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"I don't really want to talk about ELO, actually."
Jeff Lynne's frequent, calm protests to that effect during a recent interview were like a latent bug in his normally pleasant demeanor, as if he was being unreasonably pestered on a particularly irrelevant tangent.
But the Electric Light Orchestra was the biggest part of the Jeff Lynne story-at least until the Traveling Wilburys came along in 1988.
A decade and a half ago, Lynne's music with ELO came to represent all that was big and ambitious about rock: orchestras, choirs and banks of synthesizers drawing heavily on classical influences, as well as borrowing power chords, disco rhythms and Beatlesque touches from pop sources. At its grandiose mid-'70s peak, ELO was either wretched or blessed excess, depending on the ear of the beholder.
Lingering sensitivity to old criticisms leveled at ELO may be one factor in Lynne's eagerness in the interview to move to other topics-mainly his newly released debut solo album, "Armchair Theatre." But at least part of his discomfort stems from the impending release of a three-CD boxed set of ELO material, "Afterglow," due from Epic Records in early July, a potential competitor with his own new release.
"Do I have anything to do with it?" he said, repeating a question about the retrospective. "Well, I wrote all the songs that are on it!"
Other than that, Lynne's input into the 47-song set, which includes nine previously unreleased or non-album tracks, was minimal. He remembers being asked for his comments on the song selection, but when he suggested omitting some of ELO's hit singles-including some of the 19 U.S. Top 40 hits-in favor of lesser-known and less dated tunes, he was rebuffed, he says.
"So in actual fact, I didn't have much control over it. They've got the right to do it, and I'm not opposing it. But they were nice and asked me...