ELO: THE BAND THAT ALWAYS BROUGHT US UP
Light, Wonder, and the Beautifully Strange Sound of Electric Light Orchestra
My brother David introduced me to ELO.
Of course he did.
If you've been following these stories for a while, you already know that my big brother was responsible for putting an enormous amount of music into my life. Some of it I understood immediately. Some of it sent me down rabbit holes that lasted for decades.
And then there was Electric Light Orchestra.
The first song I remember David playing for me was “Telephone Line.”
I listened.
And I had one immediate question.
What is this?
There were guitars in there. Piano. Harmonies. Strings. Strange electronic sounds. Rock ’n’ roll was definitely happening, but apparently somebody had invited an orchestra.
And not a polite orchestra sitting quietly behind the band, either.
These people meant it.
Violins and cellos weren't decoration. They belonged there. They moved through the music. They answered it. Sometimes they seemed to be arguing with the guitars.
The band's name was Electric Light Orchestra.
Image: Electric Light Orchestra. Source: Counteract.com
Okay.
But what the hell kind of orchestra was this?
Whatever it was, I wanted more.
THE ORCHESTRA WAS THE POINT
Years later, I learned that the weirdness wasn't accidental.
ELO grew out of Birmingham's The Move around 1970, with Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne pursuing the idea of combining melodic rock with classical instrumentation. The concept was ambitious from the beginning: strings and other orchestral instruments wouldn't simply sweeten a conventional rock band. They would become part of the band's identity.
Image: Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne. Source: Uncited.
Eventually Jeff Lynne became ELO's creative center, and the experiment grew into something much bigger.
And stranger.
And absolutely wonderful.
By the middle of the 1970s, ELO had become enormously successful. Face the Music brought “Evil Woman” and “Strange Magic.” A New World Record gave us “Livin' Thing” and the song that first caught my attention, “Telephone Line.” Then came Out of the Blue, Discovery and more.
But Young Angel knew none of this.
I didn't know the band's history.
Actually, I didn't even know the band.
I knew the music.
I DIDN'T KNOW THEIR NAMES
That's one of the strangest things I remember about ELO.
I couldn't have told you who was in the band.
I didn't know Jeff Lynne.
I didn't know Bev Bevan or Richard Tandy. I didn't know who played the violin or the cello or who was responsible for whatever strange noise had just come out of my speakers.
Image: Electric Light Orchestra (ELO). Source: The Guardian.
And I didn't care.
ELO was a little like Pink Floyd for me in that way.
The work was the celebrity.
There were certainly personnel changes, disagreements and business problems in ELO's real history. I would learn about some of those things much later. But that wasn't the public mythology through which I encountered them.
I wasn't hearing about trashed hotel rooms.
I wasn't following somebody into rehab.
I wasn't reading about arrests or which member of the band had done what outrageous thing last weekend.
I wasn't being sold a lifestyle.
I was being given music.
And my God, what music.
ROCK ’N’ ROLL WITH THE LIGHTS ON
Rock music could be dark.
I loved plenty of that, too.
There were bands built around danger, sex, drugs, rebellion, anger, excess and the general possibility that somebody might set something on fire before the evening was over.
ELO felt different.
Not because every ELO song was happy.
It wasn't.
“Telephone Line” is lonely.
“Evil Woman” certainly isn't about a healthy relationship.
“Don't Bring Me Down” is essentially someone announcing that they have had quite enough of your crap, thank you very much.
But something fascinating happened when ELO played those songs.
They brought you up.
There was movement in them.
Bounce.
Melody.
Harmony.
Color.
Even melancholy could become beautiful in their hands.
ELO didn't seem to have a grudge against the world.
There was wonder.
That's the word I keep coming back to.
They made rock ’n’ roll with a sense of wonder.
Maybe that's why, looking back, the name feels so perfect.
Electric. Light. Orchestra.
There was light in that music.
AND THEN THERE'S THE REFLEX
You know the sound.
You don't even need the lyric yet.
The opening hits.
Your head comes up.
Your body knows what is about to happen before your brain bothers retrieving the title.
“Don't Bring Me Down.”
That's a Gen X Reflex.
Released on Discovery in 1979, it became ELO's highest-charting U.S. hit. Ironically, for a band so associated with orchestral rock, “Don't Bring Me Down” doesn't actually use a string section.
It doesn't need one.
That thing moves.
And then, of course, there's Bruce.
You know Bruce.
Everybody knows Bruce.
Except...
There is no Bruce.
Jeff Lynne has explained that the famous sound after the chorus began as “Grooss,” essentially a nonsense placeholder. A German engineer pointed out that it sounded like the German Gruß, meaning a greeting. Audiences, meanwhile, heard “Bruce.”
Eventually so many people were singing “Bruce” that Lynne started singing it too.
This may be one of the most ELO things that has ever happened.
Write enormous international hit.
Insert meaningless sound.
Accidentally create man named Bruce.
Accept Bruce.
Continue.
😂
And somehow the song called “Don't Bring Me Down” does exactly the opposite.
It brings me up.
Every single time.
WAIT. WHAT DID THEY SAY?
ELO has several songs that live in another special category for me:
Songs I have loved for decades while not being entirely certain what the hell they were saying.
Bruce is obviously president of this organization.
But there are others.
And somewhere along the way, my brain apparently transformed “Evil Woman” into something involving a medieval woman, which honestly raises an entirely different set of questions.
What does the medieval woman want?
Has anyone checked the castle?
Is Bruce safe?
These are the mysteries of ELO.
And here's the funny thing.
It almost doesn't matter.
Because the sonic fingerprints are so strong.
“Telephone Line” begins and immediately creates a world.
“Livin' Thing” has those strings.
“Evil Woman” announces itself.
“Mr. Blue Sky” practically arrives carrying its own weather system.
And “Don't Bring Me Down” needs only a few seconds before an entire room knows exactly what is coming.
That's the magic.
Sometimes ELO reaches your body before the words get anywhere near your brain.
THEY WERE ALREADY THERE
This is another part of the story that fascinates me now.
ELO didn't belong exclusively to my generation.
They were already there.
By the time Gen X came into its own as a music audience, ELO had history behind them. They had already evolved, experimented, built a catalog and established a sound.
Then the musical world changed.
The 1980s arrived.
Synthesizers became increasingly prominent. Music became more visually driven. MTV arrived.
And ELO came with us.
They didn't throw away everything that made them ELO and suddenly become some completely different band.
They evolved.
Their 1981 album Time leaned deeply into synthesizers and futuristic ideas; songs from it such as “Hold On Tight,” “Here Is the News,” “Ticket to the Moon” and “Twilight” also had music videos.
Of course ELO could walk into the future.
They'd been driving a spaceship for years.
What were we expecting?
ROCK ’N’ ROLL IS KING
And then, in 1983, after all the orchestration, studio experimentation, synthesizers, futuristic imagery and musical evolution, ELO released “Rock ’n’ Roll Is King” on Secret Messages. The recording even brought violinist Mik Kaminski back into the mix for a violin solo.
I love that.
Because ELO could look forward and backward at the same time.
They could embrace technology without acting as though everything that came before it needed to be thrown away.
There wasn't a cranky lecture about how music used to be better.
It was a celebration.
Rock ’n’ roll is still here. Come dance.
That's different.
And maybe that's one of the reasons ELO traveled so easily across generations.
They didn't chase us into the 1980s.
They came with us.
They kept the melodies.
They kept the harmonies.
They kept the strange.
They kept the fun.
They just allowed the world around them to change.
COME WITH US
The more I think about ELO now, the more I realize that's what their music has always felt like to me.
An invitation.
Some rock music says:
Be angry.
Some says:
Be dangerous.
Some says:
Look at me.
ELO always seemed to say:
Come with us.
We're going somewhere.
There might be a violin.
There will probably be a synthesizer.
A cello may show up where you weren't expecting one.
There could be a spaceship.
Nobody knows who Bruce is.
Just get in.
And off we went.
Maybe that's what Young Angel heard all those years ago when David played “Telephone Line.”
I couldn't have explained Jeff Lynne's production.
I didn't know the history of The Move.
I couldn't have named the musicians.
I didn't know why this rock band had enough strings to require its own seating chart.
I just knew the music made me feel something.
It was big without being heavy.
Sophisticated without demanding that I understand how sophisticated it was.
Strange without becoming inaccessible.
Sad sometimes, but rarely hopeless.
And wonderfully, gloriously fun.
Years later, I can finally put words to what Young Angel heard.
ELO made rock ’n’ roll with the lights on.
They were there before us.
They changed as the world changed.
They came with us.
And all these decades later, those first few notes can still trigger the Reflex.
The head comes up.
The foot starts moving.
The smile arrives.
You know what's coming.
Don't bring me down?
ELO never did.
They always brought me up.
Sources & Further Listening
ELO's official history traces the band's formation from The Move, its orchestral concept and its rise through albums including Face the Music and A New World Record.
Jeff Lynne discussed the famous “Grooss/Bruce” story behind “Don't Bring Me Down” in a 2014 interview with The Guardian.
Apple Music's Time listing documents the 1981 album and its associated music videos, while ELO album archives document the 1983 Secret Messages era and “Rock ’n’ Roll Is King.”
Thanks for taking this trip back with me.
What does ELO do to your Gen X Reflex? Is it the opening of “Don’t Bring Me Down”? The sunshine of “Mr. Blue Sky”? The beautiful loneliness of “Telephone Line”? Or is there another ELO song that instantly takes you somewhere?
Tell me in the comments. And while you’re there, somebody please tell me...
Who the hell is Bruce? 😂
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Until next time...
Keep the memories alive. Keep the stories coming. And whatever you do... turn it up.
— Dr. AY Heath (Angel)
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