(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Sat 10 May 2025 14:30, UK
Jeff Lynne had developed a unique allergy to performing live over the years with Electric Light Orchestra. As much as people would have loved to hear him perform, Lynne seemed to be far more comfortable hanging back behind his production board whenever he went into work, which is a solid argument if it meant swapping stories with The Beatles during their Anthology project. But when Lynne did make his first steps into performing again, it went far better than he ever thought it would.
That said, Lynne was never anti-live performance by any stretch, either. Many of the greatest hits he produced for Tom Petty would become staples when he played them live, but considering Lynne’s iconic band involved having a massive chorus behind him and multiple people making out a string section, it would have been impossible to replicate the sounds he heard in his head.
Because if you think about it, how much payoff would happen when he played those tunes in the 1970s? Sure, there were moments where things sounded halfway decent with the string players onstage, but when everyone has to divide up the check at the end of the night, it gets more than a little bit complicated when every single cellist and violinist has to be paid the same way.
So for a while, Lynne figured that his time was better spent trying to own the studio than recreating ‘Mr Blue Sky’ every single tour. And given how much free time he had to work with members of The Traveling Wilburys and his other favourites like Joe Walsh and Paul McCartney, it’s not like he was necessarily hurting when it came to following his muse behind the scenes.
When he did get the bug to perform live again upon ELO’s rebranding, Lynne got the shock of a lifetime when he played to those first crowds. No one gets back onstage and is received like they never left, but when Lynne played to that first festival crowd in Hyde Park as part of BBC Radio 2, he realised there was a world of people out there still in love with what he was doing.
Compared to those years trapped in the studio, Lynne felt finally free to enjoy the feeling of playing live again, saying, “It was the most wonderful feeling, to have them not gone home, but they’re there. And not only are they there, they LOVE it. And every song, they sang along really loudly, and I could hear them singing above me, sometimes. It was an unbelievable feeling. And of course now that’s, in my mind, easily the best concert I’ve ever been involved with.”
Because compared to a lot of his predecessors, Lynne’s music has had a fantastic shelf life in the background of pop culture. Not everyone is able to work out who sings some of the tunes, but given the fact that songs like ‘Livin’ Thing’ and ‘Mr Blue Sky’ are being featured in major blockbusters, it’s like he never left. And it also doesn’t hurt that the songs are good enough to be evergreen in many respects.
And when looking at how the audience reacts today, it’s like the crowd eventually caught up with what Lynne was trying to do. While every other rockstar complains about the use of cellphones at their shows, the idea of the crowd turning into a starry night sky every time Lynne plays feels like fulfilling the vision that he had for making music that sounded like it was being beamed in from space.
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