ELO and the Telephone Line
ELO’s first album came out in the UK in December 1971 and featured not just Jeff Lynne, but his fellow band mates from the Move, Roy Wood and Bev Beven. Indeed it’s often been claimed that the whole idea for this Move offshoot was pretty much Woods’. However, what’s fascinating about ELO’s debut, imaginatively titled The Electric Light Orchestra in Britain, is its American release. The head of the US label was trying to get information prior to it being pressed and released in America and got his secretary to call the London office to find out what the album was called. The secretary couldn’t get through so she left a note for her boss, which is how come in America ELO’s album came to be called, No Answer.
3 comments:
Bizarre...that's kind of like the story of the town up in Alaska that the map-maker did not know the name of and so wrote "NAME?" on the map there. This was mis-read as "NOME" and Nome, Alaska it still is.
:)
A similar thing happened with The Byrds when manager Terry Melcher wrote 'Untitled' on the label copy to go to the record company. Someone there took it for the title.
That sound of heavy drumming that you can hear, by the way, is the sound of the Electric Light Orchestra's collective feet dancing on the grave of recently-deceased ex-manager Don Arden. The orderly queue waiting to dance too includes The Small Faces, Olivia Newton John and everyone else who got screwed by him.
Nice Hipgnosis album cover though.
Was never really into ELO. Probably good but not so much for me.
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