The song that gave Jeff Lynne “the best feeling in the world”
It’s impossible to think of how much time and thought Jeff Lynne put into every single ELO project.
He was already willing to pick up where The Beatles left off, but those records sound like virtual symphonies every single time you turn them on, even if you’re listening to songs that are supposed to be straight-ahead rock and roll like ‘Rockaria’. But just because there’s a lot of window dressing in front of everything doesn’t mean that Lynne didn’t know how to make something sound simple.
After all, Lynne created some of the greatest songs that Tom Petty ever made with only the bare essentials. ‘Free Fallin’ is among the best heartland rock songs of all time, but there’s not too much going on in the mix if you listen closely. All it needs is a few chords to keep the whole thing moving, but you wouldn’t necessarily think that of the same guy who made those early ELO records.
Their beginnings were a lot closer to prog than what they eventually became, and a song like ‘10538 Overture’ wasn’t exactly going to be easy for anyone to understand. Having massive orchestral touches on the record was bold for anyone to introduce themselves to the world, but after working on the massive cover of ‘Johnny B Goode’ on ELO II, Lynne already knew that he wanted to have a different outlet than playing space-themed operatic tunes.
He and Roy Wood were on two distinct pages half the time, and when he started working on Eldorado, something felt different. There were still all the bells and whistles from the last few records, but ‘Can’t Get It Out Of My Head’ was one of the most perfect pop songs that he had ever made up until that point. And when it reached the top of the charts, it was almost like a lightbulb went off in Lynne’s head.
He could still use the orchestral touches like an instrument, but he had a lot more to offer than grandiose exercises. An album like Out of Blue had some songs that bled into each other and told a story in the same way that the back half of Abbey Road did, but as far as Lynne was concerned, he would have been far more happy making songs like ‘Turn to Stone’ for the rest of his life if he wanted to.
The album’s opening single might not have been an absolute masterpiece of complex harmony or anything, but Lynne had finally settled into the groove of being a pop star, saying, “I think simplicity-wise, my feeling is the simpler anything is, the better it is. Being able to write simple songs is a real craft. The simpler you can get it is the best way to do it. A tune with chords that I really love is a very simple song called ‘Turn to Stone’. I just love those chord changes. If you can get it good and simple and meaningful at the same time, it’s the best feeling in the world.”
Granted, not all of his productions later down the line had to be simple. The Beatles Anthology was going to be a Herculean undertaking when he got the call from the remaining members of the Fab Four, but even when working with George Harrison on his solo record, a song like ‘This is Love’ benefits from the same mentality of less is more. Lynne could build a big arrangement around Harrison’s tune, but the basis was always about writing simple pop songs that everyone could sing along.
Because, really, that was always what Lynne loved about listening to his favourite artists back in the day. Roy Orbison and Del Shannon never did anything too flashy on their records, and if he wanted to take the audience with him on a journey, he needed to be speaking their language whenever he came up with a melody.
