![]() ![]() Of course, the Beatles had experimented with orchestration as well, and the first ELO single, “10538 Overture”, with its extended “Frère Jacques” string outro, sounds a lot like something from Magical Mystery Tour. (ELO would be sort of a reverse image of Blood, Sweat and Tears: the original BS&T added horns to blues-based songs ELO would add strings to pop). The new band name would reinforce the idea of this equal partnership. But Wood and Lynne wanted to take the next step and incorporate an actual string section and feature it equally with the rock instrumentation rather than use it merely for fills and accents. Though known for helping define the propulsive style now called freakbeat, the Move had also toyed with baroque pop on such songs as “Blackberry Way” and “Something”, and had scored a hit with “Night of Fear”, which borrows directly from Tchaikovsky’s “1058 Overture”. It wasn’t as though ELO was setting out for entirely new territory. But when it doesn’t, it’s indulgent schlock (think Rick Wakeman), or worse, well-wrought but emotionally vacant showpieces that typify the soulless product of corporate rock. When this strategy works, it makes for a brilliant, intuitive synthesis - and the immediately familiar hits from ELO’s juggernaut years in the mid-’70s bear this out. But what this all amounted to in practice was condensing such ideas as orchestrated rock riffs played on violas and song snippets sewn into extensive suites and presenting them as big, unsubtle hooks. The band’s intention of incorporating ideas from classical music seemed a bit grandiose and hubristic, as well (“my tunes are just like Bach’s!”). ![]() The band was a proven hit-maker in England (though mysteriously not in America, despite being the equal of any other British Invasion band), and the record company was perhaps puzzled that the same band members should want to toss away the established name for one rather unwieldy and pretentious. ELO was formed in 1972 when the remaining members of the Move - multi-instrumentalist and songwriting genius Roy Wood, drummer Bev Bevan and late arrival Jeff Lynne, who had originally made his name with another English group from Birmingham, the Idle Race - were ready to move on, as it were, to better explore the proggish ideas that were already surfacing on such albums as Shazam! and Looking On. ![]()
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