| Out of the Blue? Yeah man, way out, and remastered, too! |
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Electric Light Orchestra
Out of the Blue
2007
(Reissue)
Epic
I first bought the Electric Light Orchestra's Out of the Blue on vinyl the day it came out in 1977. I was working as the afternoon DJ, spinning the platters that hardly mattered, at middle-of-the-road radio station WKEN-AM in Dover, Delaware. WKEN's idea of MOR was skewed, to say the very least. Record companies didn't service the station, which didn't report airplay to anyone, no way no how.
So we bought all of our records at the Wilmington Dry Goods department store in nearby Dover, the state capitol, about a 25 mile ride away. Good thing was, the kind of records we played--Percy Faith and Bert Kaempfert, anyone?--were usually to be found in the bargain bins, so they were cheap. But they hardly commanded attention, as some of the records we already had; the new records were completely round and unplayed, whereas the ones that had been around the station awhile, like the Mills Brothers' Greatest Hits, had pieces of vinyl visibly removed from the whole. In the case of the Mills Brothers, there appeared to be bite marks that separated a chunk of the record from itself, meaning no playing "Rag Doll" for you.
Working at WKEN was like a picnic where the potato salad, judged best at the county fair, was suddenly crawling with ants. There was good music to be found in the station library, but we weren't allowed to play any of it. I think our audience was asleep, because they never called in any requests, or perhaps I was asleep because I don't remember the phone ringing. If there were any callers, they certainly weren't requesting anything from Out of the Blue, which I had just bought and was into in a big way.
When I wasn't at the station, I was home playing music or watching television. I worked goofy, DJ hours, meaning I didn't go to work until just after lunch, so I had a lot of time on my hands. Thankfully, I already had a large record collection, and a bitchin' stereo that nevertheless didn't know the meaning of bass. Nevertheless, I took off the shrink wrap ever so slowly, staring at the cover as I liberated another inch of stretchable covering. I marveled at the giant spaceship glowing so brightly on the cover. I braced myself for the sounds that were to come.
As "Turn to Stone" faded up, and the squiggly, droning guitar sound descended down the fret board to meet the opening note of the first chorus, I braced myself for big things and was rewarded with even bigger things.
Out of the Blue, then as now, was a spectacular record, over the top in every conceivable way, a couple of measures of excess atop an already bloated soundscape. Which is not a criticism, by the way. Just as George Harrison's All Things Must Pass was a big-sounding record (that Harrison wondered later in life might have been just as well off without the Wall of Sound engulfing it), Out of the Blue was louder, more grandiose--more eclectic even, more kitchen-sinky as it packed more details onto seemingly endless miles of recording tape in an effort to discover just how much saturating said tape could withstand before sinking under its own weight.
It's not that Jeff Lynne hasn't made a great record or written a great song since 1977, but as a whole statement of sorts, as a record with a beginning, middle and end--as a record able to juggle disparate styles and somehow make them seem like they were made to be linked to each other, Out of the Blue was and is the champion.
Jeff Lynne never met a crazy idea he couldn't turn on its head and deliver with complete confidence. There are lots of crazy ideas on this record, and all of them work like a charm. Take the stark-raving-mad "Across the Border," one part disco lite, two parts pure pop and rock 'n' roll, and three parts mariachi hitting head-on smack in the middle of a bullfight. The song's madcap, viral mix tornados itself into a nearby drain with a choking Hollywood ending as funneled through a brick made of steel gauze.
Sounding like Simon and Garfunkel's "Cecilia" injected with the spirit of a Busby Berkeley musical, "Jungle" is a haywire dream turned back and forth, inside and out, until its neck cracks from the strain. You can practically feel the dancers' hose-laden legs jutting up and down as the insistent percussion bed drives the song to its central image of jungle natives dancing for their lives. A heels-up, pre-Motion Picture Code dirge feeds directly into the all-for-one dance fest, a celebration and a feast for the senses. There is even a lion in the song, who tells Lynne to "...join us if you so desire," as the "great blue ship that sails around the mighty sun" whirls overhead. And all of this in a spectacular, tidy three minutes and fifty-three seconds.
About side three's mighty "Concerto for a Rainy Day" much has been written, and deservedly so. Suffice it to say that it is as grand as has been said, as joyous a four-song side of a record as that has come along since has a right to be. For "Summer and Lightning" alone, Jeff Lynne deserves a the prize. I always consider this song to be built upon a vaguely doo-wop foundation--I can hear it being sung on a Bronx street corner, softly, late at night, atop the seams of well-worn, short-sleeve, white t-shirts and the clear, night time sky.
Where Out of the Blue really hits the bullseye is on side four, or for you CD people, song number 14. "Sweet Is the Night" could just as well have taken place on the same street corner alluded to above. It's unlikely that the Cartier watch mentioned in the lyrics ever hung out on a wrist on the streets of the Bronx, but the chorus aptly describes the heart, hardly a lonely hunter. "Birmingham Blues," a slow-burning rocker about being homesick, about going home after being away "for miles and miles and miles," is punctuated by orchestra stabs and smooth, connecting passages that live in harmony with the lyrical electric guitar lines and acoustic strums.
The centerpiece of Out of the Blue is, for me, the nostalgic closing song, "Wild West Hero," which echoes one of the most bittersweet fantasies of the Twilight Zone television show, "A Stop at Willoughby." In "Willoughby," the central character, a burned-out ad man on Madison Avenue married to a shrewish woman whose verbal put-downs are like lizard-tongue rips, takes the train home to Connecticut every night, falling asleep and dreaming of an idyllic, old-fashioned town called Willoughby, whose residents call out for the man to step off the train and be happy. Every ride home, in the middle of one of his dreams aboard the train, he is woken by the train's conductor and brought back to his ugly reality. Ultimately, in his dreams, the man steps off the train at Willoughby and is set free from his demons. In true Twilight Zone fashion, however, he is later found not in Willoughby, but on the train tracks, an apparent suicide. Is the man really in Willoughby? Is Willoughby the man's new reality, and is his life in New York his harsh nightmare? Which is real?
This is not to suggest that any such ending is in store for the singer in "Wild West Hero." Rather, the allusions to the Twilight Zone episode are simpler, rooted in the daydreams of a man who wishes to be someone else, who wishes to escape his reality and become a "Wild West Hero." And why not? The hero's toughest decisions involve riding the range and being with his "western girl." When "the folks would come to me" and "say we need you here," he says he'd "stay there for the night," but how long would that night be? Would it be enough to make things right?
Things have been made right, finally, with this new reissue of this classic album, finally sounding like the full-fidelity creation its fans have always known it to be. Sporting some very nice bonus tracks, including a terrific song begun during the album sessions, but not completed until recently, "Latitude 88 North." It doesn't sound like a track that would have fit on Out of the Blue, but it sure is nice to have, and nice to savor, just as I savored the album back in 1977, thirty short years ago.
Get the special edition of the reissue, the one with the extended booklet and miniature reproduction of the cardboard spaceship that came with the original album. You'll be transported back to 1977 when that red, yellow and blue spaceship, with docking station, practically jumped off the record cover and flew out into space right in front of your eyes.
Jeff Lynne is no Percy Faith, certainly, but faith has a lot to do what what Jeff Lynne has created, a living testimony to his talent and the wonderful creation that is the pop song.
Alan Haber
May 6, 2007
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