Джефф поучаствовал в альбоме Регины Спектор 'Far'.
о Регине Спектор: Родилась в 1980 году Москве. В 1989 году, во время Перестройки, вместе со своей семьей переехала в Нью-Йорк и поселилась в Бронксе. Получила классическое музыкальное образование по классу фортепиано, закончила консерваторию в штате Нью-Йорк при Purchase College, по классу композиции. Закончила еврейскую религиозную школу. Автор текстов и музыки, Регина Спектор исполняет свои песни, аккомпанируя себе на фортепиано или гитаре. Трудно определить жанр, стиль и направление творчества Регины Спектор: его называют anti-folk, но в нем есть что-то и от панка, и от инди-рока, и от классической музыки (Регина получила классическое музыкальное образование сначала в России, а затем в Нью-Йорке, у профессора Сони Варгас). Ее сравнивают с Бьорк, с Тори Амос, с Ван Моррисоном. Но она все же совершенно оригинальна. Лирика Регины нарочито интеллигентна, с многочисленными культурными реминисценциями — Эдип, Самсон, Эзра Паунд, Пастернак, а музыка экономна и изящна, как классические японские стихи. Самое главное - то, как она умеет играть голосом.
Отправлено: 11.10.12 12:33. Заголовок: Пресса пока не остав..
Пресса пока не оставляет Джеффа вниманием.даже центральная американская.
Jeff Lynne Discusses His Two New Albums, Which Hit Stores Tuesday
Electric Light Orchestra frontman Jeff Lynne releases not one but two brand new albums Tuesday. Long Wave features versions of 12 songs that inspired and influenced the multi-talented musician when he was growing up, while Mr. Blue Sky: The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra includes updated renditions of many classic tunes by his old group.
In recently interview with The Montreal Gazette, Lynne discussed the concept behind Long Wave, which offers his take on standards such as “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” “Love Is a Many Splendored Many Thing” and “Smile,” as well as early rock-era tunes his late Traveling Wilburys band mate Roy Orbison‘s “Running Scared,” Chuck Berry‘s “Let It Rock” and The Everly Brothers‘ “So Sad.”
“The old arrangements of them were busy and grand,” he notes. “[The chords] were obscured by the arrangements. I wanted to get them really simplified down, so I just studied them.”
Lynne admits that in order “to really get hold of” the tunes featured on Long Wave, he listened to each original version “100 times” before recording his renditions.
As for “Running Scared,” he tells The Gazette that his friendship with Orbison, who died from a heart attack at age 52 in 1988, was in his thoughts as he worked on the song.
“I got to know him really well, and what a sweet guy he was,” says Lynne. “He was a lovely man.”
Mr. Blue Sky, meanwhile, is the first studio album Lynne has issued under the Electric Light Orchestra moniker since 2001′s Zoom.
Fans wondering why Jeff felt the need to rerecord some of the band’s best-known and best-loved songs, he tells The Gazette, “When I used to listen to them on the radio or play a record of my old ELO stuff, they never really sounded like I wanted them to sound.”
Adds Lynne, “They tended to sound, to me, a little bit woolly and not too focused in some ways.”
He says that his experience as a producer, along with technological advances, have allowed him to create better-quality versions of those ELO classics.
“I was able to make things cleaner and clearer and get a better sound on guitar and piano,” Lynne notes.
MONTREAL — Jeff Lynne hasn’t put out an album using the Electric Light Orchestra tag in 11 years. It’s been twice that long since he released one under his own name. The wait, on both counts, ends Tuesday: Mr. Blue Sky, Lynne’s re-recording of ELO’s greatest hits, will be issued under the group signature. Joining it in the marketplace is Long Wave, Lynne’s homage to the pre-rock and early rock ’n’ roll songs that made a big impression on him.
“It’s like buses in England,” Lynne said during a recent telephone interview. “You wait forever and then they all come at once.”
Lynne said the songs he chose for Long Wave — including evergreens like Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, Smile and If I Loved You — were on his mind for years, germinating until he believed he had learned enough to do them well, in his own style.
“The old arrangements of them were busy and grand,” he said. “You couldn’t really hear the chords. They were obscured by the arrangements. I wanted to get them really simplified down, so I just studied them. I probably listened to each one 100 times before I did it — to really get hold of it.
“Learning these songs was the most pleasure you could have,” Lynne said. “It was like going to university and learning all these beautiful chords and all the parts of each song, because I play all the instruments, too. I felt it was now time to have a go at something really challenging. It took me a while, but 40-odd years later, I understand them totally, these songs. And I can do them justice.”
The Bobby Darin version of Beyond the Sea — itself an adaptation of Charles Trenet’s 1946 song La mer — is among the covers on Long Wave. “I remember when I first heard it, probably around 1960,” Lynne said. “I remember it sounded really old-fashioned then. (Darin) made it sound like a ’40s-type arrangement. I just wanted to see if I could play that style and learn the parts, because the parts to that were really difficult. There are thousands of chords in it, and it’s going at quite a pace. And the bass line is particularly tricky.”
Long Wave occasionally deviates from its pre-rock setting to visit early rock ’n’ roll songs, with Chuck Berry’s Let It Rock, the Everly Brothers’ So Sad (To Watch Good Love Go Bad) and Don Covay’s Mercy Mercy on the track list. “The very old ones are the ones I used to hear on the radio all the time. My father would have the radio on all day. The ’60s ones are from when I really got my own thing going with music that I had chosen to love,” Lynne said.
Among the more striking manifestations of Lynne’s youthful musical independence was one of his early bands, the Idle Race. With that late-’60s Birmingham band, he recorded two albums of twisted and infectious pop songs like The Skeleton and the Roundabout, I Like My Toys and Hurry Up John. The group, he said, was “kind of wacky. At the time, I was obviously trying to be very different and not sound like anybody else. We certainly didn’t. That’s for sure.”
Lynne later joined the Move, appearing on their two final albums, Looking On (1970) and the brilliant Message from the Country (1971). “(The albums) weren’t the best sound I’ve ever heard, but the ideas were there. Lots of ideas. And Roy Wood and I worked quite well together,” he said.
Wood and Lynne formed the Electric Light Orchestra in 1970, but the restless experimenter Wood left after the group’s 1971 debut album. Lynne took over the leadership of the pop group and fronted it through a decade of hits. Putting together a hefty ensemble, with strings, was necessary mostly to play the songs live, said Lynne, who wrote, arranged, produced and sang on the records.
On Mr. Blue Sky, Lynne plays ELO’s biggest hits alone, overdubbed multiple times, and the new recordings sound impressively close to the originals.
“When I used to listen to them on the radio or play a record of my old ELO stuff, they never really sounded like I wanted them to sound, or like I thought they sounded at the time I did them,” he said. “They tended to sound, to me, a little bit woolly and not too focused in some ways. A lot of it is my lack of experience as a producer in those days. I’ve had another 25 years of experience in recording, and technology has improved a fantastic amount. I was able to make things cleaner and clearer and get a better sound on guitar and piano.”
After ELO officially disbanded in 1986 (subsequent uses of the name have been strictly Lynne projects), Roy Orbison was among the artists with whom Lynne honed his production skills. He said he was thinking of their friendship when he recorded Orbison’s Running Scared for Long Wave. “I got to know him really well, and what a sweet guy he was. He was a lovely man,” Lynne said.
Lynne and Orbison were, memorably, part of the Traveling Wilburys, an idea George Harrison and Lynne hatched when Lynne was producing the ex-Beatle’s Cloud Nine album. Bob Dylan and Tom Petty made it a quintet.
“The Wilburys was a marvellous thing,” Lynne said. “It has to be up there with some of the best things I’ve had a go at.”
Lynne’s friendship with Harrison gave him an entry into producing the Beatles’ “reunion” tracks Free as a Bird and Real Love when the Fabs did their Anthology project in 1995. Although Lynne said he considers working with the surviving Beatles the highlight of his production work, he had a giant challenge. Technically, he said, it’s the biggest one he has ever faced: the tracks were built around two poor-quality recordings by John Lennon.
“They were just on a cassette, in mono,” he said. “His voice was with the piano and we couldn’t separate it. It was all one track. That was the hardest thing to get around.”
And dealing with the volatile chemistry between the surviving Beatles at the time? On the other end of the line, you could almost hear Lynne lacing up and beginning to skate away, waving a hearty goodbye. “They’re all different people, of course, and they all have their own things. I’m usually very polite to the Beatles,” he said, laughing. “And I will always be, because I hold them in great esteem.”
Other than perhaps wearing his trademark sunglasses, Jeff Lynne of the British band Electric Light Orchestra is not exactly a recognizable or charismatic figure compared to other rock stars of his era from the '70s and '80s. In its entry about the group, the Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll once wrote: "The Electric Light Orchestra has a history of facelessness. Even the most ardent fans generally can't name more than one or two band members."
But the music Lynne as the leader of ELO is definitely nothing short of anonymous. From the early '70s to the mid 80s,' the group blended Beatles- influenced rock and roll with strings (at least for most of its career), resulting in such hit songs as "Can't Get It Out of My Head," "Telephone Line," "Evil Woman," "Don't Bring Me Down," and "Hold On Tight." After the group went on hiatus, Lynne went on to even bigger fame in the late '80s and '90s as a member of the Traveling Wilburys, the supergroup that also consisted of George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan and Tom Petty; and as a producer for the aforementioned Harrison, Orbison, Petty, and most recently Regina Spektor. Along the way, ELO's music has maintained its popularity in commercials and in the film "Boogie Nights."
This past Tuesday, the ELO founder returned with two brand-new albums: "Long Wave," his first solo recording under his name in over 20 years; and "Mr. Blue Sky: The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra." Both releases come as ELO marks the 40th anniversary of its debut record, "Electric Light Orchestra" (or known as "No Answer" in the United States).
Anyone familiar with Jeff Lynne knows how much he loves to be involved in every aspect of the music--from writing and producing his own material, to singing and playing all the instruments himself. So it may come as a surprise that "Long Wave" is a collection of cover songs from the '50s and '60s. It is probably the most tender of music Lynne has ever released, from his renditions of ballads as "At Last" (made famous by Etta James), "She," "If Loved You," and "Love is Many Splendored Thing"; to rockers in "Let It Rock" and "Beyond the Sea" (immortalized by Bobby Darrin).
According to a press release, "Long Wave" is a look back at the songs that Lynne had listened to in his youth long before forming ELO. "I call this new album 'Long Wave' because all of the songs I sing on it are the ones heard on long wave radio when I was a kid growing up in Birmingham, England," Lynne said. "These songs take me back to that feeling of freedom in those days and summon up the feeling of first hearing those powerful waves of music coming in on my old crystal set. My dad also had the radio on all the time, so some of these songs have been stuck in my head for 50 years. You can only imagine how great it felt to finally get them out of my head after all these years."
"Long Wave" is not the only new music coming from Lynne. "Mr. Blue Sky: The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra" is an album of 11 re-recorded greatest hits with Lynne performing all the instruments himself. Essentially, they're near-letter perfect versions of the original ELO songs with some slight variations and quirks here and there -- "Do Ya" for example, sounds more aggressive than its predecessor, as does "Don't Bring Me Down," The only exception on the record is the excellent new song, "Point of No Return," which hopefully is a sign that Lynne will be releasing more original material by either himself or under the ELO name.
"When I listen to the old versions they don't sound the way I thought they did when I first wrote and recorded them," he said in the press release. "I wanted to use the experience I've gained producing records ever since and have a completely new try at them. I'm not saying the old versions aren't good; I like them very much. We were doing our best, but experience and technology also play a big part, and these new ones sound much more solid and tight."
The release of the two new albums is proof that at 64 years old, Lynne hasn't lost his skill in crafting melodic rock and roll.
Джеффа номинировали на следующий год на включение в зал славы авторов песен.
Songwriters Hall of Fame 2013 Nominees For Induction Announced
New York, NY – October 11, 2012 – Jimmy Webb, Chairman of the Songwriters Hall of Fame has announced the slate of 2013 nominees for induction. The organization, which is dedicated to recognizing the work and lives of those composers and lyricists who create popular music around the world, holds annual elections to determine those who will make up the roster of inductees for the following year. Eligible voting members will have until December 17th, 2012 to turn in ballots with their choices of three nominees from a non-performer and two from a performer category. For information with which to register or renew as a voting member before November 19th in order to participate in this election, please go to songhall.org/join.
The 2013 Annual Awards Gala will take place at the New York Marriott Marquis on Thursday, June 13th.
English pop-rock luminary Jeff Lynne first found fame in The Move, then made it big on both sides of the pond as leader of the Electric Light Orchestra. With ELO, he wrote such hits as “Can’t Get It Out of My Head,” “Livin’ Thing,” “Mr. Blue Sky” and “Don’t Bring Me Down.” He later co-founded the Traveling Wilburys with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty, and had a writing hand in their hits “Handle With Care” and “End Of The Line;” he also wrote hits for the likes of Orbison (“You Got It”) and Petty (“I Won’t Back Down” and “Free Fallin’”). Key songs in the Lynne catalog include “Evil Woman,” “Do Ya,” “Don’t Bring Me Down,” “Mr. Blue Sky” and “Strange Magic.”
Отправлено: 12.10.12 14:05. Заголовок: Вот я тоже так понял..
Вот я тоже так поняла, что надо платить. :( Получается, у кого у поклонников лишних денег больше. тот и победитель? Фу, противно!
SLQ
постоянный участник
Зарегистрирован: 28.10.09
Откуда: Санкт-Петербург
Отправлено: 12.10.12 15:38. Заголовок: Jeff Lynne - Long Wa..
Jeff Lynne - Long Wave/Mr. Blue Sky: The Very Best Of Electric Light Orchestr
ELO man upgrades his hits and re-imagines his youth...
At a certain point in their career, the successful rock star naturally leans towards a touch of retrospection, whether by way of an autobiography (as with Dylan’s Chronicles Vol. 1), a variously revised, remixed or re-recorded edition of their oeuvre (as with Kate Bush’s Director’s Cut), or a sentimental indulgence in the kind of greasy-kidstuff radio fodder that first drew their attention to music (as in McCartney’s Kisses On The Bottom). Never one for half measures, Jeff Lynne has opted for two out of the three, with the simultaneous release of a re-recorded greatest hits album and an album of teen favourites from the dawn of rock’n’roll. Can his life story be far behind, one wonders?
Unlike Kate Bush’s career retrospective, Mr. Blue Sky (in which Lynne replays and re-records his old songs), doesn’t seek to find new depths in any of ELO’s classic hits, or re-contextualise them in the light of subsequent musical developments. The new versions are, to all intents and purposes, exactly the same as the old versions, they’re just more so, if that makes sense. Like many a musician forever encountering their own back catalogue on random radio broadcast, Lynne seems to have become able to hear only the imperfections: rather than an ego-boost, it afforded him instead the nagging irritation that, surely, these tracks could sound so much better? And being a top studio boffin type and all-round musical polymath with state-of-the-art equipment at his everyday disposal, he realised he was perfectly placed to give these old hits the presence and pizzazz he felt they lacked.
One by one, the ELO songs were given the musical equivalent of a software upgrade. The effect is understandably more noticeable on the older tracks, like “Showdown” and “10538 Overture”, than on the later material: the latter song, for instance, now has a spangly presence that distances it slightly from its Walrusian origins. But in general, this is a subtle restoration exercise that shouldn’t annoy even the most obsessive of anorak fans. The bonus track “Point Of No Return”, with its arpeggiated guitar figures, melodic logicality and sleek harmonies, sounds like a refugee from Tom Petty’s Lynne-produced Full Moon Fever, which is fine by me.
Long Wave – named after the wireless waveband that carried the BBC Light Programme of Lynne’s youth – takes a very different approach to its source material, which is re-imagined in ways that set it sometimes strikingly apart from the original versions. The older, pre-rock crooner tracks like “She” and “If I Loved You” are reminiscent more of the early Beatles covers of things like “Bйsame Mucho”, with arrangements stripped back to guitars and piano, and chiming harmonies illuminating complex melodies. Lynne’s version of “Beyond The Sea” prances along on his swaggering bassline where Bobby Darin’s glides, and there’s a similarly lollopy bonhomie to his take on Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile”, a sort of lazy cowpoke trot that suits the song perfectly. The tone of relaxed confidence extends to Chuck Berry’s “Let It Rock”, which accrues a low-slung gangster lean through being taken as a lazily galloping boogie rather than a motorvating rocker. And there’s an interesting adaptation of Etta James’s R’n’B inflections to suit Lynne’s milder pop intonations on his version of “At Last”. The most drastic re-imagining occurs on a version of Don Covay’s “Have Mercy” that harks back to Lynne’s own youth in The Idle Race: here, there’s a brash, primitive beat-boom attack to the guitar and drum groove that recalls The Spencer Davis Group’s “Keep On Running”, no mean thing to pull off on your own. Elsewhere, his take on Roy Orbison’s “Running Scared” is suitably respectful as it climbs to its operatic climax, while the harmonies on the Everlys’ “So Sad” are so spot-on it’s as if Lynne has located his inner Don for one pass, followed by his inner Phil for another. All in all, an interesting exercise, far less arch and shamateurish than Kisses On The Bottom. Andy Gill
Q&A Jeff Lynne Did you play all the ELO parts? Yes, I played all the instruments myself, except for the string lines, played by Mark Mann.
Didn’t you once play strings? Not really. I could scrape out a crummy tune on a cello. Then I had frets put on my cello, to make it more tuneful. I used to love doing slides, but you could hear it on the frets: badumbadumbrrrrrup!
It’s interesting how the earlier, pre-rock’n’roll songs are more reliant on melody than rhythm, compared to the rock songs. Those chord structures are very, very complex. You have to do a kind of tunnel-hearing thing, just listen to an individual instrument and think away those big arrangements that are fluffing all around it, with all those flutes and clarinets that obscured what the real chords were. If you listen in a different mode and just learn the guitar chords, they’re actually very simple songs – but you would never know that from hearing those old recordings of them.
“Have Mercy” is effective in beat-boom style. I tried to get a live feel, which is difficult to do when you’re playing it all yourself – you can’t really bounce off yourself: once you’ve laid down one track you can’t think about it again, because you’ve got to try and get the next one to bounce against that one. The reason I know that song so well is that it was one of my favourites when we used to play it in The Idle Race, in the pubs and clubs of Birmingham. INTERVIEW: ANDY GILL
Отправлено: 22.10.12 09:17. Заголовок: Conversations With E..
Conversations With Electric Light Orchestra's Jeff Lynne
Mike Ragogna: Hiya, Jeff, how are you?
Jeff Lynne: Oh, not too bad, and how are you?
MR: I'm pretty good, pretty good. Hey, it looks like you've got a couple of projects, your solo album Long Wave, and also The Very Best Of Electric Light Orchestra.
JL: Uh-huh.
MR: Where do you find the time in the day?
JL: Well, don't forget, that's all I had to do. I spent three years six days a week doing those two albums plus another eight songs for my new album, original songs.
MR: Let's first get into Long Wave. Long Wave is a bit of a tribute to your musical history. Things you loved?
JL: Yeah, things I loved, that I've loved since I was a tiny lad.
MR: Your track list includes older classics, such as "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered," "Smile," and "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing." But there are also tracks such as "Let It Rock" and "She."
JL: What can I say? I've got a very diversified taste. Part of it was, obviously, that I'd grown up through the rock 'n' roll era, and so that's why they're in there, because they were very formative in my rock 'n' roll years.
MR: It must have been hard for you to come up with a track list for this one. How did you choose them?
JL: It wasn't difficult, they sort of jumped at me when I wrote them down, a few of them. I've been thinking about doing this for years, but I never actually got around to it because they sounded so complicated to do. I never even tried them before. I actually listened to the records, probably a hundred times, each song, just to get into it in such a deep way. I really wanted to do them perfectly. There wasn't a musical mistake anywhere, and there isn't, so I'm really glad to say that.
MR: I imagine some of these songs were favorites of your parents, maybe playing in the house when you were little?
JL: That's right. We didn't have a TV 'til I was about thirteen. That's when Roy Orbison and Del Shannon came along, so, okay, I was safe. That's what I did. I listened to them, and I also had a crystal set in bed, you know? I would listen to all that stuff, because the BBC was on long wave and that's all you could get in those days.
MR: Thus the title for Long Wave. You've been part of ELO, The Traveling Wilburys, The Move, and you've been associated with many more. You're constantly in musical motion, aren't you?
JL: Well, I like to be. Music is my first love. I have so much fun doing it, especially doing these old, beautiful songs where not only is the tune great, but the chords are marvelous and the words are superb. It's just so rare that you get all three things spot on. This is why they sort of jumped off the page for me, you know? Sometimes, I would trawl through iTunes to try and find different versions of it, so I could do...what do you call it?
MR: An amalgam?
JL: Yes, exactly. Very well spotted.
MR: Thank you.
JL: Yes, an amalgam of different styles of that song rather than get trapped. What I really did was discard the arrangements from them and make my own arrangements so that they sounded like my style, more like harmony and no flutes and clarinets and all that kind of stuff. I wanted to make it a little bit more rock 'n' roll or kind of a bit more sixties, I suppose, rather than fifties.
MR: It was Jeff Lynne-ized.
JL: I hope so, yeah.
MR: When you have a project like this, is it tempting to go on the road and tour with nothing but this kind of material?
JL: Nothing's ever tempted me to go on the road yet.
MR: [laughs] Perhaps you'll want to return to material like this again for another project?
JL: You never know. If somebody wants me, maybe I'll do a show, but we'll see. I've just done a documentary, really. It's like an hour and a half long and it tells you the whole story of me and ELO and all the people I've worked with. There are interviews from all the people I've worked with and produced. It's quite fun, it's really good. We had a screening of it at the Grammy museum and it went down really well. I was really pleased.
MR: Looking back at your career from the early days until now, are you surprised at the amount of achievement you've had to this point?
JL: Well, when you're doing it yourself, you don't notice it. It's when people tell you about it, when it's written down or, obviously, the documentary, then I do see all the achievements. I don't gloat over it. I'm very thankful.
MR: Speaking of your achievements, they include big ELO hits such as "Telephone Line," "Living Thing," "Evil Woman," "Don't Bring Me Down," and more, such as "Do Ya" with The Move. Looking at that body of work, you've created a lot of anthems.
JL: Oh, that's very sweet, thank you.
MR: Yeah, the way that people have used personalized some of these songs over the years goes beyond just having an enduring pleasant song.
JL: Yeah, they've gone further than I ever imagined. When I first wrote those songs, all I was hoping for was that they'd get on the charts; "Ooh, maybe they'd get in the Top Ten. That would be great!" As a songwriter, that's what you're sort of aiming for, because you want people to hear them. But when they're still sticking around after forty years, it's really quite amazing, and then I do become amazed by it.
MR: Now, in a group like ELO, you are participating with other band members in coming up with some of the arrangements, et cetera, right?
JL: Yeah.
MR: But on your new solo album, Long Wave, you play every instrument.
JL: Yes, I love to play drums and bass and guitar and piano. Those are the main instruments I play. That is it. I've always loved to. On some old ELO stuff, I'm playing bass on a couple of albums, so it's not like it's something brand new. I have done bits and pieces of it, it's just that now, I've had so much more experience as a producer. I've had like thirty years more experience than those songs, and I've been working with lots and lots of great people. I've actually learned a lot more than I knew when I recorded those ELO songs, and that is really why I wanted to redo them. I listened to them on the radio and I go, "I dunno, it's a bit wooly, that. It's wooly sounding. There's no clarity, and that's what I was looking for." So I went into my studio and I started on "Mister Blue Sky." I finished it as this brand new version and I played it for my manager Craig and he said, "Wow, that's fantastic, it's much better. Why don't you try some more," and so I did. I tried "Evil Woman" and "Strange Magic" and they came out really good, too--bright and full with nice punchy bottom end. I'm very, very pleased with them and I'm really glad that I did it because now they exist in the world in a much better form than they were before.
MR: And you have the new song, "Point of No Return."
JL: Yeah. That song's about five years old, actually.
MR: When you looked at the ELO body of work and chose the twelve for this project, was it hard to stop?
JL: It was, actually. I actually got enough for two volumes, so it's quite amazing that I couldn't stop at that point. Also, my manager always wanted bonus tracks, that seems to be the new game. "Oh yeah, you finished it, but where's the bonus tracks?" "Ah."
MR: That's right, you need one for iTunes, one for Amazon, one for Wal-Mart...
JL: Yeah, you've got to have loads of these bonus tracks. It's just odd. It didn't used to be like that, of course.
MR: With Long Wave, you have these eleven songs. I would love a childhood memory or two--sweet, bittersweet--associated with these songs.
JL: I was sitting in the living room and my mum and my auntie was there listening to the radio. Well, they were talking, basically, but the radio was on, and "Only The Lonely" by Roy Orbison came on and it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It was like, "What the...?" My mum and my auntie said, "Ooh, that's horrible. It's too sexy," so that's a funny thing. I was only thirteen at the time, but I thought, "That's the most marvelous thing I've ever heard," and I told them so. They said, "Ooh, don't be silly, that's too sexy," whatever that means. I just remember that happening and that "Only The Lonely" opened my eyes to what actually was going on and I thought, "Who told everybody what to do on these records? How do they know what to play? Who tells them? Who does such-and-such?" One great story I heard about that session--well, all his sessions--was Roy Orbison used to sing behind the coat rack in the studio because they hadn't got any baffles in those days. That's the most hilarious picture in my mind, of this most wonderful singer ever, stuck behind this coat rack all muffled and that. You couldn't hear the instruments into the mic if he couldn't hear his mic in the instruments.
MR: What's amazing is you have no hint of that because of the amount of reverb on his voice.
JL: Yeah, reverb and echo. There'd be reverb and a slap of feeding back a little bit. It's like Fred Foster used to say of him, "It's like putting icing on a cake for him." If you've got a beautiful voice you can do it, if you haven't got a great voice, echo doesn't actually work sometimes.
MR: And it isn't like you're using it to hide anything.
JL: That's right. You can hide a little bit, but at the end of the day, if you don't sing in tune, then echo will make that twice as bad because it lingers on twice as long.
MR: [laughs] That's right, good point. There was no major pitch correction going on in those days.
JL: No, none at all. But he didn't need it, he was such a beautiful singer. On some of the other songs, there's always a story. Like you're sitting there, I could be in bed listening on my crystal set, for instance, on the long wave--it's always long wave, that's where everything came from off the BBC. I've got memories of that, hearing songs for the first time in bed and going, "Wow, what a great thing."
MR: A lot of fifties kids in the United States went to bed with their radios on, including me. Yeah.
JL: Yeah, with the headphones.
MR: When you were thirteen and thinking how sexy Roy Orbison was, [laughs] was that the point where you decided you wanted to be doing this?
JL: Oh, definitely. I think from the age of thirteen, I really wanted to be a producer and I've always thought that the producer was the top of the tree. I always went, "Oh, he's a producer," people like George Martin and that. I think, "Wow, you've got to learn so much of that," and you really do, actually. When I first started out, I didn't know much at all and I didn't realize I didn't but I just thought I could do it without even being taught, but what it was I've learned over the years is it's happened by teaching myself--learning from my mistakes and all things like that. Now I've been doing it for this many years--forty-five years or whatever--record producing and songwriting and stuff. It's like, "Wow, that's a long time to be doing it," longer than my dad was working for Birmingham Corporation, which is unbelievable. He retired.
MR: It's interesting that addition to your arsenal of knowledge and tools for producing, you also can play musical a few instruments.
JL: Yeah, I mean it's only because I love to play. I started out on the guitar, obviously, and then I taught myself piano from the guitar. I was lucky enough to live in my mum and dad's house, which had a front room separate. The only trouble with it was that the bus used to go past every five minutes or ten minutes, so all my demos I made on my B&O tape recorder, when you come to listen to them now, there's always a bus rumbling through the track. It's really funny. But I did learn how to make records on this little tape recorder called Bang & Olufsen.
MR: Right, Bang & Olufsen. I had a set of B&O speakers that lasted forever.
JL: Oh yeah, they do still make some great stuff. Very innovative and futuristic.
MR: Jeff, let's talk a little bit about The Traveling Wilburys. Basically, you guys were all pals--Tom Petty, Roy Orbison and George Harrison. What an interesting period. Can you go into how that all came together?
JL: Okay, I'll tell you how it started. Me and George were making Cloud Nine in George's studio in England, because he'd asked me to produce it with him. After a few weeks of working on it, we'd always finish at dinner time, and then go back up into the studio and listen back to the work we'd done and make notes for the next day. One night, he said, "You know what? Me and you should have a group." I said, "Wow, that's a good idea, who should we have in it?" He said, "Bob Dylan." I went, "Oh, Bob Dylan, yeah, of course," and I said, "Well, what about Roy Orbison?" He said, "Yeah, great, Roy Orbison," and we'd both just gotten to know Tom. Tom was always brilliant, like the All-American Boy, so we asked him as well. Funny enough, everyone we thought of in this group all joined immediately, which was fantastic.
MR: It resulted in this album The Traveling Wilburys, which, considering all the artists and talent that went into it, sounded like one cohesive album.
JL: Yeah, well it was really. We wrote those songs, one song a day, for ten days, and that's how we got the ten songs. What the fun part was, we'd sit around a big round table, each with an acoustic. Sometimes, one of us would have a twelve-string or two of us would have an acoustic twelve-string and that rhythm track would be five acoustics. Then sometimes we'd double-track that and it'd be ten acoustics on the backing track, which is just the basic rhythm guitar. Then we'd sing the words at night after dinner and we'd take all the tapes back to George's and just finish it off, really--put on the finishing touches and mix it over at George's studio. I think that's why it comes out like that, because it was done in a specific time...really quickly.
MR: Let me ask you a personal question. Obviously, you guys became pals, and you had a few passings. You also worked with Del Shannon when Roy Orbison passed...
JL: ...no, he didn't join, no.
MR: But you did some tracks with him, right?
JL: Tom and myself and Mike Campbell were producing some tracks for Del. That was a separate thing. That was a couple years later.
MR: Yeah, and some of the recordings were released on bootleg as The Traveling Wilburys.
JL: That's probably what it is, it gets mixed up because people put different labels on them.
MR: And George passed recently. My point is you must miss your buddies.
JL: Oh, of course. Always. I miss both of them, I miss George and Roy. They were both great. We had so much fun and did so much music together.
MR: Yeah, it's wonderful. Jeff, what advice do you have for new artists?
JL: Uh, stick at it. That's probably it, really.
MR: Well, that's the best advice.
JL: Stick at it and don't give up.
MR: Jeff, thank you so much for talking with us about your new solo record, Long Wave, and Mr. Blue Sky - The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra.
JL: Re-recordings, that's what you can call it.
MR: Hey, if you were to sit down with a glass of wine and listen to that ELO project top to bottom, what would you think?
JL: I feel very pleased with it. It's made it sound more alive--more punchy, more present. I'm very, very pleased with it, even without the bottle of wine.
MR: [laughs] Thank you again Jeff, and all the best with your projects and whatever you've got coming down the pike.
Отправлено: 23.10.12 09:38. Заголовок: На этой неделе кажды..
На этой неделе каждый день Джефф участвует в передачи на BBC Radio 2 по теме Tracks OfMy Years," 10 songs by other artists that have meant most to him. "Tracks Of My Years"
Отправлено: 29.10.12 11:04. Заголовок: Мировая эломанская о..
Мировая эломанская общественность только сейчас нашла оригинал фотографии с обложки волн,причем одновременно сообщения появились и у французов и у испанцев,обидно что заслуги они приписывают себе.
27 октября Джефф и Камелия посетили благотворительное мероприятие вместе с Джо Уолшем,который расчуствовался и даже спел.
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