jeff Lynne
As the band moved closer to pop music with records like On the Third Day, the experimental side of their sound was put on the back burner. Lynne was now able to write songs like ‘Can’t Get It Out Of My Head’, so why the hell would anyone want to focus on a massive prog-rock song when there was already an ace in the hole?
While Lynne still considered Wood a dear friend, he said he was blindsided once he heard that he was going to go off on his own with his own band, Wizzard, out of the blue, saying, “We were both sort of producers, and it got to the point where you’d go to the studio, and it’d be who could get to the desk first: I’m doing this bit! No, I’m doing this bit! And it got to be childish, really. And he’d already formed this other group, Wizzard, without telling us. There was no notice. He said, ‘I’ve got this other group, see ya!’”
That didn’t seem to stop Lynne one bit, though. With the rest of the group behind him, Lynne became the more benevolent version of Phil Spector, taking every single piece of the music and sculpting it until it sounded perfect. And it’s not like Wizzard didn’t have their moments, either, fitting somewhere between the early days of glam rock while still keeping the spirit of progressive music that Wood had been inching towards.
Most people may have considered Wood’s departure to be one of the biggest fumbles in rock and roll history, but it was never about the raw sales for him. It was about doing the best with whatever suited his muse, and if it meant turning down millions of records in the process, then so be it.
