He was a bit lacking in the brains department. ‘10538 Overture’ evokes The Beatles’ more avant-garde works on a lyrical level, too, with ELO sharing John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s taste for faintly unhinged characters: As Bev Beven told Trouser Press in 1976, “The original idea was taken from a neighbour that Jeff’s parents had. Thanks to ELO’s use of Harrisonesque descending chord progressions, ‘10538 Overture’ sounds as though it could have been plucked from the darker corners of Magical Mystery Tour or Sgt. “We listened to it, and that was the birth of the ELO sound,” Wood began, later commenting that the reason he liked the song so much was that you could tell the cello parts were being played “not as a cellist but as a rock guitarist.” The overall effect is one of rusted orchestral bliss. That was 18 months ago.”ĭuring that session, Wood layered his cello part six separate times, creating the warm, orchestral backing that would come to characterise ELO’s subsequent records. I ended up putting six cellos on it… I was playing cello more aggressive, like a guitar. As Roy Wood explained during an interview with the New Musical Express in 1971, “We started recording a Move album, and Jeff had this song that was meant to be for the Move, but in the meantime, I’d developed an interest in the cello and one day when Bev went home on the train from a recording session Jeff, and I had a bit of spare time, so we tried it with the cello. The single was originally written for Lynne’s group, The Move but quickly expanded beyond the band’s usual sonic parameters. It all began with ‘10538 Overture’, the first song ELO recorded and released as a group in 1971. From 1970 onwards, ELO carried the torch of British pop experimentalism, earning the praise of the masses, the critics, and many of their idols, including John Lennon himself, who once described the outfit as the “sons of The Beatles.” In fact, this was precisely what Lynn and his bandmates had intended. In many ways, Jeff Lynne’s Electric Light Orchestra picked up where The Beatles left off.