Electric Light Orchestra mastermind Jeff Lynne was in the midst of producing George Harrison’s 1987 comeback recording Cloud Nine when the former Beatles star made a left-field suggestion.
“As we were doing it, about three weeks in, George said to me, he said: ‘You know what? You and me should have a group.’ And I go [sarcastically]: ‘Wow, that’s a great idea! Who should we have in it?,'” Lynne tells VH-1. “And he says [matter of factly]: ‘Bob Dylan.’ And, of course, I’m thinking he’s going to say, like, Nigel Trilby, from up the road. But no, you know, Bob Dylan!”
A deeply incredulous Lynne then started riffing with Harrison, saying: “Bob Dylan?! Yeah, OK. Well, can we have Roy Orbison, then?” Harrison’s reply? “He said: ‘Yeah, of course we can. I know Roy; he’s great. Tom Petty? Let’s have Tom Petty in it, because he’s great.'”
A supergroup, as unlikely as it was offhanded, was in the making. “Everybody wanted to be in it,” Lynne says. “Nobody had a second thought; they just said “yes,’ and we made those 10 songs on the first album in 10 days. … It was a wonderful experience.”
Lynne also confirms work on a new songs with Bryan Adams, and confirms his plans to record a new Electric Light Orchestra album and then mount his first tour in decades. “Maybe, hopefully, early in the spring,” he says of the upcoming ELO studio project.
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Jeff Lynne may have been producing George’s LP, but perhaps he hadn’t realised how big the man was, both as a person and a musician. Something that iconic Dylan and other major artists never did, obviously. The 3 Fabs had loads of connections!
3 Fabs? You mean Harrison, McCartney, and Starr (Lennon was diseased at the time)? I don’t think of Dylan as Fab. The term Fab has always been connected to The Beatles.
I often wondered why Bob Dylan? Yet, reading here, after Harrison asked Jeff Lynne, Dylan was Harrison’s next choice to be a part of the band, and then Tom Petty. I love Lynne’s choice of having Roy Orbison. Orbison to me was a special addition and is up there along with Harrison in my heart. His vocals are iconic and warm with a lot of heart. Dylan’s vocals are itchy and irritable as well as looking at photos of him, I never cared for Dylan. It was The Birds that made his song Tambourine Man a hit. I guess I never got the significance of Bob Dylan. What if someone really cool were in Dylan’s place? This is how I always felt about Traveling Wilburys. What is the attraction of Bob Dylan as I surely don’t see it, and I heard he wasn’t a cool, nice person, and was difficult (“had to walk on eggshells around him.”).