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(Credits: Far Out \/ Jet Records \/ ELO)<\/p>\n
Mon 8 December 2025 18:30, UK <\/p>\n
The author Graham Greene once wrote, \u201cThere is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.\u201d For many of us, that\u2019s the moment when you realise that music isn\u2019t just something to wallpaper over a background of silence. Jeff Lynne<\/a> has never forgotten the moment it changed his world.<\/p>\n The working-class lad from Birmingham was a quiet observer of a family conversation when something pricked his ears, not that you could tell beneath his thatch of fuzzy hair. A good half a century later, he can still recall it all with the stirring clarity of a Charles Dickens novel, though the content differs rather wildly.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first time I ever heard \u2018Only The Lonely\u2019 on the radio was\u2026,\u201d Lynne remains so flabbergasted that he runs out of words in his recollection. \u201cI couldn\u2019t believe it,\u201d he told Record Collector<\/a> about the Roy Orbison classic from 1960. \u201cMy mum and my auntie said, \u2018Ooh, he\u2019s so sexy, he is!\u2019 I said, \u2018Don\u2019t be ridiculous\u2019. Not that I knew anything about it \u2013 I was 12 or 13.\u201d <\/p>\n However, he was quite certain that there was something about this music that he wasn\u2019t quite old enough to fully understand. Yet he was thrilled by the precipice of depth that it presented. He dived right in. Roy Orbison was now his enigmatic hero. The perturbing music he made was his mystic North Star to adulthood. <\/p>\n As Lynne added, \u201cThey\u2019re going, \u2018Ooh, but he\u2019s too sexy\u2026 I don\u2019t like it\u2019. And I went, \u2018That\u2019s the best thing I\u2019ve ever heard in my life.\u2019 And it was. Probably still is. Pure magic<\/a>.\u201d The song had moved him beyond measure. The door to his future was now ajar. As a happy accident, he\u2019d secured his first guitar about a year earlier. Now he was determined to use it.<\/p>\n Maybe what he recognised in Orbison\u2019s anthem was expression\u2019s ability to heal. While Orbison would face plenty of tragedies in his life, music always remained a vehicle to catharsis. As he put it himself in an interview with NME, \u201cI\u2019ve always been very content when I wrote all those songs.\u201d <\/p>\n Orbison added, \u201cBy this I\u2019m saying that a lot of people think you have to live through something before you can write it, and that\u2019s true in some cases, but I remember the times that I was unhappy or discontent, and I couldn\u2019t eat, I couldn\u2019t sleep, I couldn\u2019t communicate, and I certainly couldn\u2019t write a song, no way. All the songs I wrote that were successful were written when I was in a contented state of mind.\u201d<\/p>\n That sentiment provides a beautiful counterpoint to \u2018Only the Lonely\u2019. It\u2019s simultaneously one of the saddest songs ever written, and yet there\u2019s an undercurrent of bouted artistry that can inspire young teenagers, and set aunties gossiping about sex appeal. It\u2019s orchestral to a showtune nth yet as humble as pop played by one man and his piano.<\/p>\n