Harry Doherty’s article on ELO taken from the Melody Maker on 2nd April 1977.

ELO: more than a classical gas.

“It’s not classical rock. It never has been, but when it started, it needed a name. It had to be put into a bag. I just call it music.” The Electric Light Orchestra /classical rock: the two have gone hand-in-hand since the day ELO was but a figment of Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood’s imaginations. Now, with the band well-established across the world, and Wood long gone, Lynne feels the time has come to distinguish between the two.

“I wouldn’t say that it’s influenced by the classics at all. Maybe little bits here and there, but basically no. We’re a rock group and that’s it. There’s not much that’s classical about ‘Do Ya’, is there?”

Two tracks immediately spring to mind that verify the classical-rock tag. “Roll Over Beethoven,” the neo-classical treatment of the rock classic that did more than anything else to present ELO and their ideals to the mass public, and ‘Rockaria,” the new British single, are undeniably influenced by a desire to instil some degree of operatic feel into the music. On the other hand however, it is argued that they parody the classical tag as much as they project it.

“ I suppose both are send-ups of the classical-rock tags,” Lynne said. “I’m really pleased with ‘Rockaria’. It’s a tongue-in-cheek look at classical rock, but it is a rocker and I think it’s the best in the rock tradition that we’ve done. It’s a new-style rocker.”

Five years ago, Roy Wood, immediately after splitting from the band, announced bluntly, with or without him ELO was going to be a big band. The idea, because of it’s originality and a lack of competition in the field, couldn’t possibly fail.

Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood formed ELO out of the Move in 1969, taking with them that band’s drummer and fellow native of Birmingham, Bev Bevan. The Move, excellent exponents of traditional British pop, had come to the end of the road, and the various members of the band were keen to move on to new ground.

In Britain where the Move were regarded as part of the pop establishment, the public were reluctant to accept anything other than the real thing, and for years the projects undertaken by the members of the band were never regarded by their fans as permanent. They were odd jobs to fill in the time until the Move made their big comeback. They never did.

Lynne was the newest member of the Move when the split came. He was a prolific writer and had served a good apprenticeship in pop with another Brummie band, the Idle Race, recording two albums with that band and receiving acclaim from the critics but without much public success.

Even now he doesn’t consider he was really a member of the Move, and says it was convenient for him to join the band so that he could be managed by Don Arden (who still manages him) and pursue his own ambitions.

The Move was still very much Wood’s band, although Lynne did contribute to the writing - his most notable compositions being “Do Ya,” (re-recorded by ELO on “ A New World Record”), which was the flip side of the Move’s later singles, “California Man”. In the States, though, “Do Ya” was nominated as the A side and climbed to around number 70 in the American charts, the highest the band ever achieved in the States.

Lynne, who doesn’t like talking too much about the past and especially evades the subject of Roy Wood, said the Move didn’t really exist when he joined but was just making records to fulfil contracts.

So as the Move was winding up business, the Electric Light Orchestra was being formed, but although the idea to form such a band was spawned at the end of ‘69, it wasn’t until two years later that their first album was released,

Although in hindsight, it is apparent that there was democracy in the band, with Wood and Lynne sharing the production credits and splitting the songs down the middle (Lynne in fact, penned five of the tracks and Wood four), Lynne was never given his fair share of the credit for the concept and music of ELO. Like the Move, it was still viewed very much as Roy Wood’s band.

That first album was strange. It had obviously been inspired by the Beatles’ orchestral treatment of things like “I Am The Walrus,” but quite heavy on the ear and more experimental. Wood, especially excelled when able to display his startling versatility, playing cello, oboe, acoustic guitar, string bass, bassoon, clarinet, recorders, slide guitar and percussion.

Demanding and experimental though the music was, it was also very enjoyable, and Wood and Lynne came up with a couple of excellent songs, notably Lynne’s “10538 Overture” and Wood’s valiant attempt at spoofing Mason Williams’ “Classical Gas”on “First Movement”.

The album could have been regarded as pretentious but is was tackled in such a way that, at the time, pretension was the last thing I worried about. Once ELO could settle down and rid themselves of the more absurd ideas of mixing strings with rock music, there was going to be a hell of a lot of outstanding and original music. How could they fail with writers like Wood and Lynne? They almost did.

In June, 1972 the Electric Light Orchestra made its first major British appearance at Barbarella’s Birmingham. Wood, Lynne and Bevan were joined by cellists Hugh McDowell, Michael Edwards and Andy Craig, French horn player Bill Hunt and Violinist Wilf Gibson. From the start, there was trouble with the instrumentation. If ELO were to exist successfully as a live act, they would have to concentrate on getting a sound system that would do justice to their intricate arrangements.

But while the band were sorting out the problems of live performance, Roy Wood left to form another band, Wizzard. It was, to say the least, a shock and temporarily knocked and ideas ELO had for making it in Britain.

I’ve always considered Wood’s decision to be courageous and honourable. He said there were no musical differences. He felt it was simply a case of Jeff Lynne not getting the attention his contribution to the music and development of ELO merited.

It was always his quotes and his pictures, said Wood, and he could take that no longer. Wood is currently getting another band together, called Wizzo, and he should be back in the public eye very soon.

I can’t believe Wood when he says there were no musical differences. Of course there were. When Wood left, that was the beginning of the end of the experiments with strings in the rock framework. Woodie has always been well into messing about with sounds.

Lynne preferred a more conventional approach, and when he was left in charge, the string section of ELO took on a new role. Although the strings (despite the name, ELO, with sparse use of strings, didn’t really qualify as an orchestra then) still remained prominent in the songs, they had nowhere near the predominance of when Wood shared the driving seat.

The second album “ELO 2”, was a meek attempt at sustaining that dominance, but Lynne soon discovered he could not exercise the same power over their experimental adaptation of strings as Wood, and the only thing that held that album above water was the excellent rousing version of “Roll Over Beethoven”.

With the release of “On The Third Day,” it became clear that Lynne has decided strings would be used in a complementary fashion. The concept had been sweetened considerably.

I put it to Lynne that ELO were much more experimental in their earlier days. “When we first started ELO, there was a lot of pretentiousness with the music. I was doing stuff that I didn’t really want to do but doing it all the same, I thought I should do it because it was cool, man. It was experimental but there was no direction to it. We didn’t know which way to go until we really formed a group.

“I mean, the songs weren’t particularly outstanding on that first album and I didn’t know what I was doing as a producer. As far as Roy is concerned, I think that we would have come to loggerheads musically if he had stayed.

“I wanted to be boss and he wanted to be boss, and certain things couldn’t be resolved. It would have happened sooner or later if he hadn’t left the band when he did.”

With “On The Third Day,” Lynne really came into his own, especially as a writer. He has always been a good writer, from his days with the Idle Race, but with ELO completely under his command, he developed fast and furious. Although it was a concept album, “On The Third Day” appealed more because of the quality of the songs, especially “Ma-Ma-Ma Belle,” an exquisitely paced rocker.

While Britain still refused to listen to the rejuvenated ELO, now a complete band, America slowly but surely warmed to Lynne’s voice and songs, and the unique orchestral arrangements.

Then, with the release of “Eldorado,” the band was suddenly accepted on a widespread scale in the States, while Britain, with the band occasionally plugging away with brief tours, was still adamant.

“Eldorado was the turning point, I suppose. That was the first time I used a big orchestra as opposed to treble-tracking two cellos. I always wanted a bigger sound so one day I just said ‘Let’s use an orchestra’, so I used a 20-piece orchestra and wrote the songs for that.”

“I don’t think the music was necessarily more commercial than ‘On The Third Day’. It was more accessible, probably, with much better tunes. Before ‘Eldorado’, I was to some extent, working slightly against myself by not really letting myself go completely and doing songs that I think are great. I was holding back slightly and thinking ‘Maybe it’s a bit dodgy,’ or whatever.”

“Eldorado” was a catalogue of excellent songs, magnificently played and with the ELO concept becoming more defined. The orchestra was strong, but never overpowering. More than ever, they complemented the songs.

But that album also led to criticisms of Lynne being derivative, and the Beatles, 10cc and even Bob Dylan were being liberally cited as artists from which he had outrageously ripped off tunes. Last years album, “Face The Music,” the one which cracked America wide open for ELO, received the same critical remarks.

“The critics keep doing that. They do it with other people as well. Fortunately for them, they mention me with the Beatles, so I don’t mind. I obviously don’t sit down and say ‘what can I nick today?’ I don’t do that. If I am influenced, it’s completely subconscious and I never know that I’ve done it and I still don’t. I get accused of nicking things that I’ve never hear of. I’ve never even heard of some of the people I’m supposed to have nicked from. That gets me mad.

“Obviously, I’m influenced by the Beatles, because the Beatles of ‘68 and ‘69 was the sound I have always liked. That’s obviously been a big influence on the way I’ve looked at songwriting. If you’re going to be influenced, you might as well be influenced by the best stuff, but as far as for nicking tunes, I’ve never done it. Remember that there are only seven notes to play with.

“I’ve never has people who buy the records come up to me and say that I’ve nicked anything. It’s only been reviewers and people like that. Maybe it’s just that reviewers run out of things to say. It’s happening to a lot of groups now, I’m pleased to say, not just me, but it is very strange to read that I’ve stolen something off the Beatles or whatever.”

It was a criticism, however that couldn’t be levelled against ELO’s newest album, “A New World Record,” which, to me, was the culmination of what Lynne, as the writer, singer, producer and conductor, had built to for four years.

The songs are of an unparalleled high standard, led by the rootsy r&b-ish “Livin’ Thing”, which look “Evil Woman” and the brilliant forerunner to it, “Showdown,” reinforced Lynne’s ability to pen occasional classics.

For the first time in the band’s history, apart from those early days when the ELO sound was distinguished by its inventiveness and virtual weirdness, they accomplished the feat of attaining a sharp, individual sound that could pertain to no other artist. And, very importantly, Lynne managed to get the orchestra’s complementary role off to a tee.

The album, predictably, took off immediately in the States consolidating ELO’s flourishing reputation there, and lifted them into another league. It has now sold over two million copies in the US.

But the album also broke down all the barriers of refusal as far as Britain was concerned and, following the single success with “Livin’ Thing,” the album slowly accumulated sales. All of a sudden the British public realised ELO were as good as their publicity. Britain has at last been captured by ELO. It’s difficult to say why ELO never broke through in their own country before this year. The quality of the music has been unusually high for the past three years, and the response was relatively low for two of them. The band have never totally neglected the cult following here, but the pedestrian fashion in which Britain has accepted the ELO will no doubt lead to some reaction when it comes to plotting out tours. America, which took the band to their hearts from the off, will always have priority.

“I’m just pleased that it’s happened at home,” Lynne said, “I don’t really have any other sentiment about it. I’m just chuffed. It’s suddenly happened and I accept that. I don’t look any deeper than that. I don’t look very deep into anything.

“I got despondent at one point and we thought ‘Should we pack it in and go to America?’ But we’d have another go. Every year we would do one little gesture. But America is so big that we knew we could work there forever.”

Now, with Britain and America safely secured, it’s looking better than ever for ELO. One criticism I’ve consistently had about them, however, has been that their stage act has always been a disappointment after their records. That, I am pleased to report, has also changed.

I saw the band play New York’s Madison Square Gardens recently and the sound they got, with the help of tapes, was magnificent, full and ballsy. As well as that, whatever deficiencies Jeff Lynne has in stage presence are adequately covered by a dazzling presentation, with lasers and backdrops to best effect.

“It’s taken a long time to get the stage show right, but it’s now better than ever, with the new amplification and things. The arrangements on the latest things we do are easier to play on stage. We get a really thick sound now.” ELO’s perfect stage show, I think would be to tour with a full orchestra. Lynne agreed.

“I’ve thought about that many times, but I don’t think we ever will do it. Maybe we’ll do a one-off concert with an orchestra in Los Angeles or New York and one in London. Otherwise, it’s impossible. You couldn’t take the size of orchestra I have in mind, about 30 people, on the road. It would take a couple of weeks to just set the thing up for one concert.”

“Maybe in the future, when we don’t work so much, we’ll do it, because after this American tour, we’re not going to work so much live. I want to spend a bit more time in the studio.”

That, I’m afraid, could be bad news for all those thousands of English fans who have just picked up on ELO. We shouldn’t have been so sceptical.