Rarely did the worlds of rock music and classical music become as intertwined as peanut butter and jelly. Sure, there were all the songs, especially in the early days of the rock 'n roll era, in which strings were used behind pop singers for hits. That was commonplace.
But not in the world of rock where thunderous guitars, hammering drums and powerful basses ruled. But by 1966, the Beatles experimented with that sound of strings behind songs such as "Yesterday," "Eleanor Rigby," "I Am The Walrus" and "All You Need Is Love." The Rolling Stones did the same thing with "As Tears Go By."
Otherwise, rock bands and stringed instruments were not a part of the popular music landscape.
That was, until 1973. Then a band influenced by the Beatles sounds of incorporating strings and hard-driving strings came onto the music scene. In that summer, they released a rousing eight-minute version of "Roll Over Beethoven," a combination of the 1955 hit song by Chuck Berry and parts of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (which would become a disco-fied No. 1 hit in 1976 by Walter Murphy & the Big Apple Band). The song bounded up the Hot 100, but "Roll Over Beethoven" only got as high as No. 42 the week of July 28, 1973.
Even though the song missed out on the Top 40, Electric Light Orchestra, a band formed by its leader Jeff Lynne, who was in a band called the Move along with good friend Roy Wood, was on the map. The two formed ELO and the band recorded its self-titled album in 1971. But Wood was caught up in the glam-rock scene of the day and left to form a group called Wizzard. That left Lynne in complete charge of this ensemble of musicians -- drummer Bev Bevan, keyboardist Richard Tandy, bassist Mike de Albuquerque, cello players Mike Edwards and Colin Walker and violinist Wilfred Gibson.
From the "ELO 2" album came "Roll Over Beethoven." The third album, "On The Third Day," featured "Showdown" and "Ma-Ma-Ma-Belle."
ELO, the shortened and best-known way the band is known, had great album tracks, but not one Top 40 hit in the bunch after three albums. So in 1974, Lynne went back to work in the studio with his band, which now featured Mik Kaminski taking over for Gibson on violin, Hugh McDowell taking over for Walker on one of the cellos and Louis Clark conducting and arranging the orchestral part of the group, and recorded an album called "Eldorado," a concept album featuring a young man who steps out of his ordinary life and is introduced to a whole new world of fulfilled dreams and fantasies.
Concept albums rarely, if ever, coughed out a Top 40 hit, so the move was never to actually have a Top 40 single. But one song stood out -- a "quieter" piece of music following the big "Eldorado Overture" that began the album. It was called "Can't Get It Out Of My Head," a song that fit the fantasy of Lynne's work of a mystery "ocean's daughter" that takes this young man to an entirely different world from midnight until the break of dawn.
Tandy's keyboard and synthesizer highlight the piece, as does the strings of Kaminski, McDowell and Edwards. And released as a single by ELO's record label in the United States, United Artists, "Can't Get It Out Of My Head" was the highest-debuting song on the Top 40 chart of January 25, 1975, starting out at No. 33. Though AT40 would play a much more edited version of the four-minute, 21-second piece, the song would keep climbing upward and would reach the Top 10 on March 8, 1975, when it moved up from No. 11 to No. 10. The next week, it would peak at No. 9 before falling back to No. 18 the week after that.
The ball was rolling for ELO. By the end of the year, they would hit the Top 40 again with "Evil Woman" and get to No. 10 by February 1976. And with the strings being a huge part of the musical backdrop, ELO would have 14 more Top 40 singles between 1976-80 before Lynne went another direction in 1981, going to a more nostalgic, guitar-driven, 1950s sound with 1981's "Hold On Tight" and subsequent Top 40 hits.
Amazingly, for all the glory and genius of having a rock band fuse rock and classical-sounding music, two things eluded ELO all these years: a No. 1 song (the band's biggest hit, the hard-driving "Don't Bring Me Down" in 1979, peaked at No. 4) and a spot in the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame. How an innovative band such as ELO has never been inducted into the Hall is beyond me or their long-time fans.
As for Lynne, he went on to have a close working relationship with George Harrison and lived out a longtime dream of working on and producing Harrison's "Cloud Nine" album that produced the first No. 1 hit of Lynne's longtime career, "Got My Mind Set On You," as the producer for Harrison. He's also been a Traveling Wilbury member with Harrison, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan and the late Roy Orbison.
Still, ELO has always been in Lynne's mind. He recorded a 2001 CD with a newer ELO called "Zoom," which did feature a track on it with former keyboardist Tandy. But doing a show with ELO was something that kept eluding Lynne. Then on November 12, 2013, Lynne reunited with Tandy for a concert build as Jeff Lynne and Friends and performed "Livin' Thing" and "Mr. Blue Sky," two of the 16 Top 40 hits ELO had between 1975-80. That gave Lynne the courage to do another show, this time as Jeff Lynne's ELO with Tandy joining the band again to perform one show on September 14, 2014, at the "Festival In A Day" at Hyde Park. The 50,000 tickets up for sale sold out in 15 minutes. Working with Gary Barlow of Take That fame's backing band, th show was a major success and it has prompted whispers that Lynne may take his show on a world tour even as he turned 67 years old on December 30.
But even if they don't, their music has always been treasured and will live on. And ELO fans can point to the "Eldorado" concept album that brought the band their first scent of success with "Can't Get It Out Of My Head," a Top 10 hit where keyboards and guitars were playing in front of cellos and violins ... in the same band, no less!
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