Electric Light Orchestra

Electric Light Orchestra set out from Birmingham in 1970 with a mad scientist's plan: strap cellos and violins onto a rock band and write pop songs with a classical flourish. Jeff Lynne, Roy Wood and drummer Bev Bevan, all veterans of the Move, launched it as an offshoot of that band, and the name was a pun on both electric light and the light orchestral music of old BBC radio. Wood bailed in 1972, and from then on it was Lynne's spaceship: he wrote nearly all the songs, co-arranged them and produced every record, with Bevan pounding away beside him and Richard Tandy on keyboards.

The string section sawed through "Roll Over Beethoven" on ELO II, and Eldorado brought the lush, drifting "Can't Get It Out Of My Head". Then Lynne found the formula: Face the Music ("Evil Woman"), A New World Record ("Livin' Thing", "Telephone Line", "Do Ya") and the double album Out of the Blue, their biggest seller, crowned by "Mr. Blue Sky", as sunny and overstuffed as pop gets. Discovery flirted with disco and topped the British chart, and "Don't Bring Me Down" stomped like a football terrace.

Lynne pulled the plug in 1986. By then ELO had piled up more big American hits than anybody who never reached the top spot, and in 2017 Lynne, Wood, Bevan and Tandy were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.