- Place – De Lane Lea Studios, Wembley
- Time – February 1974
- Artist – ELO
The Electric Light Orchestra is a rock band from Birmingham, England. By the mid 70s they had become one of the biggest selling acts in music.
From 1972 to 1986 ELO accumulated twenty-seven Top 40 singles in the UK and the USA. They also had twenty Top 20 UK singles as well as fifteen Top 20 singles in the USA.
The band is fronted by Jeff Lynne.
Is Jeff Lynn easy to work with?
I think Jeff Lynne would probably be the first to say he was difficult to work with and I would be the second.
Jeff and I were thrown together to record the tracks for the album Eldorado.
In February 1974 Louis Elman, the studio MD, told me that Jet records had booked studio time so that The Electric Light Orchestra could record their new album.
Dick Plant, who had engineered the previous ELO album, was booked on another session so Louis asked me to start the recording.
I reminded Louis I was to be married and going on honeymoon on the 16th of February.
“That’s fine” he said, “Dick would have finished his other session and will take over on Monday the 18th.”
So in February I started recording the ELO album later to be entitled Eldorado.
I recorded the basic drum, bass, guitars, piano and guide vocals.
The band was Bev Bevan on drums, Michael de Albuquerque on bass, Richard Tandy on keyboards and Jeff Lynne on guitar, piano, vocals and ego.
The guys were really nice and easy going except for Jeff, I found it very difficult to strike up any rapport with him throughout the sessions.
All engineers work in different ways and I feel sure that Jeff was disappointed that Dick was unavailable to start the recordings.
A confident working relationship between engineer and artist takes time and Jeff had already built this association whilst working with Dick on the previous album so his concerns were understandable.
Getting started.
We spent the entire first day getting the drum sounds together, this was a long time back then.
I ended up using the old tricks of taping a cigarette packet and small pieces of sponge on various areas around the snare along with masking tape and clothes around the toms.
Eventually we all agreed, especially Bev, it sounded great.
Once we put the first rhythm track down Jeff said,
“Can you take the two overhead 87 microphones from the drums and place them about 4 feet away and record a stereo track whilst Bev doubled the original drum track.”
Well, this definitely made the drums sound bigger but our amazing, wonderful tight, clean, weighty drum sound sounded like shit, it was ambient, loose, none distinctive, messy and just plain awful.
Lynne was the only one thrilled with the effect so we continued to do this on every track we recorded, we all thought Jeff was mad.
Once the track was in a reasonable shape Jeff would put down a guide vocal, slurring his way through a melody with an occasional lyric line.
The original guide lyric for the chorus of Laredo Tornado was “I’m Dying.”
If you can imagine working on these titles in the early stages with the non-lyric vowel sounding melody from Jeff over the ambient track sound.
With the absence of the wonderful string arrangements and magnificent choral additions from Lou Clark the whole album sounded like a bunch of rough cheap demos.
At one point Don Arden arrived to have a listen to what was going on in this haven of creativity, after listening to the playback of a couple of titles he had words with Jeff and walked out in disgust.
Finding a direction.
There was also an ongoing squabble in the music press at the time between Jeff and Roy Wood of Wizard.
Jeff’s remarks about Roy whilst reading these articles in the studio really didn’t do anything to enhance his character to me.
I think bassist Michael de Albuquerque summed it up in an interview with ELO fan and writer Martin Kinch some years later when he said,
“I thought the Eldorado thing was, again, Jeff trying like mad to find a direction.
There was a lot of pressure on him don’t forget. You’d got all those mouths to feed, all those management people looking at you, secretaries and so forth you know.
And you know you’ve got this desire to do things without, maybe the correct inspiration getting in place.
I felt that again it was him pushing for a direction that still maybe wasn’t there.”
Albuquerque left the band at this time.
Looking back.
Looking back, it’s possible that Jeff who wanted to break into the USA was aware of the new interest in the plight of the American Indians with the movie Soldier Blue causing such a stir.
In 1970, Johnny Cash recorded a reading of John G. Burnett’s account of John g Burnett Cherokee messenger.
If you listen to various tracks on the album you will hear a feel of rhythm tracks like Laredo Tornado along with the original guide vocal this could have so easily led to a tribute to the American Indians.
There was a song recorded called Indian Queen, which never made the album and lyrically was never completely finished.
This became a great studio outtake.
We listened to the final playback of the finished album with not a drop of reverb on anything but plenty of echo on the vocal (the old 28-ips tape delay through the Studer B62).
Even with Louis Clark’s wonderful additions and John Richards master recording of the orchestra and choir, it appeared to be a total mish mash of Jeff’s imagination.
Nothing succeeds like success.
Once the album was released in the USA, it went Platinum; Don Arden declared “It’s a Masterpiece.”
I then listened to it again – what a wonderful drum sound and the most amazing dry recording technique on all the instruments.
It was probably the only time I ever agreed with Don Arden, it was a MASTERPIECE!
“Nothing succeeds like success”.
My personal feelings about Jeff Lynne have been outweighed over the years by his extraordinary talent as a record producer and songsmith (not songwriter) along with his amazing ability to have created and produced some of the greatest pop recordings of all time.
Lou and Jeff
Louis Clark.
Although Eldorado wasn’t exactly my favourite gig it did introduced me to Lou Clark. We became great friends and during the late 70s and early 80s we were partners in producing many music projects together.
He invited me many times to see ELO at various venues over the years but somehow there was always had a reason I couldn’t go.
When I was working in Nashville and ELO rolled into town, they were appearing there for one night.
Whilst chatting to Lou on the phone he invited me to the gig.
He said he would leave a ticket at box office in my name. I promised him I would try and make it.
That night I didn’t finish in the studio until around 3am.
Funny phone message.
When I arrived back at my hotel a red light was flashing on the phone indicating I had a message, being so late I left it until the next morning and retired to bed.
The next morning I rang the reception to get the message.
The receptionist, with a broad Southern accent and in a completely straight voice said,
“The message is from a Mr. Louis Clark and he said Bollocks to you, you wanker for not coming.”
I fell off my bed laughing.
I rang him immediately. When he answered I was still in hysterics, before I could speak he said,
“You got my message then?”
Still laughing I said “It was not only hilarious but you should have heard the young girl’s southern drawl.”
He continued, “They have no idea of the meaning of those two words, I have done many a TV and radio interview using one or the other.”
I asked Lou if he fancied to meet up for lunch, he agreed but stated he must be back at his hotel by 2.15pm at the very latest as the band were leaving to catch the plane to Atlanta, there was another gig that night.
I picked him up from his hotel around midday and we had a great lunch, we left the restaurant at around 1.30pm.
To our horror my car had been towed. I can still see the look on Lou’s face to this day.
We ended up running five or six blocks in sweltering heat to a publishing office where I knew many of the people there in the hope that we could to borrow a car.
We were in luck and they provided us with one.
A Race Across Town
We drove across town like Starsky & Hutch. The traffic lights turned red 200 yards from Lou’s hotel where we could see several black limousines parked, obviously waiting for Lou.
He leapt out of the car and shouted
“I’ll see you back home.”
He took off at a speed that would have made Roger Banister jealous.
As the lights changed to green I saw Lou jumping into one of the limos and to my relief they were all off to the airport.
Some months later ELO were ending their world tour at the Wembley arena in England.
I received a call from him telling me he had left six tickets for Saturday night at the box office, for me, my wife Sue and four extras for any of our friends.
Being busy all week I had put this on the back burner until Saturday afternoon when Lou rang,
“I’ll see you tonight, I’ve left passes for you and your guests for the after-show party backstage.”
Oh! I thought. We lived an hour and half from the gig we had to find a baby sitter AND four other friends to go at such short notice. well of course we did it.
We had fantastic seats right at the front and this without a doubt was one of the best rock ‘n’ roll shows Sue and I had even seen.
No spaceships, no thrills just a band playing pure rock ‘n’ roll.
We had a lovely time and went backstage afterwards sadly I didn’t get a hug from Jeff but Lou and the guys were great.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Related