The joke Jeff Lynne added to the start of a classic Electric Light Orchestra song
For many, Jeff Lynne is synonymous with the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO). While the band included other dedicated members like Roy Wood, Bev Bevan, and Richard Tandy, all of whom were rightfully inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame alongside Lynne, the band was undeniably Lynne’s brainchild, whether or not others were part of the project.
This was evident when Lynne took it upon himself to record one of the band’s most significant hits. ELO had been an established presence for almost a decade when ‘Don’t Bring Me Down’ was unveiled as a single in the summer of 1979. The album that housed this song, Discovery, was nearly complete when Lynne made the decision to record one last track.
“This one I made up in the studio, and I play all the instruments,” Lynne told Rolling Stone in 2016. “It starts with a drum loop from another song that I sped up. I then compressed the shit out of it. When I was singing it, there was a gap in the vocals, so I just shouted out, ‘Groose’.”
Lynne devised the song by creating a loop using the drums from a previous session’s recording. He then composed additional music on the piano, and the lyrics were the final component. Lynne crafted lyrics about a girl who believed she was superior to the man she was involved with. As a playful touch, he also inserted a count-in at the start of the song, even though there was no one he was actually counting in for.
Apparently, Lynne also made up the word “groose” as a place-keeper to fill a gap in the vocals when he was improvising the lyrics. “It was a word that came to my head,” he explained. “The engineer said that it meant ‘greetings’ in German, which I thought was lovely and decided to leave in. When I went onstage with it, everyone would sing ‘Bruce’. I just ended up singing ‘Bruce’ as well.”
Lynne continued: “This was the first song I did without any strings. It was exciting to work with them when we started, but [after] six albums, I got fed up with them. There was also trouble with the unions. They’d stop playing before the end of the song if the end of the hour was approaching. Now they aren’t so rude since there are samplers and everything.”
This track also unexpectedly became an apt theme song for astronauts during their space missions and served as the wake-up call for the Space Shuttle Columbia crew, who were stuck in orbit longer than anticipated due to unfavourable weather conditions on Earth. ELO’s record company even attempted to associate the song with the Skylab space station, which re-entered Earth’s atmosphere after six years in space.
