1970–1973: Formation and early albums /Electric Light Orchestra in 1972|left In 1968
Roy Wood—guitarist, vocalist and songwriter of
the Move—had an idea to form a new band that would use
violins,
cellos,
string basses,
horns and
woodwinds to give their music a
classical sound, allowing rock music to "pick up where
the Beatles left off" in a new direction. The orchestral instruments would be the main focus, rather than the guitars.
Jeff Lynne, frontman of fellow Birmingham group
the Idle Race, was excited by the concept. When
Trevor Burton left the Move in February 1969, Lynne was asked by Wood to join, only to say no, as he was still focused on finding success with his band. But in January 1970, when
Carl Wayne quit the band, Lynne accepted Wood's second invitation to join, on the condition that they focus their energy on the new project. On 12 July 1970, when Wood added cellos to a Lynne-penned song intended to be a Move
B-side, the new concept became a reality and "
10538 Overture" became the first Electric Light Orchestra song. The original plan was to end the Move following the release of the
Looking On album at the end of 1970, crossing over to the new unit in the new year. But to help finance the fledgling band, one further Move album,
Message from the Country, was recorded during the lengthy ELO recordings and released in mid-1971. The resulting debut album,
The Electric Light Orchestra, was released in December 1971. Only the trio of Wood, Lynne and Bevan played on all songs, with Bill Hunt supplying the French Horn parts and Steve Woolam playing violin. It was released in the United States in March 1972 as
No Answer. The name was chosen after a U.S. record company secretary had tried to ring the UK company to get the name of the album. They were unavailable so she left a note reading "No answer". "10538 Overture" became a UK top-ten hit. With both bands' albums in the stores simultaneously, the Move and ELO both appeared on television during this period. ELO's debut concert took place on 16 April 1972 at the Greyhound Pub in
Croydon, Surrey, with a line-up of Wood, Lynne, Bevan,
Bill Hunt (keyboards/French horn), Andy Craig (cello),
Mike Edwards (cello),
Wilfred Gibson (violin),
Hugh McDowell (cello) and
Richard Tandy (bass). However, this line-up did not last for long. First Craig departed, and then Wood, during the recordings for the band's second LP. Taking Hunt and McDowell with him, Wood left the band to form
Wizzard. Both Wood and Lynne later cited problems with their manager,
Don Arden, who Wood felt failed in his role, and an unsatisfactory tour of Italy. However, Arden would manage Wizzard (and continue to manage ELO as well), despite Wood's negative comments towards Arden. Despite predictions from the music press that the band would fold without Wood, who had been the driving force behind the creation of ELO, Lynne stepped up to lead the band, with Bevan, Edwards, Gibson and Tandy (who had switched from bass to keyboards to replace Hunt) remaining from the previous line-up, and new recruits
Mike de Albuquerque and
Colin Walker joining the band on bass and cello, respectively. ,
Bill Hunt, Phil Copestake (roadie),
Richard Tandy,
Bev Bevan. Bottom row left to right:
Hugh McDowell,
Jeff Lynne,
Roy Wood, Andy Craig The new line-up performed at the 1972
Reading Festival on 12 August 1972. Barcus Berry instrument
pick-ups, now sported by the band's string trio, allowed them to have proper amplification on stage for their instruments, which had previously been all but drowned out by the electrified instruments. The band released their second album,
ELO 2, in early 1973, which produced their second UK top 10 and their first US chart single, an elaborate version of the
Chuck Berry classic "
Roll Over Beethoven" (which also incorporated the first 2 or 3 lines from the first movement of
Beethoven's own
Fifth Symphony). ELO's string players still continued to perform on recordings, however. The first single off the album, "
Can't Get It Out of My Head", became their first US top 10 hit, and
Eldorado, A Symphony became ELO's first
gold album. Mike de Albuquerque departed the band during the recording sessions as he wished to spend more time with his family, and consequently much of the bass on the album was performed by Lynne. Following the release of
Eldorado,
Kelly Groucutt was recruited as a bassist and secondary vocalist and in early 1975,
Melvyn Gale replaced Edwards on cello. The line-up stabilised as the band took to a decidedly more accessible sound. ELO had become successful in the US at this point and the group was a star attraction on the stadium and arena circuit, and appeared on
The Midnight Special more than any other band in that show's history with four appearances (in 1973, 1975, 1976, and 1977).
Face the Music was released in 1975, producing the hit singles "
Evil Woman", their third UK top 10, and "
Strange Magic". It contained the hit singles "
Livin' Thing", "
Telephone Line", "
Rockaria!" and "
Do Ya", the last a re-recording of
the Move's final single. The band toured in support in the US only from September 1976 to April 1977 with a break in December, then an
American Music Awards show appearance on 31 January 1977, plus a one-off gig in San Diego in August 1977.
A New World Record was followed by a multi-platinum-selling album, the
double LP Out of the Blue, in 1977.
Out of the Blue featured the singles "
Turn to Stone", "
Sweet Talkin' Woman", "
Mr. Blue Sky", and "
Wild West Hero", each becoming a hit in the United Kingdom. The band then set out on a nine-month, 92-date world tour, with an enormous set and a hugely expensive
spaceship stage with
fog machines and a
laser display. In the United States the concerts were billed as
The Big Night and were their largest to date, with 62,000 people seeing them at
Cleveland Stadium.
The Big Night became the highest-grossing live concert tour in music history up to that point (1978). The band played at London's
Wembley Arena for eight straight sold-out nights during the tour, another record at the time. During an Australian tour in early 1978, Electric Light Orchestra were presented with 9 platinum awards for the albums
Out of the Blue and
A New World Record. In 1979, the multi-
platinum album Discovery was released, reaching number one on the
UK Albums Chart. "
Last Train to London", "
Confusion", and "
The Diary of Horace Wimp". Another song, "Midnight Blue", was released as a single in southeast Asia. The band recorded promotional videos for all the songs on the album. , Norway, in 1978 By the end of 1979, ELO had reached the peak of their stardom, selling millions of albums and singles, and even inspiring a
parody/
tribute song on the
Randy Newman album
Born Again, titled "The Story of a Rock and Roll Band". During 1979, Jeff Lynne also turned down an invitation for ELO to headline the August 1979
Knebworth Festival concerts. That allowed
Led Zeppelin to headline instead. In January 1980,
Hugh McDowell,
Melvyn Gale, and
Mik Kaminski were fired, as Jeff Lynne sought to take the band in a more modern direction. Later that year, Lynne was asked to write for the soundtrack of the musical film
Xanadu and provided half of the songs, with the other half written by
John Farrar and performed by the film's star
Olivia Newton-John. The film performed poorly at the box office, but the soundtrack did exceptionally well, eventually going
double platinum. The album spawned hit singles from both Newton-John ("
Magic", a No. 1 hit in the United States, and "
Suddenly" with
Cliff Richard) and ELO ("
I'm Alive", which went gold, "
All Over the World" and "
Don't Walk Away"). The
title track, performed by both Newton-John and ELO, is ELO's only song to top the UK singles chart. More than a quarter of a century later,
Xanadu, a
Broadway musical based on the film, opened on 10 July 2007 at the Helen Hayes Theatre to uniformly good reviews. It received four
Tony Award nominations. The musical received its UK premiere in London in October 2015. {{listen In 1981 ELO's sound changed again with the science fiction
concept album Time, a throwback to earlier, more
progressive rock albums like
Eldorado. With the string section now departed, synthesisers took a dominating role, as was the trend in the larger music scene of the time; although studio strings were present on some of the tracks conducted by Rainer Pietsch, the overall soundscape had a more electronic feel in keeping with the futuristic nature of the album.
Time topped the UK charts for two weeks and was the last ELO studio album to be certified platinum in the United Kingdom until
Alone in the Universe in 2015. Singles from the album included "
Hold On Tight", "
Twilight", "
The Way Life's Meant to Be", "
Here Is the News" and "
Ticket to the Moon". However, the release of the single for "
Rain Is Falling" in 1982 was the band's first single in the US to fail to reach the
Billboard Top 200 since 1975, and the release of "The Way Life's Meant to Be" similarly was their first single in the UK to fail to chart since 1976. The band embarked on their last world tour to promote the LP. For the tour, Kaminski returned to the line-up on violin, whilst Louis Clark (synthesizers) and
Dave Morgan (guitar, keyboards, synthesizers, vocals) also joined the on stage line-up. Clark had previously handled string arrangements for the band.
1983–1986: Secret Messages, Balance of Power, disbanding Jeff Lynne wanted to follow
Time with a double album, but CBS blocked his plan on the grounds that a double vinyl album would be too expensive and not sell as well as a single record, so as a result, the new album was edited down to a single disc and released as
Secret Messages in 1983; many of the out-takes were later released on
Afterglow or as B-sides of singles. The album was a hit in the UK reaching the top 5, but its release was undermined by a string of bad news that there would be no tour to promote the LP. Lynne, discouraged by the dwindling crowds on the
Time tour, CBS's order to cut
Secret Messages down to one disc, and his falling out with manager Don Arden, decided to end ELO in late 1983. At this point, Lynne appointed his accountant and tour manager Craig Fruin as his new manager (a position Fruin still holds as of 2026). Drummer Bevan moved on to play drums for
Black Sabbath, and bassist Groucutt, unhappy with no touring income that year, sued Lynne and Jet Records in November 1983, eventually resulting in a settlement for the sum of £300,000 (equivalent to £1,004,913 in 2025). While
Secret Messages debuted at number four in the United Kingdom, it subsequently performed poorly in the charts, with a lack of hit singles (though "
Rock 'n' Roll Is King" was a sizeable hit in UK, the US and Australia) and a lukewarm media response. That same year, Lynne moved into production work: having already produced two tracks for the
Dave Edmunds album
Information, he would produce six cuts for his next,
Riff Raff in 1984, and one cut on the
Everly Brothers reunion album
EB 84. He also composed a track for former
ABBA member
Agnetha Fältskog's 1985 album
Eyes of a Woman. Lynne and Tandy recorded tracks for the 1984
Electric Dreams soundtrack under Lynne's name; however, Lynne was contractually obliged to make one more ELO album. So Lynne, Bevan and Tandy returned to the studio in 1984 and 1985 as a three-piece (with Christian Schneider playing saxophone on some tracks and Lynne again doubling on bass in addition to his usual guitar in the absence of an official bass player) to record
Balance of Power, released early in 1986 after some delays. Though the single "
Calling America" placed in the Top 30 in the United Kingdom (number 28) and Top 20 in the
States, subsequent singles failed to chart. The album lacked actual classical strings, which were replaced once again by synthesizers, played by Tandy and Lynne. However, despite being a 3-piece, much of the album was made by Lynne alone, with Tandy and Bevan giving their additions later. The band was then rejoined by Kaminski, Clark and Morgan, adding Martin Smith on bass guitar, and proceeded to perform a small number of live ELO performances in 1986, including shows in England and Germany along with US appearances on
American Bandstand,
Solid Gold, then at
Disneyland that summer. ELO performed at the
Heart Beat 86 charity concert organised by Bevan in the band's hometown of Birmingham on 15 March 1986; a hint of Lynne's future was seen when
George Harrison appeared onstage during the encore, joining in the all-star jam of "
Johnny B. Goode". ELO's last performance for several years occurred on 13 July 1986 in
Stuttgart, Germany, opening for
Rod Stewart. With Lynne no longer contractually obliged to further performances, ELO effectively disbanded after that show, but there was no announcement made of it for the next two years, during which George Harrison's Lynne-produced album
Cloud Nine and the pair's follow-up (with
Roy Orbison,
Bob Dylan and
Tom Petty as
Traveling Wilburys)
Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 were released.
1989–1999: ELO Part II Bev Bevan (under an agreement with Lynne, who co-owned the ELO name with him) continued on in 1989 as
ELO Part II, initially with no other former ELO members, but with ELO's main orchestra conductor, Louis Clark. Bevan also recruited
Eric Troyer,
Pete Haycock, and Neil Lockwood. ELO Part II released their debut album,
Electric Light Orchestra Part Two, in May 1991, featuring songs written primarily by Troyer and Haycock. Mik Kaminski, Kelly Groucutt and Hugh McDowell, at the time working in a group called OrKestra, joined the group for their first tour in 1991. While McDowell did not stay long-term, Groucutt and Kaminski became fully fledged members by 1993. In 1994, after the departure of Haycock and Lockwood, Part II recorded
Moment of Truth, featuring songs mostly written by Troyer and the band's newest member, singer-songwriter and guitarist
Phil Bates. This line-up toured up to 1999, following which Bates was replaced by
Parthenon Huxley. Bevan retired from the band later that year and sold his share of the ELO name to Jeff Lynne in 2000, after Lynne had expressed his dismay that in certain areas the band were billed as 'ELO', rather than with '...Part II' added, suggesting that it was the original band. The remaining band members continued after they hired drummer Gordon Townsend and changed the group's name to
The Orchestra. In 2001 The Orchestra released their debut album,
No Rewind, primarily featuring songs by Troyer and Huxley. Kelly Groucutt died in 2009 to be replaced by singer-songwriter
Glen Burtnik (formerly of
Styx). Louis Clark died in 2021, replaced by his son, Louis Clark Jr., who had already performed with the band for a decade prior.
2000–2001: Reformation Lynne's comeback with ELO began in 2000 with the release of a retrospective box set,
Flashback, containing three CDs of remastered tracks and a handful of out-takes and unfinished works, most notably a new version of ELO's only UK number one hit, "
Xanadu". In 2001
Zoom, ELO's first album of new material since 1986, was released. Though billed and marketed as an ELO album, the only returning member other than Lynne was Tandy, who performed on one track. Guest musicians included former
Beatles Ringo Starr and
George Harrison. Upon completion of the album, Lynne re-formed the band with completely new members, including his then-girlfriend
Rosie Vela (who had released her own album,
Zazu, in 1986) and announced that ELO would tour again. Tandy rejoined the band a short time afterwards for two television live performances:
VH1 Storytellers and a
PBS concert shot at
CBS Television City, later titled
Zoom Tour Live and released on DVD. Besides Lynne, Tandy and Vela, the new live ELO line-up included
Gregg Bissonette (drums, backing vocals),
Matt Bissonette (bass guitar, backing vocals),
Marc Mann (guitars, keyboards, backing vocals), Peggy Baldwin (cello), and Sarah O'Brien (cello). However, the planned tour was cancelled, reportedly due to poor ticket sales.
2001–2013: Non-performing work, reissues and miniature reunions From 2001 to 2007,
Harvest and
Epic/
Legacy reissued ELO's back catalogue. Included amongst the remastered album tracks were unreleased songs and outtakes, including two new singles. The first was "
Surrender", which registered on the lower end of the
UK Singles Chart at number 81, some 30 years after it was written in 1976. The other single was "Latitude 88 North". In August 2010,
Eagle Rock Entertainment released
Live – The Early Years in the UK as a DVD compilation that included
Fusion – Live in London (1976) along with previously unreleased live performances at
Brunel University (1973) and on the German TV show
Rockpalast (1974).
The Essential Electric Light Orchestra artwork was re-jigged to feature two different covers. The US and Australian releases shared one design, while the rest of the world featured the other for a new double album release in October 2011.
Mr. Blue Sky: The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra was released on 8 October 2012. It is an album of re-recordings of ELO's greatest hits, performed by Lynne exclusively, along with a new song titled "Point of No Return". Released to coincide with Lynne's second solo album,
Long Wave, these new albums contained advertisement cards, announcing the re-release of expanded and remastered versions of both the 2001 album
Zoom and Lynne's debut solo album,
Armchair Theatre, originally released in 1990. Both albums were re-released in April 2013 with various bonus tracks. Also released was the live album
Electric Light Orchestra Live, showcasing songs from the
Zoom tour. All three releases also featured new studio recordings as bonus tracks. Though not billed as Electric Light Orchestra (or the abbreviated ELO), in 2012, Lynne and Tandy reunited, largely under Lynne's name, to perform stripped-down acoustic versions of their ELO hits for the BBC television special
Jeff Lynne Acoustic: Live from Bungalow Palace. Lynne and Tandy reunited again on 12 November 2013 to perform, under the name Jeff Lynne and Friends, "Livin' Thing" and "Mr. Blue Sky" at the Children in Need Rocks concert at Hammersmith Eventim Apollo, London. The backing orchestra was the BBC Concert Orchestra, with Chereene Allen on lead violin.
2014–2025: Jeff Lynne's ELO , September 2014 The success of the Children in Need performance was followed by support from
BBC Radio 2 DJ
Chris Evans, who had Lynne as his on-air guest and asked his listeners if they wanted to see ELO perform. The 50,000 tickets for the resulting BBC Radio 2's "Festival in a Day" in Hyde Park on 14 September 2014 sold out in 15 minutes. Billed as "Jeff Lynne's ELO", Lynne and
Richard Tandy were backed by the
Take That/
Gary Barlow band from the Children in Need concert, led by
Mike Stevens and the BBC Concert Orchestra. Lynne chose to use the name as a response to ELO offshoots
ELO Part II and
The Orchestra. Chereene Allen was again the lead violinist for the band. The development of modern digital processing added a smoother finish to the work, which led Lynne to reconsider his preference for studio work, hinting at a UK tour in 2015. On 8 February 2015, Jeff Lynne's ELO played at
the Grammy Awards for the first time. They performed a medley of "
Evil Woman" and "
Mr. Blue Sky" with
Ed Sheeran, who introduced them as "A man and a band who I love". On 10 September 2015, it was announced that a new ELO album would be released. The album was to be under the moniker of Jeff Lynne's ELO, with the band signed to
Columbia Records.
Alone in the Universe was released on 13 November 2015. The album was ELO's first album of new material since 2001's
Zoom. The first track, and single, "When I Was a Boy" was made available for streaming on the same day and a music video for the song was also released. A 19-date European tour was announced for 2016, with the band playing the Pyramid Stage at
Glastonbury Festival on 26 June 2016. In 2017 they played their "Alone in the Universe" tour. That same year, on 7 April, they played at the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as they were inducted during the 32nd Annual Induction Ceremony. The band continued to tour in 2018 in North America and Europe. A video was created for the City of Birmingham which used the original recording of "Mr. Blue Sky" as its music; this was played at the
Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games Closing Ceremony during the handover presentation of
Birmingham 2022. On 3 August 2018,
Secret Messages was reissued "as originally conceived" as a double album. It included several cut tracks, such as the CD exclusive bonus track "Time After Time", B-side exclusives "Buildings Have Eyes" and "After All", the
Afterglow exclusives "Mandalay" and "Hello My Old Friend", and the 2001 reissue exclusives "Endless Lies" and "No Way Out". On 22 October 2018, Lynne announced that Jeff Lynne's ELO would embark on a
2019 North American tour from June to August 2019. ELO released their 14th album,
From Out of Nowhere, on 1 November 2019. While a tour from the album was announced to begin in October 2020, the official Jeff Lynne's ELO
Twitter page later announced that the tour was cancelled due to the
COVID-19 pandemic. On 18 March 2024, ELO announced the
Over And Out Tour, a final tour of North America that would span August to October 2024. Tandy died in 2024, at the age of 76. Lynne announced his death on social media on 1 May 2024, and said Tandy had been "a remarkable musician and friend." On 21 October 2024, it was announced that ELO would perform a farewell concert at the BST event in Hyde Park, London, on 13 July 2025. That same month, it was reiterated that Lynne was "unambiguous" about the tour being the band's last. On 12 July, the day before the show was to take place, it was announced to have been cancelled due to Lynne having a "systemic infection" and would not be rescheduled. ==Legacy and influence==