Produced by Jeff Lynne

That's exactly my problem...not its use, but rather its OVERuse. It got so you can pick out a Jeff Lynne production on the first downbeat.

Also, impossible as it might have seemed, he made Ringo sound like Keltner sound like Stan Lynch sound like Ferrone sound like...........

 

Once again -- Ringo put a towel over his snare in Let It Be. There began the evolution of the JL drum sound.

 

Agreed. Although it's funny that that drum sound *isn't* on Full Moon Fever, but *is* on Into the Great Wide Open.

I think Ringo's drum sound on Let It Be had more to do with Glyn Johns and less to do with a towel. I certainly don't think of Jeff Lynne when I hear Let It Be.

 

I thought I remember reading an interview where George said Jeff was recommended to him by WB suits (perhaps Lennie Waronker?) I liked Jeff's work on Cloud Nine, for the record. I just think it was totally wrong for the Beatles reunion tracks.

Me neither. Totally different drum sound.

 

This is how I feel. There are some times where an artist writes great material and puts in great performances, and I love it even if I don't like the how the artist made the recording sound. With Lynne, I like both aspects both seperately and together. I like Lynne's "sound" in and of itself, and Lynne is one of the few producers where I've picked up stuff that he produced simply because he produced it (i.e. Julianna Raye, and eventually I'd like to pick up the Dave Edmunds stuff he did).

At the same time, I agree that most (not quite all) of the stuff he produces has that very strong Lynne sound. So I can understand how somebody who doesn't like the sound would be put off from a lot of what Lynne works on.

The interesting thing is, in my opinion, I don't think Lynne has ever been as ego-driven as some other hired-gun producers that bring a very specific sound with them. In other words, Lynne just does what he does and it ends up sounding like that. To me, it doesn't seem like he has ever taken somebody's work and sort of attacked it with his sound. He just works on it and it ends up sounding like that.

Lynne has occasionally worked on material with a much lighter touch. While some tracks on George Harrison's Brainwashed scream "Lynne" (i.e. "Any Road", "Looking for My Life"), other tracks like "Pisces Fish" are much more laid-back and subtle. This may have something to do with the fact that much of the basic tracks were cut by George alone. But presumably all of the drum tracks were cut before Lynne worked on the material, so I think that drum sound was there to a degree before Lynne worked on it. Plus, Keltner drums on most of the stuff, and George had sort of adopted Lynne's production sound to a degree going by George's "Poor Little Girl" and "Cockamamie Business."

 

Martin said after FAAB and RL came out that while he initially had reservations about it, he ended up liking the songs and wished he had been able to work on them.

 

I think Jeff did a nice job with the the 3rd ELO album, "On The Third Day". An overlooked and underrated album IMO.

 

'OOTD' is one of my favorite ELO albums.

It has that unrefined rawness to it like the first two albums, but it also gave you a glimpse into ELO's more polished future as far ahead as 'A New World Record'.

 

I don't understand how so many people can just hate Jeff Lynne's sound and absolutely adore Phil Spector's sound.

Niether is natural sounding. It's all about sound as an artform.

One of Jeff's biggest influences is The Beatles' "I AM THE WALRUS". Pretty much everything he's done can be linked to that one track.

 

Scott J, good call on "On The Third Day"! I've always considered it to be the best ELO album. I just picked up the remaster of this the other day and I think it sounds great!

 

Aside from his early ELO stuff, I never got the connection with "I Am The Walrus". I see him as more of a pop musician and producer. Tracks like "Livin' Thing", "Can't Get It Out Of My Head", "Evil Woman", "Bluebird", and "Strange Magic". I know his early sound was sort of a continuation of 1967 Beatles, but my take on it is that he moved on.

 

I agree. Lynne's 80's/90's sound does not resemble "I am the Walrus" at all to me.

 

Just a thought on Jeff Lynne's "Threetles" tracks: considering the relatively sparse demos they're based on, weren't the tracks going to need a relatively heavy-handed producer to flesh them out and make them sound like completed professional studio recordings?

 

Nah. I think a polished studio sound could easily have been achieved without the trademark Lynneisms (echoey explosion drums, wall of acoustic guitars, murky sound with no bass).

Actually, that does bring up another topic, though. Aside from allowing all the distracting Lynne sonic signatures, I think another error the Beatles made was to go for too much of a kitchen sink sound, with piles of overdubbed instruments and both Paul and George singing verses. It seems overdone. I think Free as a Bird would have been much better served by something more understated, like the backing on Strawberry Fields take one. Maybe one electric guitar, bass, and drums, and backing vocals, that's all. I really prefer the Free as a Bird outfake that combines the original demo with some vox and electric guitar OOPsed from the finished Anthology version.

 

It would have been pretty hard to not have Paul and George add some lead vocals to FAAB. Otherwise, the finished product would have had Lennon singing "Whatever happened to the life that once we knew, doo dah doo dah.." and so on. Lennon apparently did write some additional bridge lyrics (which can be seen on the FAAB sheet music as the "original version"), but the lyrics (which went something like "whatever happened to the life that we once knew, can we save anything, did we lose everything") don't even really fit the meter of the bridge lyrics/melody. I believe these lyrics were provided to the "Threetles", and I believe Paul mentioned in an interview correctly that they didn't fit, not so much thematically, but in terms of literally fitting into the melody/meter. The existence of sheet music for Lennon's "original version" with different lyrics does suggest the possible existence of additional demos other than the three very similar piano demos that circulate. Rumors have persisted for years of acoustic guitar demos existing somewhere. Maybe those demos feature the alternate lyrics.

 

This is debatable, but I do think the technical aspect of integrating the demo into the new recording may have been part of the "big" sound of the song. But I do think it's very true that part of the reason the song has a very strict 4/4 simple beat is because they had to re-record the song at exactly the same tempo as the demo, and then have their new recording be exactly in time so that they could drop the segments of the demo back in with the least amount of problems. Remember, unlike "Real Love", "FAAB" was done all in the analog realm. Lynne was literally hitting the "record" button for each Lennon demo drop-in. This was described in an interview.

 

True. But I think it would have worked better to have just one of them do it, rather than both. Having all three Beatles sing lead parts just seems very Wilburyish. I imagine in terms of ego it would have been hard to get them to agree on just one of them singing the necessary additions, but I wish they had done it that way.

 

I do agree that having three Beatles share the lead did seem odd and a bit gimmicky (although I like hearing the contrast of how Paul handled the vocal versus George). It didn't remind me so much of the Wilburys, but it did remind me of the "equal time" politics that were present during the entire "Anthology" project (i.e. Klaus Voorman having to design the Anthology triptych artwork so that it could also be divided into eight video spines with each Beatle being equally represented on each video spine, etc.)

 

I think people who don't like Jeff Lynne use the "he makes everything sound like ELO" line as a blanket accusation, but I don't think ANYTHING he did or produced after the mid-80s sounded like ELO -- and that's including an ELO album (Zoom)! I think the Cloud 9 production sounded similar to the final 1980s ELO stuff, but then I think the "Wilbury sound" is really what people are hearing after 1988 -- massed acoustics, trashcan drums, descending guitar/synth lines, and Jeff's "spaceman" backing vocals. I like it, myself.

The "I Am The Walrus" connection is simply adding "heavy" strings to rock songs. It's easy to see how "Walrus" inspired a lot of ELO songs, but it was a whole different animal by 1985.

 

Hello Sean,

I was careful in my original post to ask about "Jeff's Signature Sound" (rather than ELO). I agree that there is a difference.

You are correct in regards "The Wilbury Sound", but I also think that (to a certain extent) this can also be traced back to "Mr Blue Sky" - maybe that is what some feel is "The ELO Sound".

Stephen

 

To me, what separates the "Wilbury Sound" is the acoustic guitars; it gave the productions a warmer, more organic feel than either the 1970s "ELO" sound or the mid-80s "Jeff Lynne" sound. For example, I don't think anything on Cloud 9 has a particularly Wilbury-ish feel (despite the presence of some acoustics); the production of that album feels more like the "Hold On Tight" era ELO (which was really solo Jeff at that point).

"Mr. Blue Sky" sounds like pure ELO to me, and not really a precursor to the subsequent Jeff Lynne production styles.

 

Don't forget the tympanis.

 

Lucky for me, I love tympani!

 

I do too actually!

 

It's funny that a lot of people use the "he makes it sound like ELO" statement (which I've also said many times, as Sean did, is not really true of his post-ELO productions, in my opinion), because I remember back in 2000 when the ELO "Flashback" boxed set came out, all the ELO fans heard Jeff Lynne's remake of "Xanadu" and said he was making ELO sound like the Wilburys!