![]() ![]() That old chestnut– artistic differences - popped up again. ![]() However simpatico the pair were at the time, it didn’t last long. Wood had written it as an homage to pre-Beatles rock-and-roll, his favorite, Little Richard, and Lynne’s favorite, Jerry Lee Lewis. Wood’s “California Man”, later covered by Cheap Trick, revealed that Lynne’s fixations weren’t limited to four lads from Liverpool. The final Move recordings were released on a maxi-single that included Lynne’s “Do Ya”,in which he and Wood traded vocals, was a catchy rocker that Lynne would re-record years later on New World Record. The elements come into sharper focus on Message from the Country, as Wood and Lynne employ overdubbed vocal tracks, of the kind that would become very familiar to listeners of ELO and Lynne’s future productions. ![]() And his songs on The Move’s Looking On stretch on too long, lacking focus. The Idle Race material, as good as it was, carries plenty of the twee psychedelia of the period. While one can hear the seeds of Lynne’s future hits in his early writing, it wasn’t quite there. That final Move album was a contractual obligation. Indeed, by the time of Lynne’s second Move album, 1971’s Message from the Country, they were already working on the first ELO album. The side project took precedence, as the remaining members were mostly more interested in ELO than in The Move. This intrigued Lynne, while Wood wanted a second songwriter to take the pressure off him. But when their eponymous second album tanked after its September release, he didn’t need 10,538 overtures, just a second.īy this point, Wood was looking to start a new project, one that would incorporate more orchestral ideas. Still trying to get the Idle Race to take off, he declined. Knowing that the two got along, The Move asked Lynne to join in 1969 after Trevor Burton’s departure. Wood, who produced the Idle Race’s debut album, had joined The Move. Lynne had hit it off with Roy Wood, who’d left the Idle Race the year before he joined. Despite some nifty Lynne-penned songs, particularly on their first album, they went nowhere commercially. Lynne grew up in Birmingham, a city not unlike cities in America’s Rust Belt cities if, say, Detroit had been bombed heavily by Nazis during World War II.īeatles worship was not uncommon for lads of Lynne’s age, in his late teens and early 20s when the Fab Four were in their run from A Hard Day’s Night to Abbey Road.īy the end of 1966, Lynne was a member of the Nightriders, soon to be renamed the Idle Race. And therein lies a small personal example of Lynne’s appeal - a man whose work sat squarely in the middle of the overlap of three music writers’ Venn diagrams. And afterwards, our anticipation had turned into smiles that betrayed our utter lack of disappointment. Then there was me, whose tastes expanded later after first being immersed in Top 40, a woman whose second album she ever bought with her own money was ELO’s best album, A New World Record, (and got Out of the Blue for Christmas later that year).Īnd all three of us were looking forward to the show, part of ELO’s first tour in the States in over 30 years, equally. Another who grew up in Cleveland, getting snuck in to see bands like Devo, the B-52s and Clash before they turned 18, then enjoying all sorts of no wave and noise after moving to New York. One person, a writer whose primary beat is hard rock and heavy metal, Dio horns and logos that look like Rorschach tests and all. Six years ago, three of us had pre-show beverages near Radio City Music Hall. The last member of classic ELO still in ELO, and one of the last surviving Wilburys, Jeff Lynne, turns 75 today. ![]()
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