Following his stint as leader of
the Electric Light Orchestra, singer/guitarist
Jeff Lynne forged an equally successful career in the '80s and '90s as a producer with his distinctive sound gracing the latter-day records of many veteran rock & roll legends.
Lynne began his career in the late '60s as the frontman of a group called
the Idle Race, which recorded the album The Birthday Party for RCA in 1969. In 1970,
Lynne accepted an invitation from
Move leader
Roy Wood to join his revamped band; the two shared a vision of fusing electric rock & roll with classical orchestrations, a concept that eventually transformed
the Move into
the Electric Light Orchestra (instead of the two groups running concurrently, as had originally been planned). The
Lynne composition "Do Ya" provided the aggregation's first U.S. hit in 1973;
Wood soon abdicated his share of the group's leadership to form
Wizzard, leaving
Lynne in charge. He ran the group into the '80s, scoring several U.S. Top Ten singles and albums and contributing to the soundtrack of the 1980 film
Xanadu.
In the early '80s,
Lynne's production career began to take off, as he worked with roots rocker
Dave Edmunds,
Duane Eddy, and
the Everly Brothers. Acclaimed work followed with
George Harrison (1987's
Cloud Nine),
Brian Wilson, and
Randy Newman. In 1988,
Lynne participated in the Grammy-winning
Traveling Wilburys supergroup; he soon produced fellow
Wilburys Roy Orbison and
Tom Petty on the critically and commercially successful
Mystery Girl and
Full Moon Fever, respectively. In 1990,
Lynne released his first solo album,
Armchair Theatre, and worked on
the Wilburys' second album,
Volume III. Some of
Lynne's most prominent work was with his main influences,
the Beatles, on their
Anthology series; the reconstructed "Free as a Bird" bore his unmistakable stamp, and he also worked with
Ringo Starr and
Paul McCartney (
Flaming Pie) individually.
Lynne spent the back half of the '90s relatively quiet as a dispute over the ownership of the name
Electric Light Orchestra worked its way through the courts. After winning the rights to
ELO,
Lynne released
Zoom -- which was largely recorded on his own -- under the
Electric Light Orchestra moniker in 2001. The album received good reviews but generated no hits.
Lynne then turned his attention to working with
George Harrison on a new collection of songs.
Harrison died before he could complete the album, but
Lynne finished it and it was released as
Brainwashed in 2002. Four years later,
Lynne reunited with
Tom Petty for
Highway Companion, their first album together since
Into the Great Wide Open in 1990.
In 2009, he produced a few songs on
Regina Spektor's
Far; then
Lynne turned his attention to recordings of his own. He returned to action in 2012 with a pair of albums: a collection of re-recorded
Electric Light Orchestra songs called
Mr. Blue Sky and a collection of covers of '50s and '60s pop hits called
Long Wave.
Long Wave debuted at number seven on the U.K. albums chart and 133 on Billboard in the U.S.;
Mr. Blue Sky debuted at number eight in the U.K. and 118 in the U.S. Early in 2013, reissues of
Armchair Theatre and
Zoom appeared, along with a release of the lone concert
ELO gave in 2001 in support of
Zoom. Two years later,
Lynne revived the name
ELO -- this time the billing was
Jeff Lynne's ELO -- for Alone in the Universe, his first album of originals in 14 years. It appeared on
Columbia in November of 2015. With new songs at their disposal, the band went on tour, including dates in America, festival appearances, and a July U.K. show at Wembley Stadium that was recorded for their 2017 live album,
Wembley or Bust.
Lynne quickly returned with a new studio album called From Out of Nowhere in November 2019. ~ Steve Huey