Footprint Center, Phoenix
October 29th, 2024

The latest in our ongoing series of “Guess We’d Better See Them Before They Die” concerts, brings us what is intended to Jeff Lynne’s farewell series of shows, the appropriately named “Over and Out” tour. As ever, you’re never quite sure whether to believe an artist when they say they’re quitting. But with Lynne turning 77 next month, and never a particular fan of playing live (he basically didn’t for two decades), it’s credible this could be the last chance to see him. If so, Phoenix was his final performance in America. It wasn’t originally intended that way, but the concert was rescheduled from October 21st due to illness, pushing it to the end of the tour dates.

ELO are one of those bands I was contractually obliged to dislike as a kid, because my big sister liked them. But as they moved into their lush, synth-driven phase, they began to align more with my tastes at the time. I eventually developed an appreciation for their earlier stuff too: I will argue that Mr. Blue Sky is the equal of Bohemian Rhapsody in terms of pop complexity, pushed over the top by Jeff Lynne’s genius level production. It says a lot that when I was searching YouTube just now, there are precious few remixes of the song, because it’s basically near-perfect, and needs no improvement.

The staging for tonight’s event was impressive, featuring an extremely large video screen and lasers. A lot of lasers. Hey, what can I say. 70’s prog-rock will never die. Likely a necessity to capture the full sound of ELO, Lynne was backed up by no less than ten musicians on stage, including two cellists and a violinist. [Given the requirement for such an entourage, Jeff deciding not to tour for twenty years makes a lot of sense] But I have to say, the results were impeccable. The sound quality was among the best I’ve ever heard at a live concert, especially in a venue the size of the Footprint Center, which seats around twelve thousand people. You had the same depth as on the recorded versions of the songs, and the clarity was there to match.

Lynne wasn’t exactly interactive with the audience: a few “Thank yous” and thumbs-up were about the limit of it, without even an apology for or acknowledgment of the last-minute cancellation the previous week. But Lynne has never been a Mick Jagger type, being described as “astonishingly shy”, and someone who greatly prefers to work in the studio than appear on stage. Tonight, he even delegated the lengthy task of introducing the members of the band to musical director Mike Stevens. But Jeff did genuinely seem to appreciate the thunderous and lengthy applause which followed when Lynne himself was introduced. The crowd knew they were in the presence of musical greatness, perhaps for the last time in his career, and responded appropriately.

You couldn’t argue with the song choices: like the Stones, Lynne has multiple decades of work from which to draw. Inevitably, there were omissions: I’d have loved to hear Twilight, or the eight-minute epicness which is the cover of Chuck Berry’s Roll Over Beethoven. But that would have meant excluding something else, whether it was Rockaria!, with Melanie-Lewis warbling her heart out or All Over the World from cult flop movie Xanadu. Short of playing for four hours, there’s no easy solution, and Lynne isn’t doing that. Indeed, it was notable that he did delegate some of the higher-pitched vocalizations to backup singer Iain Hornal. But that’s hardly grounds for complaint.

Naturally, the set finished with an encore of Mr. Blue Sky (below), an iconic song which keeps getting new fans through its use in movies and other media. It’s startling to realize it’s approaching half a century old, because it seems so fresh it could have been composed yesterday. Lynne now goes back to his home territory, with a final slew of shows culminating in his last ever performance at Hyde Park on July 13th next year. If this was, indeed, Lynne saying “Over and Out” to the United States, it was a fitting end to a remarkable career.

Set list

• One More Time
• Evil Woman
• Do Ya
• Showdown
• Last Train to London
• Believe Me Now
• Steppin’ Out
• Rockaria!
• 10538 Overture
• Strange Magic
• Sweet Talkin’ Woman
• Can’t Get It Out of My Head
• Fire on High
• Livin’ Thing
• Telephone Line
• All Over the World
• Turn to Stone
• Shine a Little Love
• Don’t Bring Me Down
• Encore: Mr. Blue Sky