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. =>>>>>>>>>>>

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Jeff Lynne is 5 (live) 2006

Jeff Lynne @ You Tube

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Jeff Lynne

@ Face The Music
Jeffrey "Jeff" Lynne was born on 30th December 1947 in Birmingham, UK. He formed an interest in music while still at school, influenced by artists such as Del Shannon, whose concert at the Birmingham Town Hall made a lasting impression on young Jeff and was to change his whole future, Roy Orbison and, of course The Beatles. When he was fifteen, Jeff was given a plastic guitar by his father. Though it had only one string and cost about two pounds, he practised every spare minute. Jeff spent much of his time in the front room of his parents' council house in Shard End, Birmingham, which he had taken over with his guitars, amplifiers, tape recorders and piles of records. After he had left school, he took on a number of jobs none of which lasted more than a few weeks. Playing guitar in one or two local groups like The Chantelles and The Andycaps, Jeff was always looking for the chance to turn professional. In 1966, at the age of nineteen, he joined a local Birmingham band called The Nightriders, who were looking for a guitar player through an advert. He amazed his fellow band members with his stunning guitar technique and proved to be a good singer and harmonizer, too. The band subsequently changed their name to The Idle Race and made young Jeff their front man. Soon he wrote most of the band's songs and became the producer of their second LP as well .The Idle Race released two albums, The Birthday Party (1968) and Idle Race (1969) plus a couple of singles, but never really enjoyed the success they were aiming at.

In 1970 Jeff Lynne left the band in order to join The Move, then a very popular and successful band in Britain, accepting Roy Wood's second invitation, who promised his old friend Lynne to launch a new project, called The Electric Light Orchestra, which had been on his mind for a couple of years. Their idea was to form a ten-piece ensemble with cellos, violins, french horn etc. and play symphonic rock. "... I suppose that the Electric Light Orchestra is meant to take up where 'I Am The Warus' left off, and to present it on stage."(Lynne) It took them almost two years to fulfill their ambitious plan to transform The Move into The Electric Light Orchestra since its first public announcement in May 1970 - they did not release ELO's eponymous debut album until December 1971. In the meantime they still recorded and performed as The Move, which was a necessary move in order to finance their new project: Two more albums, Looking On (1970) and Message From The Country (1971) and a couple of relatively successful singles were released, before The Move ceased to exist.

Within a week of ELO's first single release, "10538 Overture", in June 1972, Roy had left the band to form Wizzard: "I left ELO partly because attention was being focused on me, and not the band as a whole, and partly to save the friendship between Jeff and myself. ... It got to a point where Jeff didn't speak to me much - and I couldn't stand that." Roy's departure left Jeff the sole band leader, and he took over the composer's duties, too.

The first of many ELO U.S. tours began in California in June 1973, and the band were well received. Audience enthusiasm ensured that ELO returned to the States for increasingly longer tours, each one bigger and more spectacular than the last, culminating in heir legandary 1977 "Out Of The Blue" tour. However, despite ELO's highly successful tours in the seventies, Lynne became increasingly more uneasy about touring: "I like making records better than playing live. I like to play tight - I used to love playing in clubs and stuff. When it got to those big arenas, with 20.000 people and all the equipment, it became less fun for me. I like to get it right - or try to. When you're playing on tour, you can't do that. It sounds different every night. There's too many people involved. You can't really get it spot-on. And the size of the place totally destroys the sound."

While the first three albums Electric Light Orchestra (1971) [US: No Answer], Electric Light Orchestra II (1972) and On The Third Day (1973) were somewhat experimental and seemed to lack direction, their fourth album, Eldorado (1974), the band's first collaboration with arranger/conductor Louis Clark, was a ground breaking success and defined the new direction of the group's overall sound: "Eldorado was the turning point. I always wanted a bigger sound, so I used a 40-piece orchestra and wrote the songs for that." Making the record, framed with an overture and a finale and subtitled "A Symphony By The Electric Light Orchestra", was a big thrill: "Hearing all these guys strike up with that big tune was amazing." Lynne raved: "This is the way I've always wanted the group to sound - what I was aiming for in the first place. It's the first time it's actually sounded like an Electric Light Orchestra." Face The Music (1975) gave Jeff Lynne his first worldwide smash with the single "Evil Woman".

With A New World Record (1976) ELO's commercial ascendance gained momentum: The album spent almost a year on the American charts, falling out of the Top 40 only two months before the release of Out Of The Blue (1977), the record that would bring ELO to its commercial apex. Originally to be called Out Of This World, the title was felt to resemble its predecessor's too closely, so Lynne got another chance to exercise his fixation with the colour of his hometown soccer team - witness "Boy Blue", "Mr. Blue Sky", "Bluebird", "Bluebird Is Dead" and "Midnight Blue"! The double album was recorded in Munich in just three months after Lynne had locked himself into a Swiss chalet to plan his masterpiece: "I'd usually have all the songs written before we went in the studio. I'd take the songs along to the practice hall where we'd learn them", explains Lynne, "I would never sing until all the instruments were finished. We'd learn all the backing tracks, go in the studio and lay them down in a few days. Then we'd put all the rest of the stuff on, like the orchestra. Then I'd play the guitars or whatever else, do the backing vocals and then maybe the choir." Musical geniuses like Lynne often have peculiar ways of writing songs: "I had a tune in my head, but I never told anybody what it was. It was always a mystery to everybody. I'd have ten tracks full of orchestra, choir, group, everything - a great big sound and no words. I saved the words until the very last minute. [...] I came up with the words either the day before or I'd spend a week just doing words and go in and sing the lot."

In 1979 Lynne gave the world Discovery, and it became ELO's most successful worldwide release, reaching No. 1 and shipping platinum. Later that same year, Lynne was offered the opportunity to score a soundtrack for a film, Xanadu, that looked like a surefire smash, starring the late 70's female icon, Olivia Newton-John. Though the film added precious little to the history of cinema and became a mega-flop with both critics and audiences, the soundtrack Xanadu (1980) was extremely successful in commercial terms, bringing ELO another platinum album (actually, half of one: Olivia Newton-John occupied one side by herself) and three hit singles, including the title track, for which Olivia did the vocals and which became ELO's first and only No. 1 hit in the UK. Despite this commercial success, Jeff took the movie's failure very badly and came to loathe his involvement with the film, since it finally destroyed any pitiful remainig shreds of credibility that the band still might have possessed in the eyes of the public.

Although the Electric Light Orchestra had always been Lynne's prime concern, he also made a few attempts at working on solo material and producing other artists. His first project were two songs he contributed to the soundtrack All This And World War Two (1976), the Beatles cover songs "Nowhere Man" and "With A Little Help From My Friends", followed by his pop single "Doin' That Crazy Thing" (b/w "Going Down To Rio") in 1977 which didn't do very well. In 1984 he contributed two songs to another soundtrack, Electric Dreams: "Video" which was also released as a single (b/w "Sooner Or Later") and "Let It Run". Among the first artists Jeff produced while he was still with ELO were Del Shannon (1974/75), Jasper Carrot "Funky Moped" (1975) and Dave Edmunds, whose albums Information (1983) and Riff Raff (1984) contain some material by Lynne. Furthermore Jeff Lynne also wrote a couple of songs for other artists, such as Helen Reddy's "Poor Little Fool" (1978), The Everly Brothers' "The Story Of Me" (1984) and Agnetha Fältskog's "One Way Love" (1985).

The eighties saw the release of three more ELO albums, Time (1981), Secret Messages (1983) and Balance Of Power (1986), none of which achieved the same success as ELO's heyday albums of the late seventies. Looking back on that period in 1990, Lynne spoke candidly of those records: "They lack inspiration, because I didn't have any. I really had enough by Time; I was getting to not like it by then. I thought I'd be in the mood for the next one and, at the time, I thought I was. But now I listen to it and I wasn't. I was in a cocoon, with a lack of direction and nobody to bounce off. I started thinking how nice it would be to work with other people. I did the last album and then I was free of it."

In 1986, after a charity gig in Birmingham, a final gig in Wembley Stadium and two more shows in Germany, Jeff Lynne finally lost interest and split the band he had helped to found, moving onto a solo career involving writing, recording and producing some of rock's biggest names: George Harrison (Cloud Nine, 1987), Roy Orbison (Mystery Girl, 1989 and King Of Hearts, 1992), Tom Petty (Full Moon Fever, 1989 and Into The Great Wide Open, 1991) and Del Shannon (Rock On!, 1991). Other production credits include Randy Newman, Duane Eddy, Brian Wilson, Ringo Starr, Joe Cocker, Dave Morgan, Hank Marvin, Miss B. Haven, Julianna Raye and Tom Jones. =>>>>>>>>>>>

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