The one musician Jeff Lynne never wanted to talk to again: “Silly”
Jeff Lynne never went into the studio without having a good idea of what he wanted his music to sound like.
ELO was his baby from the moment that he started it, and even if they went through their fair share of twists and turns, it all came back to him trying to make a symphony every single time he made a new record. And when he officially retired from the band for a few years, he didn’t really want anyone to be messing with their legacy every single time he found his way towards other musical legends.
Half of the fun of him working with people like George Harrison and Tom Petty was that he didn’t have to worry about getting onstage, and that’s something that he had to fight for ever since he went off the last ELO tour. He didn’t like the idea of not being able to produce all of his songs live the way they were intended, and he didn’t want to bother making the same kind of tunes that were neutered by what the rest of the band could do.
So when he put that part of his music on the shelf, it made sense for him to think outside the box and live out his Beatles fantasies when he began working with Harrison and the other Traveling Wilburys. But when you decide to suddenly stop a band in their racks, the rest of the musicians weren’t exactly going to be happy about being left on the sidelines until you decide to come back.
Lynne didn’t want to leave the rest of the band hanging, but hearing about a whole new version of the band going on without him would have been unthinkable. The entire process of making ELO wouldn’t have existed without him, and while he and Roy Wood reached a point where they were going off in different directions, Bev Bevan’s idea of making a new band riding on the coattails of ELO didn’t sit well with him.
After all, ELO Part 2 wasn’t supposed to be anything more than an imitation of what they had done, and even though Lynne was well within his right to sue over the name, he figured that he would rather not engage with Bevan anymore, saying, “To me, it’s silly. At one point, I thought about suing him — I mean, I did write all the songs for ELO, except for one by Chuck Berry, and I produced them all. But in the end, I thought, well, why go to all the expense of two years in court? I decided it isn’t worth the bother. It’s nothing to do with me at all.”
But it didn’t take long for Bevan to start trying out some new things as well. If he couldn’t jam on Lynne’s songs all the time, getting the chance to work with Tony Iommi probably didn’t hurt, either. Then again, the reason why ELO Part 2 never got off the ground probably had more to do with what the crowds would have been thinking when they got to see them perform live.
They weren’t terrible by any stretch, but when you’re looking at the crux of what ELO were, Lynne would need to be there to give it even a modicum of authenticity. Make no mistake, Bevan was a great musical force in the band for years at that point, but when you look at what they were doing, the description of ‘tribute band’ didn’t even begin to describe the kind of treatment they were giving many of their songs.
The band were making the slightest changes to what Lynne had done and was seeing if anyone would notice, and while Lynne didn’t bother getting involved, he also knew that he wasn’t going to spend time calling up Bevan, either. The drummer had gone his own way, and it was time for Lynne to leave that side of himself in the past and only come back when it was for the right reasons.
