ELO II

Album Review

Cut during the summer and fall of 1972, ELO 2 was where Jeff Lynne started rebuilding the sound of the Electric Light Orchestra following the departure of Roy Wood from the original lineup. It was as personal an effort as Lynne had ever made in music, showcasing his work as singer, songwriter, guitarist, sometime synthesizer player, and producer, and it is more focused than its predecessor but also retains some of the earlier album's lean textures. Lynne, drummer Bev Bevan, bassist Michael d'Albuquerque, and keyboardist Richard Tandy comprise the core of the band, with two cellists and a violinist sawing away around them. There were holes in the sound that made the group seem somewhat ragged, as on the pounding "In Old England Town (Boogie No. 2)"; Lynne's singing would also have to develop, and some of the material also showed the need of an editor. On the other hand, "From the Sun to the World (Boogie No. 1)" was a succinct progressive rock workout, and "Kuiama" was a decent showcase for the different sides of the group that worked about as well as any 11-minute progressive rock track of the period. But the very fact that the group's cover of "Roll Over Beethoven" was the hit off of this album also showed how far Lynne had to go as a songwriter (and is indicative of just how far he would go on subsequent albums) — there's nothing else here even one-half as good as that as a song, and the fact that the band attacked the Chuck Berry-authored rock & roll classic like a buzzsaw made it one of the most bracing pieces of prog rock to make the charts. As a patchwork job, the album holds up well, and it and the single did go a long way toward getting ELO the beginnings of an audience in America (where, in fact, they got a much more enthusiastic reception on tour than they did in England).

[ELO 2 — or ELO II as it is spelled stateside — was subsequently reissued by Epic/Legacy in the U.S. in 2006, after years of Epic's parent Columbia Records (aka Sony Music) label trying to palm off its old inferior masters as a proper presentation of the album. The remastered sound brings it up to the standard of the EMI U.K. 1999 reissue, and the 2006 U.S. version contains four bonus tracks: an instrumental of "In Old England Town," the session outtake "Baby I Apologise" (a song Lynne was working on at the time with another artist — he can't recall who — in mind), and "Take 1 Alternate Mixes" of both "In Old England Town" and "Roll Over Beethoven." All of these except the alternate mix of "In Old England Town" appear on the 2003 double-disc reissue of ELO 2 (subtitled Lost Planet) and the expanded single-disc 2005 U.K. reissue of the album. There's also new annotation by Jeff Lynne and ELO fan/scholar Rob Caiger that gives a much clearer account of the circumstances and chronology of Wood's exit from the band (he's on a couple of tracks here), serving as a reminder of how unexpected ELO's survival was — most of the rock press expected the group to fold when Wood went off to form Wizzard, but instead Lynne ended up rebuilding a much stronger live band that, with help from some improved technology, could generate its sound properly on-stage, something the first version of the group had serious difficulty doing.]