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["10538 Overture" playing]

Whether people were ready for the ELO, I'm not too sure.

I think they were lucky in terms

of they came out at roughly the same time as Genesis, Yes, ELP,

the whole prog rock movement had started.

♪ Did you see him run? ♪

♪ Did you see him crawl? ♪

ELO were experimental.

They went to do strings, arrangements, interesting lyrics.

It was a quite a big undertaking to create this large band

and they pulled it off.

They loaded in such an incredible amount of orchestration

but the fact is it worked, it was symphonic pop.

It was a different sound.

It was completely something no one expected.

They mixed Beatles harmonies with heavy rock

and orchestral sounds.

Beatles, lots of strings and very catchy tunes.

They carried it off purely because they had a flamboyance

which carried past the oddness.

ELO, the Electric Light Orchestra,

really sprang out of the late '60s.

I suppose they were in a way inspired by The Beatles,

because The Beatles showed the way with

songwriting and arranging, album production,

set amazingly high standards.

And on the way, inspired younger musicians

to try something in the same field.

Using strings, I think, was a crucial thing.

And that left its mark on a young band called The Move.

♪ I don't know what to say, ♪

♪ She was running away ♪

But now I'm standing on the corner,

♪ lost in the things that I said ♪

♪ What am I supposed to do now? ♪

♪ Goodbye Blackberry Way ♪

The Move were a Birmingham, who in the pop rock circles,

for want of a better description, in the late 60s

had made a modest amount of impact,

thanks mainly to the fact

that they had an incredibly talented songwriter in Roy Wood,

who was also something of an eccentric.

By the time we got towards the end of the 60s,

Roy Wood and the drummer Bev Be van were the only members of The Move

who remained from the original five-piece,

which had Carl Wayne singing, Ace Kefford playing the bass

and Trevor Burton playing the guitar.

Now, The Move had established themselves

with a string of very good hit singles,

but Roy Wood, on the one hand, was being told

to keep The Move going because obviously

that was the goose that laid the golden singles.

But he wanted to do something else.

He wanted to branch out a little bit.

And I remember as a teenager, I always found that confusing,

reading the press, Roy Wood's got a new band

and it's called Electric Light Orchestra.

And then you sit watching Top of the Pops

and he's still performing Move songs.

What's going on here?

♪ Goodbye Blackberry Way ♪

♪ Sure to want me back another day ♪

They reached the point where The Move

suddenly seemed a bit out of date

and they outlive their image, certainly.

And they wanted to move on, literally, and do something

that was more artistically credible.

The Move brand ceased to be important by the beginning of the 70s.

So what happened was the formation of the Electric Light Orchestra

out of the move, comprising Bev Be van on drums

and Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne,

who recently joined the last version of The Move.

So you had these three guys who've been writing great songs,

great material for The Move.

And in fact, there was a little bit of a predecessor

to the ELO when Tony Visconti,

who produced David Bowie later on,

he actually played the cello as well and he would do string arrangements

for The Move, which I think gave Roy Wood ideas

of what he could carry on with.

♪ Tied to the bed ♪ ♪ She's waiting to be fed ♪

♪ No pay 'til Saturday ♪

♪ Can't see an ounce of reason in her head ♪

♪ Don't laugh and turn away ♪

♪ Wild wild wild tiger woman ♪

♪ You move me very fast ♪ ♪ But can you last another day ♪

♪ Get out of the way ♪ ♪ Wild wild tiger woman ♪

♪ You're gonna break your little fall ♪

♪ They call her the wild tiger woman ♪

I think the track Wild Tiger Woman by The Move,

one of the ingredients that has been carried over to ELO

it's quite interesting, for a band of that era

to use this chord, which is a diminished chord.

So they're playing a sort of blues type of sequence.

[guitar playing]

Which is basically E to B to A, and then suddenly,

which is very much Roy Wood, he puts this E diminished.

[guitar playing]

If you transfer that to strings...

[guitar playing]

You can hear ELO in there.

[guitar playing, humming tune]

So there's the first thing that's been taken by Roy

from The Move and put into ELO.

What he wanted to do was follow the same route

that the Beatles had followed with I Am The Walrus.

To have strings involved in pop music,

to create something a bit different,

not just overdubbed at the end of a song

or put on by a producer who thought he was Phil Spector.

What they wanted, what he wanted was something that really

could get the best of rock, the best of pop, the best of Classical,

mix it in together and come up with maybe

something that would be as big in the 70s

as pop has been in the 60s.

Wasn't original, necessarily.

What was innovative was the fact

that this was to be the first time someone had tried it on block,

rather than doing it on occasional songs.

So here Jeff Lynne developed the idea

of the Electric Light Orchestra,

and they came up with that by using

as an experimental guinea pig, if you want,

one of the songs that Jeff Lynne had written for a Move B side.

Roy Wood bought a cheap Chinese cello

and he decided that he'd have a fiddle about with this in the studio.

So he played along with the finished track

or the work in progress track.

And Jeffrey has said, "hey, that's a good sound, why don't we try that?"

So 15 overdubs later, they had 10538 Overture.

♪ Did you see that man running ♪ ♪ through the streets today? ♪

It was the first of the Electric Light Orchestra saga,

but the beginning of a completely different way to make a rock record

a very commercial record, using strings, but not using strings

as a mellow, smooth, cheesy sort of way,

but using strings in a rhythmic, pushy, rocky way

that actually were, in a way, sort of quite guitar based.

10538 Overture as a first single,

starts with a complete lift from the Beatles's Dear Prudence.

[guitar playing]

So that repeats, then it goes to a G major chord.

In the next section, which is very much like

ELO's own style of writing,

it goes to a C major to a C suspended fourth,

to a G minor, then it modulates.

It goes up a tone to a D major to a D suspended fourth

to an A minor, and then jumps to an E flat quickly.

Back to the introduction again.

[guitar playing]

The strangest thing about this track is that

it manages to marry something that you recognize,

which is a Beatles riff, onto their own ideas.

And of course, in a period in 1970 when anything went musically,

you could try and join things together.

So it sort of worked quite well in a sort of bizarre way

and nobody had really done anything quite like that before,

so they were fresh.

♪ Did you see that man running ♪ ♪ through the streets today? ♪

♪ Did you catch his ♪ ♪ face, was it 10538? ♪

Roy Wood picked up the cello as being the way

he wanted to drive ELO almost from day one.

Why he chose it? Only he can say, but it was a brilliant choice

because it had a real power to it.

It was a pop rock instrument in many respects,

waiting to be discovered.

And Roy would suddenly decide, what we're going to do

is make the cello the focus of our string section.

We're not going to make it violin,

we're not going to make it anything else.

It had a smoother, soothing, softer sound.

We're going to go for aggression.

He brought a new meaning to cello playing, that's for sure.

And I mean even, you know, you see performance of them playing,

he's rocking out with that cello.

So again, you know, that's something no one had seen before.

He thought, "Aye aye this is Roy going mad, he's lost it."

And other people thought, "Absolutely brilliant.

This is absolutely amazing."

I thought it was Roy being a genius.

♪ Did you hear the news ♪ ♪ came across the air today? ♪

Guitar is a rhythm instrument, bass can be a rhythm instrument.

Logically, the cello can be.

It can be plucked, staccato, or it can be bold.

And yes, they've used it a lot and I think it's a great effect, actually.

I don't think that using the cello as a bass instrument

was actually that effective.

It created a sound, a tone, colour, it created a sound.

But it wasn't something that really pushed things along,

it was more of a decoration to the sound as it was.

It's not like picking out a kazoo or a banjo. [chuckles]

You have to treat the instrument with respect.

And yet, in a way, I suppose Roy was doing that

and he was introducing an instrument that might have got

overlooked and forgotten, certainly popularized again,

and made people look at it in a different light.

So it's nice to see him using an unusual instrument

in a kind of pop rock context.

The basic string section in an orchestra is double basses,

cellos, violas, and violins.

And what they would do was double track

those triple trackers to make them sound like a huge string section.

That was essentially it. Although, strangely enough,

on 10538 Overture, they had a French horn as well.

I think the only time that it was that predominant,

mostly with ELO, it was a rhythm section

and lots of strings and lots of vocals.

Roy's idea was to actually use an orchestra,

but what he did do, because he was a guitarist,

instead of actually doing string parts,

because he played everything himself.

He played cellos, violins, and did everything himself,

because he did all that, he actually played it like a guitarist.

If you listen to the ELO singles,

and if you listen to anything on ELO, it's not actually an orchestra,

it's actually Roy playing all this... [humming tune]

Pushing stuff and then all the little solo bits.

It's all based around rock and rhythm

and about around the guitar, what a guitarist would play.

They didn't try and bolt-on an orchestra.

They employed other musicians, violinists, etc.

To be part of the whole package.

That's what makes it completely different.

It's not like, let's have a rock band

and put loads of strings around it,

like Deep Purple did with an orchestra,

or The Moody Blues did with an orchestra.

It's nothing like that at all, it's a completely different attitude

and a completely different thing.

They did with the 10538 Overture, exactly what Roy would envisioned.

They took what was a very basic, simple, very catchy pop song

and just loaded it in with strings, especially cellos,

and turned it into this classical pop piece,

which was quite remarkable.

They then took it to then The Move manager, Don Arden,

the legendary Don Arden, and said, this is what we want to do.

And apparently Arden's initial comment was,

"You've got to be joking, you're mad.

This is never going to work."

As soon as he heard 10538 Overture, he thought, "this can work."

It sounded like the Beatles,

so that's a pretty great thing to start off with.

And what was remarkable about the single was that

it entered the charts at number nine,

just as The Move's California Man was leaving the charts.

♪ Did you see him run? ♪ ♪ Did you see him fall? ♪

Some critics were a little bit sniffy about ELO,

they thought they were pretentious or rising above the station [chuckles]

and people had a tendency to be rather suspicious

of any group that used strings, it's not always a popular thing to do

because you have this idea of,

Are they trying to be classical musicians?

Are they trying to be moving into this orchestral rock thing?

When ELO came out, it was a little different

and a little innovative because they were trying to be mainstream

without trying to be artistic at the same time.

So I think they did hit people a little bit

square on the jaw with a sound that was,

what is this? What are they trying to do?

This is pop, but not as we know it, Jim.

However, people started to realize that the underlying melody

was so strong, it carried everything forward.

♪ Did you hear the news ♪ ♪ came across the air today? ♪

♪ Someone has been found on ♪ ♪ the rocks down in the bay. ♪

Their first single proved that the public were ready to listen.

If you could get the combination of a kind of a good striking theme

and a good pop tune

together with all this experimental stuff, then it worked.

It was a bit raw, but you could see what was going to come,

or you could look back and see

that that was the starting point for a lot of the hits

that they had after that.

For a first single from ELO,

I think it was everything that everybody was expecting.

The classical edge, it was certainly different,

but I certainly wasn't expecting it to sound as Beatle-y as it did.

John Lennon himself actually said that if the Beetles had carried on

what they would have been producing, had they stayed together,

was more or less what ELO produced.

So if it had the master's seal of approval,

I think that turned a lot of people on to listening to it.

The difficulty for some people was that The Move had

got themselves an identity and the ELO was...

Well, was that a new group? Was it The Move in sheep's clothing?

Nobody was really quite sure what to make of it at the time,

and I think having John Lennon put his reputation behind it

actually did them a lot of good.

Just trying to match acoustic, delicate, subtle instruments

like a violin or a cello, with a raucous drum kit

and a powerful lead guitar, it's very, very difficult.

So they set themselves high standards and a big task.

It wasn't an easy ride for the ELO, but they were convinced

that they had something original and fresh to say.

[audience applauding, cheering]

Jeff Lynne says, "If you could blow it, pluck it or bow it,

Roy would play it."

And if you look on that first ELO album,

almost all the orchestral parts, I think they had a French horn player

and they had a violinist.

And then you had Bev Be van on drums,

Jeff Lynne in vocals and guitar.

And then Roy would do vocals and everything else.

His one thing is overdub it to oblivion.

If you're doing something once, you'll treble it.

If you're doing something twice, you'll quadruple it.

So because he was on to 16 and 24 track when he made those records,

if you wanted to have four pianos, he'd play one piano,

then play another piano on top of it, another piano on top of it.

And that gives a completely different sound

to when you have four pianists.

Tends to sound quite squashed and quite thin and quite small.

But if you do it the right way, and if you have the right songs,

and the right ambiance and things around it,

it'll always sound very interesting.

They certainly has the ability to come up with interesting,

almost cartoonish concepts and translate them

into these sort of almost bad taste kind of extravaganzas,

musical extravaganzas in which you throw everything in.

Fire bells ringing, violins, [chuckles]

explosions, the 1812 Overture, anything.

You just throw it in.

It's a bit like a sort of manic Phil Spector in a way.

A Birmingham Phil Spector.

There wouldn't have been an Electric Light Orchestra

if it wasn't for Roy Wood and his ability with,

you know, a myriad of classical instruments

that he brought into the studio and there were times

when he had to learn to play new instruments and odd little bits,

just to sort of complete the ideas that they had in their heads.

If Roy Wood had been American,

we would be calling him the second Brian Wilson.

He came up with great ideas.

He was the man, really, who drove of the early ELO.

At the beginning, it was Roy Wood's project, it was Roy Wood's idea

and Jeff was coming along for the ride.

If you look at the early writing credits,

it involved Jeff Lynne as much as it did Roy Wood.

They were equal on the first album.

If anything, I think Jeff Lynne might have more songwriting credits,

but the innovation that was used in the first album

very much was driven by Roy Wood's genius.

It was he who came up with a lot of the ideas

and the heaviness of the album.

So Jeff Lynne's own ideas and the way to present songs

perhaps were overshadowed by Roy Wood's personality,

Roy Wood's vision and Roy Wood's enthusiasm.

Who was going to get the limelight? Was it going to be Roy Wood

who'd achieved so much with the first version of The Move?

And Jeff Lynne, who joined the band later?

He was clearly a great talent and burgeoning writer,

somebody who wanted to express himself.

So between Roy and Jeff, there was always going to be a bit of rivalry

and probably arguments about the musical direction.

The next one is part of a long line of Jeff's songs

that he can't think of titles for.

Is Jeff's Boogie 1 to 13.

And this is Jeff's Boogie No. 2.

It's very easy to see, you can spot the Jeff Lynne song

and you can spot the Roy Wood song.

So they both obviously had their own idea

for what the band was going to be like.

And to a certain extent,

it was almost like never the twain shall meet.

Jeff's Boogie No. 2, the title doesn't really rank up there

with the 100 greatest song titles of all time,

but Jeff Lynne was in the habit of creating a lot of different songs,

riffs, pieces of music,

and obviously he didn't bother to give them a title

until he knew that something was going to happen to them.

Now, Jeff's Boogie No. 2 didn't actually make it onto the first album.

It was a piece that they played live.

So I think what we do is look at it and say,

would it have deserved a place on the first album?

And the answer, to be honest, is probably no.

It's not got the finished quality of a song that's been thought

through all the way through.

It's a little bit staccato, jumpy,

but then ELO songs, perhaps were then.

[indistinct lyrics]

Hang on a second. This is, you know...

It's got some good beats, but it's going all over the place

as far as I was concerned.

Yeah, Boogie 2 it's a bit of a strange, strange old brew, that one.

It's hard to understand because Jeff Lynne is a fantastic songwriter

and Roy Wood is a brilliant songwriter.

So why, they must have had loads and loads of great songs flying around.

Why do they do things like that?

I mean, don't understand.

In fact that we've got that dub on film is obviously a plus,

because it shows you the way that Jeff's mind was working.

[indistinct lyrics]

Bev Be van is an incredibly underrated performer.

He's the third arm, if you will, the early ELO.

He was with The Move, with Lynne, and with Wood

and when those two decided to start this new experiment

they took Bev Be van with them, and there's a reason for that,

because Bev Be van is an excellent drummer.

He can be heavy, he worked with Black Sabbath.

He can be subtle, he can be light, he can be orchestral,

but he's never been given the credit he deserves,

because he doesn't have a profile.

He's always, oh, that bloke at the back just bashing away.

But he remains one of the most crucial elements

of the whole Electric Light Orchestra sound.

The one thing about a drummer in a band that size

is you have to be a very powerful drummer,

and Bev is, you also have to be rather like a conductor.

In a band of that size, especially live,

you are giving musical cue points within a song.

Someone like Bev would give a signal, okay, a little fill,

going into the chorus or whatever.

So he was like a conductor, he was the engine room

of a band of that size.

And it's perfect, really, for the band.

The greatest thing he does add is that he doesn't get in the way.

He doesn't want to be a soloist, he doesn't want to be a star.

He just wants to play the drums.

I don't think with the ELO he was necessarily called upon

to pull out all the stops on every song,

because clearly the focus was elsewhere,

but the fact is, he came up in the John Bonham school of drumming.

He's one of these drummies who learns how to hit things

at an early age and he channeled all that energy into drumming.

♪ You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain ♪

♪ Too much love drives a man insane ♪

♪ You broke my will, oh what a thrill ♪

♪ Goodness gracious, great balls of fire ♪

♪ You get me lonely and you get all my money ♪

♪ You came alone and your with me honey ♪

♪ I cannot lie you are so fine ♪

♪ Goodness gracious, great balls of fire ♪

♪ Kiss me baby, ♪

♪ Whooo, feels good ♪

♪ Come on over baby, ♪

♪ Love me like a lover should ♪

♪ Your fine, so kind, ♪

♪ Told this world that ♪ ♪ your mine, mine, mine ♪

ELO tackled lots of things that people and critics

certainly were a bit bemused by. I mean, for example,

doing a version of Jerry Lee Lewis' classic rock and roll tune

Great Balls of Fire.

Is that a good idea to do in the 70s? I'm not too sure,

because people had their firm memories of the original.

♪ You get me lonely and you get all my money ♪

♪ You came alone and your with me honey ♪

♪ I cannot lie you are so fine ♪

♪ Goodness gracious, great balls of fire ♪

This particular song is a rock and Roll classic.

And they pretty much just tip the hat to it.

So, yeah, I mean, they did a good job, basically.

I think they loved the song

and I think that comes across in their overall production.

Of course, they added, you know, the bigger sound

with the strings and all that sort of stuff.

But essentially, they're holding true to Jerry Lee Lewis' song.

It's not a very easy song to do because it's one of those covers

that is always overshadowed by the original because the original is

based so much on Jerry Lee Lewis' own personality and flamboyance.

So when ELO tried to do it, they didn't do it justice

because they were overshadowed by the original.

♪ Love me, baby ♪

♪ I wanna love you ♪ ♪ like a lover should ♪

♪ Your fine, so kind, ♪

♪ Told this world that ♪ ♪ your mine, mine, mine ♪

Obviously, when a band starts its career

it may not have enough music to play a whole set.

Great Balls Of Fire serves almost as not only stuffing in the set,

but it also perhaps gives the listener

an idea of what ELO are trying to do.

Because, as you know,

you can separate the song from the treatment.

This was very much a prototype of the kind of arrangement

that Jeff Lynne would be doing on Roll Over Beethoven a year hence.

I can understand Roll Over Beethoven

because Beethoven, string players, rock band.

Hm, get that. I get that combination.

You've got string players, you've got the word Beethoven,

you've got a rock band.

Oh, that's good. Makes sense to me.

Great Balls Of Fire. Why? It's a piano song.

It's a rock song.

What's got to do with strings?

It's either that or they just didn't have enough material.

And that's weird,

because you're talking about Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne,

two of the greatest songwriters around.

I think it's probably best left in its original format.

♪ Dawn is the death wish night has passed away ♪

♪ It left the sacred flower ♪

♪ Opened up the grave and bowed its life ♪

♪ Unto the queen of hours ♪

♪ Queen of the hours ♪

♪ Along, along, along the path of time, of time ♪

♪ She is still, the clock shall tell the tale ♪

♪ When all is well, is well ♪

Queen Of The Hours is one of those songs that was a very good pop tune.

Typical of Jeff Lynne at the time,

he wrote a very simple pop number,

it could have been the Beatles, it could have been Stones,

but then what they did was

once they had the basic stuff structured down,

they loaded it up with strings and so forth, and it worked really well.

That seemed to be the way they were operating at the time,

which is to get the song done, get the basis done,

get the, if you want, the rock instrumentation

or pop instrumentation in place

and then think, "Okay, how can we overload this?"

And throw in all manner of styles

and all manner of instrumentation from the classical end.

Because of the period that it was recorded in,

I think it had had some unusual influences.

It had sort of Eastern music influences,

Indian music influences in there.

If there was a track that perhaps put the ELO in the Beatles flame,

that was it.

It really is I Am the Walrus backwards in certain respects.

♪ Dawn is the death wish night has passed away ♪

♪ It left the sacred flower ♪

♪ Opened up the grave and bowed its life ♪

♪ Unto the queen of hours ♪

♪ Queen of the hours ♪

♪ Along, along, along the path of time, of time ♪

♪ She is still, the clock shall tell the tale ♪

♪ When all is well, is well ♪

I think it also had some influences that were around at that point,

which were not musical, were pharmaceutical, called LSD.

Because there's a rather odd section in the middle.

But in those days anything went and it worked for the time.

If it does sound as if it owes a little bit to the Fab Four,

well, maybe that's not a bad thing.

Like any band, when they form, they have to find their feet.

And this was a track where they were finding their feet.

And certain ingredients from Queen Of The Hours

stayed with ELO right through their career.

And other ingredients were like,

"Okay, not so good. Let's remove that".

There are bands that take music on the road before they record it.

And yes, that sometimes does mean that you come up with

a far better finished product.

If you've been able to see how it goes down

in front of a live audience,

you can refine it, you can work out what works and what hasn't.

Certainly with ELO it was the reverse formula,

because you had to create really in the studio,

but then start worrying about how you're going to reproduce it live,

which certainly if you have to do it one way round,

that's probably not the preferred way.

ELO live were a strange concoction

because they looked odd.

Certainly in the early days,

Roy Wood looked like a crazed eccentric.

He could have been the professor from Back to the Future.

He looked so mad and so wild-eyed.

And it was him who carried the whole thing, to some extent,

visually, in those early days,

everybody else held back.

But of course, the big hanging point was the fact

that you had this line-up of cellists on stage.

What was going on?

This is Baroque, this is chamber music,

this is orchestral, but this is still pop music.

There's what, nine, 10 people in the band?

It's something that people hadn't really seen before on stage,

that's for sure.

Cellos, violins and a rock band to go with it.

So in that respect, it was innovative and original.

I saw them playing at a concert.

I think it was one of the early rock festivals back in the midst of time.

ELO were battling the elements

and all the things that go on at rock festivals,

like bad sound and wind blowing

and the music sheets blowing away in the breeze

and sound mixers pulling their hair out

trying to get it all together.

So it's very difficult to kind of get that stuff across live.

Some of the headlines that ELO got for

the chaotic performances they put on,

one in Croydon in particular, I think,

was more or less the death knell of that group,

because the reviewer couldn't hear what was going on,

because back in those days

contact microphones pickups didn't really exist.

And the other problem they had was that Roy Wood on record

was playing four or five different things.

So, obviously, having him belting around from cello to oboe

to whoever knows what else,

was a little bit of a logistical nightmare.

So heaven helped the poor sound man with all he had to deal with.

I don't think the results live of the first ELO

were ever really much to write home about.

How could they recreate that sound on stage

without having all the string instruments,

without having 25 string players?

Synthesizers were beginning to be developed.

That was allowing them to recreate,

to a certain extent, extent the sound of strings.

But it wasn't very early in their career.

So once it had a bit of success in America,

that's when the live shows really started kicking in for them.

They were able to use two or three keyboard players

and some real live string players

and they got away with it sounding as close as damn it to the records.

But in the very early days there wasn't a lot happening live.

This one's from the Electric Light Orchestra album.

It's supposed to be a hymn.

On the album, we did it with a choir.

We couldn't afford it tonight.

So this one's called Whisper In The Night.

Whisper In The Night is very definitely a Roy Wood track.

You wouldn't mistake it for anyone else.

And in many ways it does hark back to The Move

in the kind of sound it has.

So I would say it's an inventive track.

It was one that had elements that you would recognize

if you're a Move fan,

but also it was trying to move forward

in the way that ELO were doing.

♪ Whisper in the night ♪

♪ Over silent evening air ♪

♪ Angel's gown shines white ♪

♪ All at once you're glad she's there ♪

♪ Daughter of your dream ♪

♪ Shine a guiding light for me ♪

♪ For I'll be here 'til light ♪

♪ Whisper in the night ♪

♪ 'Til she has forgiven me ♪

Whisper In The Night that was a bit a bit [indistinct] for me,

and therefore I didn't have much time in my life for it,

so Whisper In The Night,

I'm sure it's a lovely way to end an album,

but not my cup of tea.

It's sort of sad on the one hand

and Christmas-y on the other.

It's really quite unusual.

And I think it sounds a bit like to me

that he had had an idea for a song

and brought it to the table

and nobody else maybe had a particular

piece of material at that time,

so they put it together and saw what they got.

Not one of their better moments, I would say.

♪ For I'll be here 'til light ♪

♪ Whisper in the night ♪

♪ 'Til she has forgiven me ♪

♪ La-dah-dah, dah ♪

♪ Whisper in the night ♪

♪ 'Til she has forgiven me ♪

It was a really good song.

And they put on a very angelic choir,

a very heavenly choir,

and a beautifully arranged string operation as well,

which made it into something slightly different than the norm.

It took it away from the norm.

It's very close in many respects

to what The Beatles had done

about five years previously on Sergeant Pepper.

And it wouldn't have been out of place on Sergeant Pepper.

It's one of the best songs on the first album.

It was a bit moody,

but not a sort of dark, meaningful moody.

It was just insipid, I think was the word I'm searching for.

Quite an odd song, actually.

If you heard it now,

you might not associate it immediately with ELO.

You'd probably say, "Who's that?"

Whereas lots of other ELO songs

you immediately know it's ELO

just by their overall sound.

It's very easy now to look back at the lyrics and think,

"Was Roy Wood writing his valedictory letter to the band?"

Because it's all about saying goodbye to a loved one.

Maybe you can read too much into it these days,

but given the fact he wasn't to be around for very much longer in ELO,

you do start to think,

"Was he already having second thoughts

about carrying on with this band?"

♪ Whisper in the night ♪

♪ Over silent evening air ♪

♪ Angel's gown shines white ♪

♪ All at once you're glad she's there ♪

♪ Daughter of your dream ♪

♪ Shine a guiding light for me ♪

♪ For I'll be here 'til light ♪

♪ Whisper in the night ♪

♪ 'Til she has forgiven me ♪

♪ La-dah-dah, dah ♪

♪ Whisper in the night ♪

♪ 'Til she has forgiven me ♪

I still remember to this day

the first time hearing the first ELO album.

Me and mates were going like, "It's the Beatles.

It's the goddamn Beatles".

The Beatles influence, I think really did come from Jeff Lynne.

History has shown that the guy's a Beatles fan.

No need to apologize for that.

The Beatles were one of the best bands that have ever existed.

But, I mean, the fact that Lynne ended up

producing new Beatles material on Anthology,

worked with George Harrison

on the last couple of records that George ever made

was with George in the Traveling Wilburys.

And the overt Beatles-ness of the classic period of ELO,

the 70s period ELO.

You know, that's what Jeff kind of brought in to the mix

where Roy might have bought the more quirky classical ideas.

♪ And she'll be someone else in a while ♪

♪ I see the flood lights burning ♪

♪ I hear the band play on ♪

♪ Now Nellie takes her bow ♪

I know a lot of people accuse Jeff Lynne of being like John Lennon,

but I don't think Jeff ever went out to sound like John Lennon.

He comes from northern England, so did John.

He's got the sound of his voice.

I don't think it's ever on purpose.

I don't think that ELO were overly influenced by The Beatles,

but they were heavily influenced by The Beatles.

They took that as a starting point.

What Roy Wood did,

and let's give Roy Wood the credit

for being the main visionary in the early days.

What he did on that first album

was to ensure they used Sergeant Pepper as a starting point,

and then said, "What would happen if?"

And then project it out from there.

So Sergeant Pepper was a starting point

and a heavily influential starting point,

but it wasn't the be-all and end-all.

It was a love of the music.

And it does sound great, there's no doubt about it.

And it was wrapped around their songs,

so it wasn't as if they were just stealing the songs.

They weren't doing that.

But there's no doubt that ELO

would never have sounded like ELO without The Beatles.

Early ELO just reeked of The Beatles,

every song we could more or less take apart and say,

"That's The Beatles".

Maybe apart from, what was it, the Battle of Mars ton Moor.

That was it.

July 2, 1644.

Which was a [indistinct].

♪ My Lord King, ♪

♪ You stoop to betray your own people, ♪

♪ And even in the eyes of God, ♪

♪ Do you not relent? ♪

♪ I am therefore bound by no other course ♪

♪ I shall raise an army; ♪

♪ Together we will march against you and your kind, ♪

♪ And every born man will fight to regain his own freedom, ♪

♪ And cleanse his wretched soul. ♪

The Electric Light Orchestra first album

certainly wasn't the answer to everyone's prayers,

but it had enough in it to suggest that

had they made a second album with that same lineup,

what they'd have come up with would have been

far nearer the finished article,

far nearer a real combination of rock and the classics.

The first ELO album was a very good debut album

for the one simple and obvious fact it was different.

It was a completely different thing.

It's an interesting album,

it's an enjoyable album in places,

it's a fun album in places,

but it's not a great debut album.

The first album was still trying to find their feet

and maybe pushing and pulling

between the different dynamics that were in the band

as songwriters.

What's also funny is that the ELO first album

was called No Answer In America.

And the reason for that was because a secretary

at United Artists had been asked to phone the UK office

to find out what the album was going to be called.

And there was nobody in the UK office,

so she just wrote on a piece of paper "no answer,"

which some genius then saw later on.

And hence the album was called No Answer in America.

For me, the whole of the first album,

the material took second place of the actual sound,

that they were more interested in getting the sound together,

getting the orchestration thing and the whole vibe of it together.

I can take that. Except for the fact that

when you're a listener

and when you're listening to an album you've bought,

the one thing that makes you listen to it is the material.

And I think the greatest weakness in that first album is the material.

I don't think it's great.

And there's stuff you listen to and you just think,

"What on earth were they doing here?"

And there's some stuff that just sounds so baroque and bizarre

that you just wonder how they thought

they were going to get away with it.

But overall, it's the blueprint for the fantastic rock band

that they were going to become.

Some of the most important ingredients they had was

Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood's vocals were good sounding,

they were good singers

and they were interested in lots of harmonies

and so it was poppy, but it was this big sound.

♪ Lifting her head, her countenance redeemed ♪

♪ Re-acted the murder by the silver stream ♪

♪ Ah look at me now displaying emotion ♪

It was heavy, it had a baroque style,

something slightly surreal about it

and was more adventurous than they ever were to be again.

And it was a great introduction.

It certainly took a few people by surprise.

My dad was sat in the corner reading his racing post

and his ears pricked up and looked at me,

"What the hell is this you're listening to?"

"Oh, it's ELO, dad".

And he didn't make one of his disparaging comments.

[grunty voice] "I'm verbally impaired by you".

So I took that as a thumbs up.

And I know that he liked his orchestral pieces

and I think that's probably an indication

that it did have orchestral qualities

that even my old man found quite appealing.

Apart from using a brass section,

which they used in places,

you couldn't really cut the glockenspiels

and triangles thrown in.

It was big, you know.

And logistically, it was a big job to record it.

Recording sessions in those days

were a bit trial and error sometimes.

And sometimes you kept a take that maybe wasn't the most solid,

temper wise,

but was the best feel wise.

In a strange way, despite the ambition and innovation

that Roy Wood was trying to introduce,

they were the anathema of prog rock,

because prog rock was very much influenced by classical respect.

The prog rock musicians were into writing huge pieces,

great swathes of music

which drew on pretentious twaddle if you want,

or pretentious culture, however you want to put it.

ELO were about pop.

They had pop hits, but they weren't a pop band.

They have always been a progressive rock band.

They might have been more progressive

when they started, like most prog bands are.

I think ELO thought in the true meaning of the word progressive,

they thought that they were being progressive

because they were progressing from The Move

and taking the music to what they thought was the natural progression.

But as for prog rock,

no, I don't think they were prog rock.

It's more free form pop.

Progressive rock, as far as I was concerned,

had closer links with the jazz tradition,

which I don't think ELO did.

They were more obviously pseudo-classical influences.

The use of Beethoven themes, that sort of thing,

in a pop context, which is fun

and artistically satisfying in its own way.

But I would never call them a progressive rock band.

Early ELO is most definitely the mixture of the two styles,

of Roy's style and Jeff's style, working together.

But you can also hear their styles separately.

In songs that were written together,

Jeff's musical stamp is there.

And that's what took over the band after Roy had left.

Logically, of course.

When the pair started Electric Light Orchestra,

they were equal partners, but it was an equal partnership

that never really sat comfortably with either of them.

They both wanted to be number one.

And things apparently reached such a bad state

that when ELO went on tour and played in Italy,

there was an infamous gig

when it was announced by the promoter

that ELO would not be playing that night

and no reason was given.

The problem was, backstage, Lynne and Wood had fallen out

as to who should actually be the first to step foot on stage.

Both wanted to be ahead of the other.

That was how crazy it had gotten.

On ELO's first album,

Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood came up with all the songs,

rather like Lennon and McCartney,

and as with Lennon and McCartney,

they couldn't necessarily satisfy their own needs

within that format.

Because Roy always wanted to control

the production and the sound and the writing,

the rest of the band found it very hard to deal with.

And I think anyone.

I think it's very hard to work with Roy

because he wants to do everything.

He wants to write it all, he wants to play it all,

he wants to sing it all, only because he's very talented.

He does trust people and he does appreciate people.

It's just his pure enthusiasm for working

and for making a sound.

It had obviously fallen apart in terms of the relationship.

Jeff Lynne was going to leave or be booted out.

Roy Wood would take complete control.

But such is the character of Roy Wood.

He got bored with it all and said, "No, I've got another idea.

Let Jeff Lynn have this. This is old hat.

I'll move on and form Wizzard.

Once he'd done the Electric Light Orchestra,

he'd done the album, he was bored.

To him, it was over. He'd done this.

That's why I always think

the first Electric Light Orchestra album

is Roy Wood's solo orchestrating album.

Because Roy Wood got bored

and Jeff Lynn took up the bat on,

and he developed it.

♪ You made a fool of me ♪

♪ But them broken dreams have got to end ♪

Jeff Lynne probably found greater freedom

without the competition from Roy.

So he would be able to focus his energy and ideas.

ELO were led by Jeff Lynne.

Bev Be van was his right hand man.

Richard Tandy I suppose, was his left.

And then an array of new musicians came into

that he felt could project the sound that he thought ELO should have.

Jeff thought again,

"Okay, how am I going to approach this?

Roy's gone need to have some madman dashing around,

playing five instruments in one song.

That simplified it a bit. I do the guitar and the vocals.

I write the song, and then we add in the other bits

as we go along,

rather than try and have this forced clash, if you like,

of the pop and the classical,

which is what Roy found so exciting.

It certainly did become a different beast.

I mean, that was it. It was Jeff Lynne's baby then.

And basically he took it in the direction that he wanted to.

Many critics and probably the fans

and probably the manager thought,

"Oh, my God, the band's doomed. They're going to fail".

But they did a new album, ELO II, after Roy went,

and then they had an enormous success in America.

♪ Ha, ha, woman, what you gonna do? ♪

♪ You destroyed all the virtues that the Lord gave you ♪

♪ It's so good that you're feelin' pain ♪

♪ But you better get your face on board the very next train ♪

♪ Evil woman ♪

♪ Evil woman ♪

For the first time, Jeff Lynne became the main songwriter

in a band of national and international stature.

And he rose to it magnificently

because he was a great songwriter.

Like Roy Wood, he wrote wonderful pop songs.

The difference is, Jeff Lynne locked everything down.

The experimentation, the adventure,

the innovation that Roy Wood had begun

with the first album was suddenly sidelined.

Jeff Lynne decided, "What we're going to do is make pop rock music

with soothing, smooth use of orchestration".

His Electric Light Orchestra

is a continuation of Roy's idea

done much better.

More lush, much more commercial,

much more slick,

much more obvious sort of piece of sell able product.

Bev Be van was still drumming

and we still had Jeff Lynne singing, writing, playing guitar.

But the band that ended up was really a rock band

with the odd string or two here and there.

One can never argue what the ELO achieved.

However, they never fulfilled the potential and ambition

that Roy Wood showed in those early days.

And that's because Jeff Lynne, I don't think totally believed in it.

He wanted to use classical influences for pop reasons,

to get commercial hits,

and he wrote some of the greatest songs of the 70s.

♪ Thought I saw love smilin' in your eyes ♪

♪ Ha, ha, very nice to know ♪

♪ That you ain't got no place left to go ♪

Very often when people come up with an idea

and one person gets bored and the other one doesn't,

there's a real bit of animosity.

But for some reason, when Roy got bored with it

and decided not to carry on

and Jeff took it on,

they just shook hands and went their own way.

It always seemed to be a really pleasant divorce,

which is very unusual in rock.

I think the fact that Roy and Jeff are still on speaking terms

and the fact they're still mates,

I don't think we'll have them together again in our lifetime.

But it would be nice to think that they can look back

on the early work and say,

"Well, we did something there that was worth doing".