The hated 1980 movie that gave Jeff Lynne his greatest songs: “One of me best”
Jeff Lynne wasn’t the kind of artist who really needed music videos to be one of the biggest artists in the world.
He was more than happy to make music that people were going to love in the studio, and even if ELO had one of the best stage shows with the amazing spaceship designs, there was no way that he was going to be one of the biggest artists in the world if it meant sacrificing the kind of music that he was making. He wanted to keep perfecting his songs until they were absolutely perfect, and when you look at his track record on the silver screen, he wasn’t exactly the best at figuring out the best cinematic experiences.
In fact, half of the time Lynne appears on camera tends to be with his sunglasses on most of the time. He was always trying to make music first and promote it second, and even when The Traveling Wilburys looked like they were having the time of their lives in the video for ‘Handle With Care’, he was happy to fade into the background and let Tom Petty and George Harrison do some of the heavy lifting for him.
But that didn’t mean that Lynne couldn’t find time to make his way into the movie world. After all, some of his songs have made for the greatest needledrops of the modern age like at the beginning of Guardians of the Galaxy 2 when ‘Mr Blue Sky’ starts playing, so why couldn’t he have found time to do a full-on musical? In theory, he could, but in practice, Xanadu was a lot more of a mixed bag than anyone thought it was going to be.
Olivia Newton-John was already becoming larger than life thanks to Grease, but even when compared to the greatest music she’s ever made, there’s a massive slab of 1970s cheese covering this movie. The entire plot doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense, and even when she is singing, there are more than a few times when you’re sitting there wondering just what the hell is going on.
As a matter of fact, one of the only saving graces of Lynne working on that record was getting the title track under his fingers, saying, “It was quite difficult because it was the theme tune of the song… um… of the film. And that was quite hard to write. I think construction wise, that’s one of me best songs. I know it’s a bit soft, probably, but it… it’s actually… the chord structure, I’m really, really pleased with. I’ve always liked the chord sequences. She sang it great.”
And if you look at the way the song was constructed, it’s not like there aren’t many ELO-isms out of place by any stretch. Lynne was clearly still in his element making some of the greatest tunes that he could think of, and even if he were to play the song on acoustic guitar, it could stand alongside some of the greatest tunes he ever made like ‘Livin’ Thing’ and ‘Evil Woman’ on any good day.
Getting the best performance out of Newton-John wasn’t going to be that difficult by any means, but when you consider that this was the first time Lynne ever worked with someone outside of ELO, maybe he wouldn’t have been able to work on George Harrison’s records or make magic when working on The Beatles’ Anthology a few years later.
While Lynne was definitely working at the peak of his powers when making a record like this, the fact that he never actually saw the movie speaks volumes about what he was used to by this point. This was clearly a work job for him, but even when he was making tunes that seemed to be by-the-numbers by his standards, he still managed to make tunes that were miles better than what anyone else could think of.
