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Jeff Lynne
Otis Wilbury
Clayton Wilbuy
Jeffrey Lynne was born on 30th December 1947 in Birmingham, UK. When he was fifteen, Jeff was given a plastic guitar by his father.
After playing guitar in various local groups, in 1966 he joined a local Birmingham band called The Nightriders, who were looking for a guitar player through an advert. He impressed his fellow band members with his stunning guitar technique and proved to be a good singer and harmonizer, too. The band subsequently changed their name to The Idle Race and made Jeff their front man. The Idle Race released two albums, The Birthday Party (1968) and Idle Race (1969) plus a couple of singles, but never made it big.
In 1970 Jeff Lynne left the band in order to join The Move, accepting Roy Wood's invitation, who promised his friend Lynne to launch a new project, called The Electric Light Orchestra, which had been on his mind for a couple of years. Their idea was to form a ten-piece ensemble with cellos, violins, french horn etc. and play symphonic rock. "... I suppose that the Electric Light Orchestra is meant to take up where 'I Am The Warus' left off, and to present it on stage." It took them almost two years to fulfill their ambitious plan to transform The Move into The Electric Light Orchestra since its first public announcement in May 1970 - they did not release ELO's eponymous debut album until December 1971.
While the first three albums Electric Light Orchestra (1971), Electric Light Orchestra II (1972) and On The Third Day (1973) were somewhat experimental and seemed to lack direction, their fourth album, Eldorado (1974) was a ground breaking success and defined the new direction of the group's overall sound. Face The Music (1975) gave Jeff Lynne his first worldwide smash with the single "Evil Woman".
In 1979 Lynne gave the world Discovery, and it became ELO's most successful worldwide release, reaching No. 1 and shipping platinum.
In 1986, after a charity gig in Birmingham, a final gig in Wembley Stadium and two more shows in Germany, Jeff finally lost interest and split the band, moving onto a solo career involving writing, recording and producing some of rock's biggest names: George Harrison (Cloud Nine, 1987), Roy Orbison (Mystery Girl, 1989 and King Of Hearts, 1992), Tom Petty (Full Moon Fever, 1989 and Into The Great Wide Open, 1991) and Del Shannon (Rock On!, 1991). When his record company, Warner Bros. offered him the chance to release a solo album, he came up with Armchair Theater (1990).
In 1994/95 he fulfilled a lifetime's ambition and stepped into George Martin's shoes, producing his idols, The Beatles. He worked on two songs for their Anthology project, the reunion single "Free As A Bird" and "Real Love", another Lennon demo. Subsequently, Paul McCartney asked Lynne to help him on his next solo album, Flaming Pie, (1997) which contains eight tracks co-produced by Jeff.
Related Links
The Jeff Lynne Network
