Rob Brens attended my home again today and we finally nailed the percussion performances for the ELO cover. Anyone can play a cover of something someone else wrote. Six months of guitar lessons and you can play a huge number of songs, if you want. But to rebuild the song from basic materials as if you wrote it yourself, that is what takes time.
This song is sounding amazing and I love the original so much that doing it any other way would be an unacceptable personal failure. Thanks so much for your time Rob, we are on a winner here.
I thank my parents Glenys and Barry Turner (how Aussie are those names?) for introducing me to to such amazing music when I was 3 or maybe 4 years old living in air force accommodation in Perth. I guess it was the mid 70s?
The Electric Light Orchestra NEW WORLD RECORD album was one of many they owned and I was always intrigued by the artwork on the album sleeve. The music, even at that age, I could feel was very closely linked to the other worldly UFO design and I listened to this collection of songs over and over again.
I remember feeling disappointed when my mother explained to me that the UFO was not real and that the strange men who made the music were just normal human beings and probably lived in a house like we did. Normal human beings indeed! I wish I was as normal as Jeff Lynne.
It took me until my mid teen years to understand their other early albums including ON THE THIRD DAY and NO ANSWER. Those were a little esoteric for a four year old, I think.
Finally after many years of playing, writing and listening to music I feel capable of approaching this song by the amazing Jeff Lynne. It will be included on my EP release for June this year with 3 more of my own songs.