August 14, 2020 —– Chart #52
Hello Musical Friends,
It’s Friday! Let’s have some fun and step back to 1977 and enjoy a great band and star front man. “Telephone Line” is a song by English rock band Electric Light Orchestra (ELO). It was released on May 1977 through Jet Records and United Artists Records as part of the album A New World Record. It gained huge success, reaching Top 10 in Australia, US, UK and number 1 in Canada.
The Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) are an English rock band formed in Birmingham in 1970 by songwriters-multi-instrumentalists Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood with drummer Bev Bevan. Their music is characterized by a fusion of Beatlesque pop, classical arrangements and futuristic iconography. After Wood’s departure in 1972, Lynne became the band’s sole leader, arranging and producing every album while writing nearly all of their original material. For their initial tenure, Lynne, Bevan and keyboardist Richard Tandy were the group’s only consistent members.
ELO was formed out of Lynne’s and Wood’s desire to create modern rock and pop songs with classical overtones. It derived as an offshoot of Wood’s previous band, the Move, of which Lynne and Bevan were also members. During the 1970s and 1980s, ELO released a string of top 10 albums and singles, including two LPs that reached the top of British charts: the disco-inspired Discovery (1979) and the science-fiction-themed concept album Time (1981). In 1986, Lynne lost interest in the band and disbanded the group. Bevan responded by forming his own band, ELO Part II, which later became the Orchestra. After a brief reunion from 2000–01, ELO remained largely inactive until 2014, when Lynne re-formed the band again with Tandy as Jeff Lynne’s ELO.
During ELO’s original 14-year period of active recording and touring, they sold over 50 million records worldwide, and collected 19 CRIA, 21 RIAA, and 38 BPI awards. From 1972 to 1986, ELO accumulated twenty-seven top 40 songs on the UK Singles Chart, and fifteen top 20 songs on the US Billboard Hot 100. The band also holds the record for having the most Billboard Hot 100 top 40 hits (20) without a number one single of any band in US chart history. In 2017, the ELO key members of Wood, Lynne, Bevan and Tandy were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Telephone Line is track two on their 1976 album, A New World Record, and was the final single to be released from the album until September 2006, when “Surrender” was released from the expanded reissue of the album. It became their biggest single success in the US and was their first UK gold award for a single. With ELO’s continuing success in America it seemed obvious to Jeff Lynne to use an American ring tone during the song. Writer/guitarist, Lynne explained: “To get the sound on the beginning, you know, the American telephone sound, we phoned from England to America to a number that we know nobody would be at, to just listen to it for a while. On the Moog, we recreated the sound exactly by tuning the oscillators to the same notes as the ringing of the phone.”
The song charted in the Top Ten in both the UK and the US, peaking at number 8 in the UK and number 7 in the US. The tune was on the Hot 100 for 23 weeks, nearly a full month longer on that chart than any other ELO tune. Billboard ranked it as the No. 15 song of 1977. In 1977, the song would reach number 1 in New Zealand and Canada. “Telephone Line” and Meri Wilson’s “Telephone Man” were back-to-back on Hot 100’s top 40 for two non-consecutive weeks in the summer of 1977.
As was the norm, many ELO singles were issued in different colors, but the US version of this single was the only green single ELO issued. It became the band’s first single to achieve Gold sales figures.
Stunning live performance at Wembley Stadium:
Keep rockin’,
Stan