Jeff Lynne
@ Wiki
Jeff Lynne (born December 30, 1947) is a Grammy Award-nominated English rock songwriter, singer, guitarist and record producer.
Born in the Shard End area of Birmingham, England, he is best known for his involvement with the Electric Light Orchestra and the Traveling Wilburys. After disbanding ELO, Lynne became a much respected and much sought after record producer, working with many of his musical heroes and culminating with his involvement with The Beatles on their Anthology project.
Early career
In 1963, Jeff Lynne, Robert Reader and David Walsh formed a group using little more than Spanish guitars and cheap electrical instruments to produce music. They were originally named "The Rockin' Hellcats" however this was changed to "The Handicaps" and finally to "The Andicaps". They practised at Shard End Community Centre and performed weekly. However, in 1964, Robert Reader and David Walsh left the band and Lynne brought in replacements. At the end of 1964, Lynne decided to leave to replace Mick Adkins of the local band, "The Chads"[1].
In 1966, Lynne joined the line-up of The Nightriders as guitarist, the band would soon change their name to the Idle Race, a name which was allegedly given to them unwittingly and sarcastically by his grandmother Evelyn Lynne who probably disapproved of the pop music culture as not being a proper job. Despite recording two critically acclaimed albums with the band and producing the second, success eluded him. In 1970, Lynne accepted a lifeline from friend Roy Wood to join the line up of the more successful band The Move.
The '70s & '80s
Lynne contributed songs to The Move's last two albums whilst formulating With Roy Wood and Bev Bevan a new classical rock project which would eventually become the highly successful Electric Light Orchestra (E.L.O.). He served as its guitarist, lead singer and, after the departure of Wood in 1972, its sole creative force. In 1976, Lynne recorded Beatles cover songs “With a Little Help from My Friends” and “Nowhere Man” for the evanescent musical documentary All This and World War II. In 1977, Lynne released his first ever solo single, the disco-flavoured "Doin' That Crazy Thing"/"Goin' Down To Rio". Despite ELO's high profile at that time, it received little airplay and failed to chart.
In 1984, while still with ELO, Lynne contributed two original songs "Video" and "Let It Run" to the film Electric Dreams. Lynne also wrote the song "The Story of Me" which was recorded by the Everly Brothers on their comeback album EB84.
After ELO's breakup in the mid 1980s, Lynne moved into production work, showing both the influence of The Beatles that characterized much of ELO's work and an influence from rockabilly-style music. The Beatles' connection was strengthened when Lynne produced George Harrison's Cloud Nine, a successful comeback album for the ex-Beatle, released in 1987 featuring the popular singles "Got My Mind Set on You," "When We Was Fab" (where he played the violin), and "This Is Love," two of the three songs co-written by Lynne. Later, Lynne also co-founded the Traveling Wilburys (with George Harrison, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan and Roy Orbison) in the late 1980s, and worked extensively on the Roy Orbison album Mystery Girl co-writing and producing Orbison's last major hit "You Got It".
In 1989, Lynne co-produced the acclaimed album Full Moon Fever by Tom Petty, which included the hit singles "Free Fallin'," "I Won't Back Down," and "Runnin' Down a Dream," all co-written by Lynne. This album and Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1, which he also co-produced, both received nominations for the Grammy Award for Best Album of the Year in 1989. Another of his songs which he never recorded himself, "One Way Love", was released as a single by Agnetha Faltskog and appeared on her second post-ABBA album, "Eyes of a Woman".
The '90s
In 1990, Lynne collaborated on the Wilbury's follow up Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3 and shortly after that released his first solo album Armchair Theatre, with old friends George Harrison and Richard Tandy featuring the singles "Every Little Thing" and "Lift Me Up." The album received some positive critical attention but little commercial success. Lynne also provided the song "Wild Times" to the motion picture soundtrack Robin Hood Prince of Thieves in 1991.
In 1992, Lynne was once again in the studio with Tom Petty, this time with the Heartbreakers, co-writing and producing the album "Into the Great Wide Open", featuring the singles "Learning to Fly" and "Into the Great Wide Open". The same year he produced Roy Orbison's posthumous album King of Hearts, featured the single I Drove All Night.
In February 1994, Lynne fulfilled a career long dream by working with the three surviving Beatles on the Anthology album series, and reunion tracks "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love" (overdubbing John Lennon's demos for the songs). He has also produced records individually for George Harrison, Ringo Starr and worked on Paul McCartney's album Flaming Pie.
In 1996, he was officially recognised by his peers when he was awarded the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contributions to British Music.
The 2000s
In 2001, Lynne released a new ELO album, Zoom, which (except for original ELO keyboardist Richard Tandy on one track) featured none of the original members of the Electric Light Orchestra, but attempted to "return to the classic ELO sound."[2] The album received positive reviews but had no hit singles. While a concert of the album was filmed and shown on the US TV network PBS, a planned concert tour was cancelled, although the concert was released on DVD. Also that year, he appeared on a VH1 Storytellers show filmed in New York, and EMI and Sony released remastered editions of ELO's catalog.
That same year, Lynne received word that George Harrison, his old friend since the 1980s, had died after a long battle against cancer on 29 November. Both Harrison and Lynne worked together on Harrison's final album Brainwashed. Lynne went back to the recording studio as a producer in 2002, co-producing and helping complete George Harrison's posthumously released album, Brainwashed. He was also heavily involved in the memorial Concert for George, held at London's Royal Albert Hall in November 2002, and subsequently produced the Surround Sound audio mix for the Concert For George DVD released in November 2003. The DVD received a Grammy for Best Long Form Music Video.
Also in 2002, a tribute to Lynne called Lynne Me Your Ears was released, [3] featuring two CDs full of artists performing Lynne/ELO songs, including Todd Rundgren, SWAG (featuring members of Wilco, The Mavericks and Cheap Trick), Sixpence None the Richer, Doug Powell, PFR, Jason Falkner, Fleming and John, Jerry Chamberlain of Daniel Amos, Rick Altizer and others.
Lynne reunited with Tom Petty in 2006 as producer and bassist of Petty's third solo album, Highway Companion.
2006 proved to be a prolific year for Lynne as the re-mastering of ELOs back catalogue continued. By March 2007, every ELO album with the exception of 2001s "Zoom" had been re-mastered on a grand scale with superb sound quality, extensive sleeve notes and bonus tracks.
The pinnacle of these, was the re-master of "Out of the Blue" in February 2007, which peaked at 18 in the UK album chart 30 years after its original release - included within this re-master as one of the extra tracks was the download only single Lattitude 88 North.
The re-mastering continues shortly with the Travelling Wilbury albums Volume 1 and Volume 3, available as a double CD with DVD followed by the re-issue of the ultra rare "Idle Race" CD - "Back to the Story".
A passionate football fan, he supports Birmingham City, and the Blues play the ELO hit song "Mr. Blue Sky" at the start of each home game. The next to last track on the 1977 ELO album "Out of the Blue" (which includes Mr. Blue Sky) also features a song called "Birmingham Blues". Indeed, Lynne was briefly linked with a possible buy-out of the club in 2003 as part of a consortium. Ultimately, the supposed bid never materialised.
Lynne won the Q Icon Award at the 2006 Q Magazine Awards. =>>>>>>>>>>>
Jeff Lynne @ You Tube
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