“Are you gonna write about how many bald heads you see in the audience?” joked a guy outside American Airlines center on Friday night, where the audience lined up for Jeff Lynne’s ELO looked ready for a show, but possibly also retirement. One guy was carrying a donut cushion to make stadium seating more comfortable. Another was using a walker.
Electric Light Orchestra ruled the airwaves of the late ‘70s, a blast of harmonies, classical instruments, and catchy hooks that picked up where The Beatles left off. Formed by British musicians Ray Wood and Jeff Lynne as a way to merge rock with orchestral elements, ELO ultimately became Lynne’s vision. He was the sonic wizard behind a series of earworms you’ve almost certainly heard, even if you think you haven’t. The music’s sweeping style made it perfect for movies, including Boogie Nights (“Livin’ Thing”), Donnie Brasco (“Don’t Bring Me Down”), American Hustle (“10538 Overture”), and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (“Mr. Blue Sky”).
ELO disbanded by the mid-80s, but Lynne experienced a career resurgence over the past decade, returning under the name Jeff Lynne’s ELO with new albums and live performances, though the last part, at least, was coming to an end. This 27-date North American excursion was a farewell tour, called “Over and Out.”
“Everyone’s doing their final concert. It’s sad,” said a woman in line at the merchandising table, where long-sleeved retro ELO jerseys sold for $60. The Eagles, Elton John, Aerosmith, and KISS have all been taking a bow over the past few years. Rock, once a fountain of youth, has become a golden goblet of nostalgia. I’m not immune. I plunked down $50 for a ‘70s-style ELO ringer T-shirt.
It was shortly after 9 p.m. when Jeff Lynne took the stage, though he moved slowly. He’s 76 years old, even if he doesn’t look it, with that shaggy hair and the sunglasses he was practically born in. The set opened with “One More Time,” a melodic toe-tapper off the 2019 album From Out of Nowhere, but it was the only recent ELO offering of the night. The people want the classics, and for the next 90 minutes, the band tore through the back catalog like they were running up a high score on a pinball machine: “Evil Woman,” “Do Ya,” “Strange Magic,” one hit after another.
Lasers split the darkness as hypnotic visuals played on a circular screen above the stage that was in the shape of a spaceship, long ELO’s visual symbol. As the music traveled from rock to disco to prog to pop, the images morphed, too. Galactic swirls, trippy kaleidoscopic patterns, comic-book deserts and cityscapes.
Lynne’s voice is distinctive, but it’s never been pyrotechnic. He sounded solid, though he faltered a few times and skipped a few falsettos. Backup vocalist Iain Hornal carried the occasional verse, while Melanie Lewis-McDonald, also a backup vocalist, thrilled with opera flourishes on songs like “Rockaria!” from the 1976 album A New World Record.
ELO always had a maximalist aesthetic, and a band of 12 musicians filled the stage, bringing to life the songs’ many layers and madcap sonic climaxes (a fire extinguisher is used as percussion at one point). Stand-outs in a group of tight players included pianist Marcus Byrne, drummer Donavan Hepburn, who seemed to be having the time of his life, and violinist Jess Murphy, who stepped into the spotlight for “Fire on High,” an instrumental from 1975′s Face the Music, before launching into the classic “Livin’ Thing,” which opens with a fiery Spanish-style violin solo.
“Thank you very much,” Lynne said between songs, but that was about the extent of his banter. He took sips of water during pauses, as hoots from the audience punctured the silence.
Lynne was never a front man in the charismatic mold. Those sunglasses might have given aloof rock-star vibes, but he wore them because he was shy. He preferred the studio to the limelight, a dial-fiddler who could spend 14 hours at a mixer. It’s probably no coincidence that ELO faded right as MTV exploded. Videos needed camera-friendly lead singers happy to pout into the lens, not quiet perfectionists hiding behind a wall of sound.
Lynne could write the hell out of a pop song, though. “Can’t Get It Out of My Head” is a simple love ballad from the 1974 album Eldorado, and as Lynne’s somber voice filled the stadium, the iPhones came out with flashlights deployed, waving overhead like lighters once did, moving in the darkness like a thousand fireflies.
Rock critics often dismissed ELO in the ‘70s, but like other popular acts ripped during their reign (Billy Joel, the Eagles, ABBA), the music’s enduring power has won the argument. “Telephone Line” turned into a stadium sing-along with its shooby-doo-wop chorus. Women leapt to their feet for “All Over the World,” from the soundtrack to the 1980 rollerskating musical Xanadu, a movie so terrible it inspired the Razzies, the Oscars of bad film. But the transcendent music, half of it contributed by ELO, has become a cult classic. It was my side door into ELO as a six-year-old girl, who didn’t know what was “cool,” only what moved me.
Across the internet you can find arguments about whether or not Jeff Lynne is underrated. On one hand, he’s in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and sold more than 50 million albums, it’s not like history missed the guy. On the other hand, he’s never punched through to household-name status. This is the man Tom Petty called “the best overall musician I’ve ever met.” Lynne produced Petty’s Full Moon Fever, co-writing classics like “Free Fallin’,” during his very successful behind-the-scenes years. He was the one guy in the Traveling Wilburys nobody seemed to recognize (the supergroup also included Bob Dylan, Petty, George Harrison and Roy Orbison). But his reputation as a sonic mastermind was never in doubt among musicians. When The Beatles got back together to transform two demos by John Lennon into full-fledged pop songs, “Real Love” and “Free as a Bird,” they tapped Lynne as the producer.
“Yes, he’s underrated, and it’s ridiculous!,” said Aubree McClenahan. She’s 24 years old, and a Lynne super-fan since high school, when she first heard “Need Her Love” in the car of a friend’s dad.
There actually turned out to be a number of young people at the show. “My dad gave me an MP3 player entirely filled with classic rock songs when I was 13,” said Araceli Renteria, 26. While her classmates were jamming to Maroon 5, she was lost in orchestral pop.
It’s a reminder that music doesn’t belong to any era. Music can rocket us back in time to the passenger seat of a VW bus, the static-crackle of an all-request radio show, or the pale pastels of a high school dance, but it can also take us out of time entirely.
The set closed with “Don’t Bring Me Down,” a song whose groove is nearly impossible not to dance to, and the encore exploded the arena with “Mr. Blue Sky.” Some of us might have known that song from its original appearance on the 1977 masterpiece double album Out of the Blue, and some of us might have discovered it through the trailer for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, or its use in Dr. Who, or Guardians of the Galaxy. Wherever we found it, we knew the giddy beat and the exhilarating crescendo that flared like sunshine itself. The crowd was clapping and madly shimmying.
I did count ten bald heads in the section where I was sitting, by the way. But for the moment, everyone was young.
