The Electric Light Orchestra - The Electric Light Orchestra

Released - December 1971

Genre - Art Rock

Producer - Roy Wood & Jeff Lynne

Selected Personnel - Jeff Lynne (Vocals/Piano/Keyboards/Guitar/Bass/Percussion); Roy Wood (Vocals/Cello/Bass/Guitar/Oboe/Bassoon/Clarinet/Percussion); Bev Bevan (Drums/Percussion); Bill Hunt (Horns); Steve Woolam (Violin)

Standout Track - 10538 Overture

The Electric Light Orchestra, for me, are one of the ultimate examples of the significance a particular musical artist can have in your heart even if they're not an artist that you listen to particularly often these days any more. Between the ages of roughly 14 and 19 ELO were never far away from being my most-listened-to artist, and gradually opened the door to all the music that would come to define huge chunks of my life. While the music they led me on to ultimately came to be more meaningful, exciting and complex than the majority of ELO's stuff ever was, I simply can't deny the importance or the brilliance of their work and the impact it had on me. Essentially, in 2004 I saw Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind as a romantic teenager and was blown away by it (it's still one of my all-time favourite songs). Immediately snapping up the DVD and the soundtrack as soon as I could, I found a certain song by this band entitled "Mr Blue Sky" on the soundtrack (it was used in the theatrical trailer, not the film itself) and remember consciously thinking it was the greatest song I'd ever heard. Gradually I sought out all their work, starting with greatest hits compilations and big-selling albums before my deepening obsession with music at uni drove me to find their more obscure work. It was my love of ELO that prompted my step-dad to introduce me to Supertramp by dubbing them "the thinking man's ELO," and it was my subsequent love of Supertramp that really prompted me to delve into this obsession. So I have a lot to thank them for.

Of course, ELO are frequently dismissed as rather trite purveyors of lightweight disco-inflected pop rock, and that's an attitude that does them a real disservice - firstly, while it's true that the majority of their most popular work was more concerned with getting people dancing and buying records than it was with artistic credibility or musical invention, one simply can't deny how incredibly good this band were at achieving what they wanted to achieve and crafting hugely catchy, well-crafted pop music. More significantly, it's an attitude that totally ignores ELO's roots as one of the most interesting and innovative art rock bands of the early 70s. ELO arose out of the ashes of the Birmingham-based rock band The Move which, by 1970, was beginning to become a tiresome and uninspiring project for core members Roy Wood, Jeff Lynne and Bev Bevan. Searching for new ways to reinvigorate their sound, Wood decided to take his cue from the Beatles who, on Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, had first suggested the possibility of making rock music that incorporated classical instrumentation. Wood would attempt to go one further, with all the music this time written principally around classical instruments rather than the other way round, with those classical arrangements being the band's raison d'etre rather than just a way of ornamenting the sound. The new band would be built around the core trio, with Bevan on drums and percussion, Lynne playing most of the more conventional rock instruments including guitars and keyboards, and Wood focussing on the classical instruments, mainly strings and woodwinds.

Flying in the face of what the casual ELO listener might associate with the band, this sounds daring, unusual and radically new, standing up well alongside some of the best experimental rock and prog rock of the time. It's very much the album where, more than ever, the band's "orchestra" remit was pushed to the forefront more than anything else. Whereas there would come a time when ELO would justify that "orchestra" moniker simply by overdubbing a few violin parts over a disco backing, here it's a grandiose, scraping, braying orchestral polyphony, with the sawing of cellos and the blaring of horns rendering it totally unlike anything that had come before. In places, the fixation on delivering a concept successfully takes precedence over decent songwriting - "Look At Me Now" is a fairly trying melody over a tuneless scraping cello part and an irritating oboe squeal, while "The Battle Of Marston Moor" was so avant-garde and self-consciously baroque that Bevan refused to play on it, meaning songwriter Wood had to play most of the instruments for the song himself. Where this self-titled debut is most successful, however, is where it delivers what makes this concept so fascinating, which is to say, where the classical approach is used to deliver what is, undoubtedly, rock music, rather than a sort of weird modern, skewed version of baroque and renaissance music.

The best example, of course, is the album's hit single, Jeff Lynne's "10538 Overture," a truly great rock song reminiscent of some of the best of the Beatles' later work. The mildly distorted descending guitar part, echoed in that same sawing cello and the fanfare of the horns, makes for the band's first indisputable masterpiece. "Mr Radio" is the other great pop song on the album, and heavily anticipates the sort of radio-friendly fare Lynne would later go on to develop with the band. However, that's not to say that Lynne is the only one who manages to make Wood's concept work here. Although some of Wood's contributions are overly pompous and self-important, there are two that really stand out. "First Movement (Jumping Biz)" is a tremendously fun and energetic showcase for classical guitar that's one of the most instantly catchy pieces of music to use such a specific and old-fashioned arrangement or instrumentation, while "Whisper In The Night" is a truly beautiful ballad that hints at the possibility of what great things ELO could have achieved if Roy Wood had been granted more time to push his concept into new directions.

It's certainly true, though, that listening to this, it feels like an album divided between two creative minds, one that had a good ear for catchy pop music, and one who yearned to be an avant-garde musical pioneer. Ultimately, these were tensions and differences that Wood and Lynne were aware of themselves, and Wood soon departed to pursue his own musical projects, leaving the ELO concept in Lynne's hands. Strangely, considering how Wood had been the driving force behind the more avant-garde aspects of this debut album, he went on to form Wizzard, purveyors of fairly forgettable pop fluff, most notably the irritating festive "classic" "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day," while pop impresario Lynne would continue to make genuinely daring and innovative music with ELO for another few years before the band morphed into a very different entity to achieve superstardom. It's wrong to say that the band ELO changed into are worse than the band they started out as, but it's also wrong to say they're better - they're more or less a totally different entity, and fans of art-rock who assume they dislike the band's disco and pop stylings should certainly listen to their early work as it's of surprisingly high quality in that genre. This debut is certainly an uneven ride, but it's the most complete statement of the idea Wood wanted to ultimately deliver, and contains some truly fantastic moments. Give it a go, even if you've heard "Mr Blue Sky" and think, for whatever unimaginable reason, that you don't like it. This is a different beast altogether.

Track Listing:

1. 10538 Overture (Jeff Lynne)

2. Look At Me Now (Roy Wood)

3. Nellie Takes Her Bow (Jeff Lynne)

4. The Battle Of Marston Moor (July 2nd 1644) (Roy Wood)

5. First Movement (Jumping Biz) (Roy Wood)

6. Mr Radio (Jeff Lynne)

7. Manhattan Rumble (49th Street Massacre) (Jeff Lynne)

8. Queen Of The Hours (Jeff Lynne)

9. Whisper In The Night (Roy Wood)