Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) is a British rock band that was especially successful in the 1970s and 1980s. ELO was founded in 1971 in Birmingham by Roy Wood, Jeff Lynne and Bev Bevan. In the 1970s and 1980s, ELO was extremely popular and everything they touched turned to gold.
In October 2012, Mr. Blue Sky: The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra was released. A compilation album with the best of Electric Light Orchestra according to Lynne's choice. All tracks were re-recorded, almost all by himself. Unexpectedly, Lynne and Tandy were the surprise act on 14 November 2013 during the benefit concert BBC Children in Need Rocks. They were the main act of the evening, raising money for charity. On 25 October 2019, the second single from the forthcoming album, Time of Our Life, was released. Again, Lynne had done almost everything on the new album himself. Steve Jay and Richard Tandy also contributed to the album. The band performed for BBC Radio 2. A day later, From Out Of Nowhere entered the UK charts at number 1.
Sunday Morning Classic: Out of the Blue
On 23 February 2020, the album "Out of the Blue" was played during the Sunday Morning Classics.
Out of the Blue was Electric Light Orchestra's (ELO) seventh album, which began its life in the Swiss Alps after the band completed its New World Record tour in April 1977. ELO's lead singer, guitarist and songwriter Jeff Lynne rented a small chalet near Lake Geneva. He brought his guitar and rented an electric piano and tape recorder, spending about a month alone composing new music.
Starting with the suite "Concerto For a Rainy Day," the songwriter composed most of this upcoming double album with about fourteen tracks in two weeks. The songs were then rehearsed and arranged for the band and orchestra before production began at the Musicland studios in Munich, a favourite place for Lynne due to the proximity of "a great football pitch at the back during a break." Lynne was pleased to get 40 orchestral musicians into the relatively small Musicland after initially booking them and being dissatisfied with a much larger studio that had too much natural reverb. Ultimately, all 19 tracks on Out of the Blue were composed and produced by Lynne, and the album was completed in just a few months.
Out of the Blue was a huge success, reaching the top five of the album charts in seven different countries and becoming ELO's most acclaimed album. The album also benefited from being ahead of its time with some disco-friendly sounds in the year that gave us Saturday Night Fever and spaceship-centred artwork in the year that gave us Star Wars.
Source: Wikipedia and Jan Liebregts Photo: Egghead and Paul Carless (front picture)
