Jeff Lynne's ELO
Electric Light Orchestra’s Jeff Lynne is an unlikely icon — a hero for music nerds. In his trademark shades and shock of poofy locks, Lynne exploded out of the Me Decade in a cacophony of vocoder-effected vocals, UFO imagery and proggy, symphonic rock ’n’ roll. He’s long been a famously shy, behind-the-soundboard kind of rock star, a guy who orchestrated history’s greatest supergroup (that would be The Traveling Wilburys, which also included George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and Bob Dylan) and can somehow make phrases like “insufficient data coming through” sound poetic.
Despite all that — and despite landing 25 singles in the Billboard Top 100 between 1973 and 1983 — the man has only won a single Grammy over the course of his career. It’s criminal — The Black Eyed Peas have six, for God’s sake! But we’re not here to debate the historical relevance and general awareness of the Recording Academy. On Wednesday, Lynne brought his bevy of hits and world-class players, currently touring under the name Jeff Lynne’s ELO, to Bridgestone Arena, and that’s what we’re here to talk about.
It was, in a word, swell. The 71-year-old Birmingham, England-born Lynne and his dozen-or-so backing performers don’t offer a lot of surprises on their current tour. A glimpse at set lists from the group’s recent appearances will show you that they never deviate from the same 20 songs, and they play them in nearly identical order each night. But that set list is a veritable hit parade, packed with many of the aforementioned Top 100 hits, as well as a smattering of slightly deeper cuts throughout. Wednesday’s performance also had some moments that, even if they weren’t unique to the Nashville show, felt pretty special — most notably, a midset performance of the Wilburys hit “Handle With Care” that featured Dhani Harrison, son of George, performing his dad’s vocals. He did so very convincingly, with footage of dearly departed Wilburys Harrison, Orbison and Petty inspiring big cheers from the crowd each time they’d flash on screen behind the band.
Dhani Harrison
Dhani had opened Wednesday night’s show at the local enormo-dome — which was, if not completely sold-out, very close to it. While Harrison bears more than a passing resemblance to his old man, he and his band’s tunes weren’t what you’d call Beatle-esque, instead veering from vaguely power-poppy to grungy. The set was peppered with tunes by Harrison’s band Thenewno2 as well as a jangly set-ender that brought to mind Peter Gabriel, and it elicited plenty of polite and supportive applause from the audience.
And the audience, of course, skewed largely toward the baby-boomer demographic, with much of the crowd viewing the show through the screens of their various mobile devices. But distractions aside, they responded in elated fashion as Lynne & Co. blasted into set-opener “Standing in the Rain” right around 9:15 p.m., strobes flashing and lightning bolts crashing across five LED panels onstage. An array of green lasers cut through the arena during the gleeful clap-along of “Shine a Little Love,” while the iconic spaceship from the cover of Out of the Blue hovered on screen intermittently throughout the set.
Jeff Lynne's ELO
“We haven’t been here in hundreds of years,” said Lynne a couple songs in. “It’s lovely to be here.” He didn’t mean “we” quite literally, of course, as he’s the only original ELO member in this iteration of the band. But he was backed by top-notch players and singers, among them musical director Mike Stevens, on whom Lynne pawned off the task of introducing all the band members at one point. Bolstered as they were by on-point backing harmonies, Lynne’s vocals nevertheless sounded rich and strong over the symphonic disco of “All Over the World” and the falsetto-laden “Livin’ Thing,” his fingers still nimble on the guitar solo of “Showdown.”
Lynne & Co. finished off their main set with an undeniable four-song run of bangers: the lovesick ballad for the ages, “Telephone Line,” followed by “Don’t Bring Me Down,” “Turn to Stone” and “Mr. Blue Sky,” the latter an impossibly bright burst of optimism as always. After asking the crowd to indulge him in taking a selfie — it was a sweetly paternal moment, and possibly the most words he said all evening — Lynne brought his band back out for a single-song encore. They closed it down where it all began, more or less: with a stretched-out rendition of “Roll Over Beethoven,” ELO's heavily tweaked 1973 Chuck Berry cover and the group's first charting U.S. single.
There was plenty of room for solos, of course, and Lynne is still a shredder. It was a fitting end to a 90-minute set that, even if it didn’t offer the thrill of unpredictability, was quite satisfying. Like Lynne's career itself, the show was understated, packed with hits and delivered with extreme musical prowess. We have a shorter and shorter supply of icons whose catalogs can compare to his — who can take something as seemingly simple as rock ’n’ roll, complicate the hell out of it, and by doing so show you where its visceral impact came from in the first place — and it’s always a pleasure to bear witness to those who've still got it.
