Author: wamdines

Yungblud has shared a first taste of his forthcoming third album, in the form of nine minute, six second new single Hello Heaven, Hello, accompanied by a striking, cinematic video.

“I’ve been discouraged from releasing a nine-minute and six second song as my first move back in a year because, in the modern world, it’s seen as a ‘risk’,” the Yorkshire-born singer, real name Dominic Harrison, admits. “I don’t see it that way at all – I see it as an opportunity. In my opinion, risk is an artist’s greatest tool – putting everything on the line in pursuit of the best evolution and art you can create. Without risk, there is no innovation.”

With its orchestral flourishes, Hello Heaven, Hello bears more than a trace of classic British artists The Who, David Bowie and Queen, and speaking about the song, which he began writing four years ago, Harrison says, “Rock music is in my DNA. It’s the first genre I was ever exposed to; I grew up in a guitar shop with my Dad and my Grandfather. Rock music helped me find an identity as a human being.”

Yungblud has yet to reveal the title of his third album, but he promises it will be “magical”.

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne’s private jet, played Angus Young’s Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.

Babymetal have announced their biggest-ever North American tour, with 24 shows lined up across the summer.

With support coming from Black Veil Brides, Jinjer and Bloodywood on select dates, the kawaii metal trio will launch their latest North American adventure in Houston, Texas on June 13, and remain on the road through to July 23, when the tour will wrap in Phoenix, Arizona.

Tickets will go on general sale here on March 21 at 10am local time, but a pre-sale begins today, and fans can sign up for an access code at laylo.com/babymetal.

Jun 13: Houston 713 Music Hall, TX ^=
Jun 14: Irving, The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory, TX ^=
Jun 17: Tampa Yuengling Center, FL ^=
Jun 18: Atlanta Coca-Cola Roxy, GA ^=
Jun 20: Charlotte Skyla Credit Union Amphitheatre, NC ^=
Jun 21: Baltimore Pier Six Pavilion, MD ^=
Jun 24: New York The Theater at Madison Square Garden, NY ^=
Jun 25: Boston MGM Music Hall at Fenway, MA ^=
Jun 27: Uncasville Mohegan Sun Arena, UT ^=
Jun 28: Philadelphia TD Pavilion at The Mann Center, PA ^=
Jun 30: Laval Place Bell, Canada ^=

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A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne’s private jet, played Angus Young’s Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.

Formed in the early 80s but languishing in obscurity after the tragic death of their frontman, Hell were one of metal’s great fan. But in the early 2010s, acclaimed producer and superfan Andy Sneap helped resurrect the band, introducing them to a new generation of metal fans.

In today’s crowded marketplace – where genres and scenes constantly divide amoeba-like into increasingly narrow entities – a genuine sense of the unique is sadly something of a rare commodity within music, metal included. Indeed, such is the proliferation of bands that it doesn’t even seem to be an issue anymore – if a new band sounds like another older band, who cares – they’re just paying homage, right?

But then, every once in a while, you discover a group who are so fresh that they turn all your preconceptions on their head. Hell are such a band. Watch the video for On Earth As It Is In Hell, or, better still, see them live, and initially the gloriously unsubtle spectacle is so over the top, so theatrical and so unlike anything else out there, that you’ll be wondering what it is you’re witnessing.

Few obvious points of reference exist, yet its heart is also quintessentially and undeniably heavy metal, combining dashes of Iron Maiden, Mercyful Fate and even Rush with a sense of melodrama that makes King Diamond look shy and retiring. And the strangest thing about this groundbreaking outfit? They’re not even a new band. Far from it; last year’s debut album Human Remains was some two and half decades overdue, and all the more poignant for it. Indeed, behind Hell’s larger than life music is a story of tragedy, obscurity and resurrection.

Formed 30 years ago, the seminal five-piece managed to carve quite a name for themselves during the early 80s with their theatrical and progressive take on the heavy metal template, but a number of setbacks – most obviously the collapse of their record label and mounting debts – eventually led the band to split before they could release a full length.

Sadly, this would play a part in the suicide of their distinctive guitarist, vocalist and frontman David Halliday soon after. So it was that the group were consigned to the history books, with only a handful of legendary demos as proof of their existence.

But that was not to be end of the tale. During their brief time together they had made a fan and friend in a young guitarist named Andy Sneap, who’d go on to become guitarist for legendary UK thrashers Sabbat, and a producer for Megadeth, Machine Head, Cradle of Filth, Arch Enemy, Dimmu Borgir and many other big hitters within the metal scene.

“I originally met these guys when I was 12 years old,” Andy recalls. “I started having guitar lessons from David Halliday, and then saw Hell about three months after that. I didn’t even know he was in a band and I was totally blown away by them. I think the only other band I’d seen was Iron Maiden and I was as impressed with Hell as I was with Maiden – even though it was in a pub it was as big a show! I became very good friends with them and, if I’m brutally honest, with Sabbat we ripped a lot of Hell stuff off. Not intentionally, but if something is that much of an influence it just comes out on your playing.”

Despite their close relationship in the early 80s, Andy would lose touch with the members of Hell following their split, just as they in turn would lose touch with one another as their lives took them in different directions. Guitarist Kev Bower, in particular, would prove highly elusive, spending much of his working life in the US – in fact, it was only a chance move by his son that led to the various parties meeting once more and reuniting the long-dormant band.

“I went through a really messy divorce which resulted in me losing contact with my son for five years,” Kev explains, “and when we were finally reunited, this little chubby kid had grown up into this six-foot, tattooed metalhead. As we started spending time together again he would play me these bands he liked – Trivium, Exodus, Nevermore, Opeth – and going through the booklets I saw all these albums had been produced by this Andy Sneap guy. I had no idea that Andy had gone on to become a producer and told my son, ‘Bloody hell, this kid was at the front of every show we played, we were his heroes!’ He didn’t believe me though, he thought it was some dad bullshit, and actually made contact with Andy to find out if it was true. Of course it was, and Andy was delighted as he’d spent all these years trying to find me!”

“Kev came down to the studio,” explains Andy, picking up the story, “as he was always interested in the recording side of things, and straight away I put a guitar in his hands and said, ‘Play that riff, I want to hear this song’, ’cos all I had was the cassettes, the demos for the album. I’d been listening to these songs for 20 years trying to remember how good it was live, and I just said, ‘For shits and giggles, why don’t we record some of these songs? I have a studio, we have weekends off, we can do it just for a laugh.’ That was four years ago and we slowly began piecing this album together three songs at a time, in blocks, and we ended up with this album recorded.”

Finding the band’s members was only the start of the challenge, and making Hell a working band once more was no small task, particularly since only one guy had continued playing his instrument in the intervening years.

“It’s funny,” laughs Andy, “when they knew me I was this blond kid on the front row of every show who used to follow them round. Now I’m the one cracking the whip and telling them what to do. It’s never easy and I’m just as guilty – when Sabbat stopped I wasn’t playing as much, I focused on being a producer.”

“It’s probably the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and the worst,” smiles Kev. “We do these shows in front of huge numbers of people and you’re a rock star for the weekend, then it’s back to the day job, so it’s a bit of a cleft stick at the moment. But coming back to the band is just awesome. I’d been out of the music business for the best part of 25 years and not played for 25 years, so this is a dream come true!”

A true labour of love, the three remaining original members (completed by drummer Tim Bowler and bassist Tony Speakman) worked with Andy – who both produced and played guitar – crafting an album that stayed as close as possible to the true spirit of the original band, and its sadly departed frontman.

“I’ve never been better prepared to produce an album than this one,” says Andy. “I’ve been listening to the songs for 25 years! When Dave died he left me everything; his guitars, amps, the rights to the songs in his will. I’ve always felt I had to do something with this and carry it forward, and having this opportunity to get his songs out there… it was something I had to do for him and his family really. I’ve really gone to a big effort financially and personally to make sure it was all done properly, all the publishing has gone to his next of kin and we made an effort to include him as much as possible on the record. In the middle of The Devil’s Deadly Weapon we lifted his voice from the demos, on the intro to Macbeth that’s him, the ‘bring out your dead’ part of Plague and Fyre, that’s him from a live show, so I’ve really gone in and tried to put him in on the album as much as we could.”

Of course, a gaping hole still existed within the group in terms of a vocalist. Initially Sabbat/Skyclad vocalist Martyn Walkier took on the role, but when that didn’t work out the group accidentally found their replacement in Kev’s brother David, who’d come in to the studio to do a few backing vocals. It’d turn out to be the final piece of the puzzle and David’s superb voice and incomparable stage presence has provided a definite figurehead for the group’s live performance.

An actor by trade who’s worked on high-profile UK TV shows (Casualty, The Bill, Heartbeat, Coronation Street), his dynamic performance brings a unique sense of drama that the band have built upon in their stageshow, making use of elaborate stage props to create a theatrical experience. The songs themselves naturally stand out from the crowd for the simple reason that they were written back in the early 80s and updated by a band who – Andy aside – are largely unaware of the last 30 years of metal history.

“It’s so important to try and do something original and I don’t see that in metal nowadays,” ponders Andy. “In the 80s you’d put a record on and you’d know immediately who it was because every band sounded and looked a bit different. Now it’s gone the other way, you have to fit into a genre, you have to have that haircut where the wind is blowing from one side. Unfortunately, we don’t have hair – it blew a little too hard I think!” he laughs. “But it is important, I don’t think we’re like anyone else. There’s a quirkiness to Hell which is so original and uniquely British really, with the little bit of tongue in cheek humour, it’s got a charm and I always liked that about the band. Germany’s got Rammstein and I’d like to think we’re putting some of that similar theatricality into our music too.”

“One of the great things about this band is we have a Grammy award-winning producer, a trained Shakespearian actor and I’m a carpenter,” chuckles Kev. “That’s my trade, so all the stage set is my work. The latest thing we’ve done is kit Dave out with a pair of four-foot stilts. He’ll be there as Pan and be 10 feet tall with the horns going on. One thing this band is definitely not short of is ideas. There are so many bands who just wander onstage in jeans and play, which is cool, but it’s never been enough for us, it’s not what we’re all about. Our objective is to entertain and I think people appreciate that.”

Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 233, June 2012

Led by singer, guitarist and chief songwriter Jeff Lynne, ELO – or Electric Light Orchestra, to give them their full name – bestrode the 1970s like a bearded, frizzy-haired giant before splitting in 1986. In 2012, Lynne returned his old band once more with Mr Blue Sky, a solo album that found him re-recording several ELO hits. When Classic Rock sat down with him in London, he was ready to look back over his stellar career.

The hair is smaller, the beard neater, but those impenetrable sunglasses still give him away. In a changing world, there’s something reassuringly unchanged about Jeff Lynne, the one-time composer and producer of symphonic rock ensemble Electric Light Orchestra. Dressed in an understated black jacket and jeans, Lynne, a famously private man, peers out of the window of his chosen venue, a smart boutique hotel near London’s posh Sloane Square. “Most people don’t know about this place,” he says appreciatively.

Forget punk-rock revisionism and critical scorn (“Electric Light Orchestra are technically adept, cynically presented froth,” carped Rolling Stone). ELO ruled the 1970s, with multi-platinum albums such as Out Of The Blue, and US and UK Top 20 hits with the likes of Livin’ Thing, Sweet Talkin’ Woman and Turn To Stone. In 1978 there was no one bigger. That year, ELO undertook a record-grossing US tour with a spaceship-style stage set that pumped out 525,000 watts of light and required 13 trucks to transport it from city to city. ELO were just as big in the studio: hiring 40-piece string sections and 30-piece choirs to recreate the sounds inside Jeff Lynne’s head. With their huge choruses, deluxe production and everyman lyrics, they were once likened to what The Beatles would have sounded like had they been beer drinkers instead of dope smokers.

It was apt, then, that George Harrison asked Lynne to produce an album for him in 1986. “And after that, everything changed,” Lynne says, smiling. Within months he had joined Harrison, Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan and Tom Petty in roots-rock supergroup the Traveling Wilburys. In 1995 he co-produced The Beatles’ ‘comeback’ single Free As A Bird.

Today, despite more than 30 years of Beverly Hills living, the Shard End, Birmingham-born Lynne still hasn’t lost his Midlands burr. No wonder more complex, hung-up artists, such as Dylan and Petty, like having him around. You suspect he leaves his own complexities and hang-ups at the door.

In October Jeff Lynne released two solo albums: Long Wave, a collection of mostly pre-rock’n’roll standards; and Mr Blue Sky, his new interpretations of classic ELO hits. Both aim to reproduce the extraordinary sounds whizzing around inside his head. “I love being inside a song,” he says. “So close that it’s like I can almost touch it.”

ELO were never off the radio in the 70s. Long Wave is full of the songs you heard on the radio, growing up in the 50s.

My dad had the radio on all day. There was no TV until I was 13 so all I got was his music. A lot of these songs I hated as a kid, like [Rodgers & Hammerstein’s] If I Loved You. I also never thought I’d be singing [Bobby Darin’s] Beyond The Sea. But if you listen to the strings in the middle, they sound like ELO. It’s only when I discovered how to play the songs that I fell in love with them. It’s the way they’re constructed that intrigues me. I wanted to be a record producer from the age of 13.

Why so young?

I heard Only The Lonely by Roy Orbison [in 1960] and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. All I could think was: “How do they do that? How do they know what to play?” After that, all I thought about was music. I left school at 15 and joined a group called The Nightriders, but I still had to work. So I took a job in a warehouse where I could always go behind the bins and practise my guitar for half an hour. When I turned pro at 18 I was so relieved.

What did you think when you first heard The Beatles?

Please Please Me [The Beatles’ second single, released in January 1963] was the one. The first single Love Me Do didn’t do it for me. I don’t mean that in a bad way, but it was very simple, only a couple of chords. Please Please Me felt like it was something else entirely. It was mind-blowing.

The Nightriders later became The Idle Race. While recording their first album,The Birthday Party, in 1968 you visited Abbey Road studios and watched The Beatles making the White Album. Did you ever imagine you’d end up working with George Harrison?

Never. Not in a million years. It was like meeting your gods. But I knew I was pretty good and could make a living out of music. I had a feeling I’d never have to go to work again. I’d been asked to join [fellow Birmingham group] The Move in ’67 and I turned them down. I thought I owed The Idle Race, as they’d saved me from this awful life of working. But their albums weren’t hits, so when The Move’s singer Roy Wood asked me again I had to say yes.

As soon as you were in The Move, though, you and Wood were plotting ELO.

By the time I joined in 68 The Move were doing cabaret, and I didn’t want to be a part of that. Roy and I had been talking about the idea of ELO for months. So we made those Move albums [1970’s Shazam and 71’s Message From The Country] to help pay for ELO.

ELO’s debut LP, Electric Light Orchestra, in 1972, featured bassoon, oboe, French horn, cello… Is it true you wanted the group to continue what The Beatles had started with I Am The Walrus?

I Am The Walrus was a big influence because of the cello parts, true. So was A Day In The Life. But I never said we were picking up where The Beatles left off. I get the blame for that, and I never said it. It was Roy Wood. At the time I thought, oh fuck. Now I think, fucking great, Roy, you’ve saddled me with this for years! [laughs]

You once described the early ELO gigs as “shambolic”. What went wrong?

Everything. We did our first gig at The Greyhound in Croydon. It was horrible, dreadful. It was amazing how Roy taught himself to play the cello in a week, so he could play it on our first single, 10538 Overture. But on stage it took him forever to change instruments because he was also playing the bassoon and the oboe. And we couldn’t hear ourselves properly. We used to have to get a little drunk just to take the edge off. Then I did something wrong.

What did you do?

It was the third ever ELO gig, in Liverpool. I’d had a drink and I needed to take a piss. There was a big curtain behind the stage dividing the room in half. So I went behind it and called to my roadie Phil to get us a bucket. He came back with this great big cleaner’s bucket and held it up for me. I was playing bass, and all I had to do was play an open-string A on the song we were doing. So I was playing with one hand and piddling into this bucket. But it just went on and on. I’d not finished when Phil moved and it was all up his arm [laughs]. I never did it again after that.

Why did Roy Wood leave ELO so soon?

Roy and I didn’t collaborate as well as we thought we would. We couldn’t work together. It was like having two individual bosses in the band. So he went off to do [Wood’s next group] Wizzard, and I got to be the sole writer and producer of ELO.

When did ELO start getting better?

About six months after Roy left. We made the second album [ELO II], and that had [a version of Chuck Berry’s] Roll Over Beethoven on it. It went Top 40 in America. So suddenly we’ve got our foot in the door over there. But I always remember my dad saying to me: “The trouble with your tunes is they’ve got no tunes,” because he didn’t think much of my songs. So I thought, I’ll show ya. And I wrote Can’t Get It Out Of My Head, a tune that was full of tunes. We put that on the fourth record, Eldorado, which sold half-a-million and went gold in America.

Growing up in a suburb of Birmingham in the 50s, you must have dreamed of going to the States.

It was a very big deal. The Idle Race had been on United Artists, and on their record labels it used to say ‘United Artists, Sunset Boulevard’, with a picture of a street with palm trees. And I used to think: “God, I want to go there.”

The first time we went to the States was supporting Deep Purple [1974]. They were playing 10,000-seater ice hockey stadiums. You could see the audience looking at us with our cellos and thinking,: “What the hell is this?” But they liked us. So it took off there, even before the UK.

ELO were managed by Don Arden, father of Sharon Osbourne, and a man nicknamed The Al Capone Of Rock. How was he to work with?

His reputation precedes him, yes. [Long pause] I don’t know if he was a good manager or a bad manager. He got us there. I always had the studio time I wanted. He helped make us successful. So I owe him that. But he had his flaws. He was good and bad.

Was there a particular point when you realised ELO had made it?

In America. After a while we started doing the 20,000-seaters. We were driving in a limo up La Cienega towards Sunset Boulevard, and there was this great big billboard that said ‘Welcome ELO’. I thought: “Fuck, this is good.” The record label had put us to stay in the Continental Hyatt House, which used to be called the Riot House after John Bonham or someone rode a motorbike around the top floor. And there was another sign saying ‘Welcome ELO’ outside. That’s when I felt like we’d made it. But after that it just got bigger and bigger.

Did you do all the things rock bands were supposed to do when touring America? Was there such a thing as an ELO groupie?

Yeah, there were ELO groupies [looking surprised]. But we only ever wrecked one hotel room. We played Washington, and the president Jimmy Carter’s son, Chip, came to the gig and invited us to visit the White House the next day.

I dunno why, but after the show we ended up trashing somebody’s room. We piled all the broken furniture in a heap in the middle like we were going to have a bonfire. Then we looked at it and panicked. I always remember someone saying: “Shall we leave now under the cover of darkness?” We didn’t. But when we left the next morning, we saw Sharon [Osbourne] in reception and she was paying the bill, and it was 10,000 dollars cash. We all went: “Oh fuck,” and ducked out before anyone could see us. We didn’t do it again.

ELO were a seven-piece group, with two cellists and a violinist. How difficult was it to keep seven people on the road happy?

There were two separate camps, y’see. There was us – we were the rock’n’roll players – and then there were the string players. We got on okay, but they had a different mentality. They weren’t in the clique. They weren’t rock’n’roll people – they’d all come from string player’s college.

On stage you always looked like you were a reluctant frontman, though.

I didn’t want to be there, no. I enjoyed the first two or three tours, but after that I was out of joint with it. I just wanted to be at home, writing and recording.

Did ELO compensate for that by using so many special effects in their live shows?

I was compensating, I suppose. Any idea that was really daft, I’d say: “Oh yes, we’ll have that.” Our cellist Mike Edwards had this idea for playing [French composer Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns’s] The Dying Swan while rolling an orange up and down the neck of the cello. Then he had a cello that exploded on stage. Mind you, sometimes it exploded, sometimes it didn’t. It was good when it worked properly. Mike, unfortunately, later got killed by a bale of hay [after it fell on to the roof of a van he was driving, in 2010].

ELO’s 1976 album A New World Record went to No.1 in the US. A year later Out Of The Blue was top five in the US and the UK. Next, ELO were touring with a spectacular, spaceship-style stage set, and US opening acts that included Heart, Journey and Meat Loaf.

We were doing 70,000-seaters in some parts of America by then. But the shows were getting too big for me. The spaceship was Don Arden’s idea. We first tried it out at The Who’s studios in Shepperton. Pete Townshend came in, saw it and said: “I want one of them!” The spaceship was amazing – the noise it made at the end of the show was incredible, like rocket engines. I used to dash out to the front and watch from the audience. It was Don who got Tony Curtis to introduce us on stage at Wembley that year, where we played to royalty [the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester]. But I was more impressed at the reception afterwards.

Why was that?

They’d put all our gold discs up on the walls at the reception. I kept thinking: “This looks impressive. These are for songs I’ve written.” That was the problem: I just wanted to be in the studio. Touring cramped my style.

ELO’s music has a reputation for being upbeat, but hits such as Telephone Line sound extremely sad. Were you having a really miserable time of it?

I always thought our music was sad. Whenever people say: “Wow, your songs makes me feel so good,” I think: “Hold on, I’m writing about loneliness.” [Laughs] Telephone Line is the saddest of them all. It was written just after an American tour. I’d got a girlfriend over there and she wasn’t answering the phone. That’s why I used the sound of the American dialling tone. It was all about long‑distance telephone calls. Touring played havoc with relationships and anything like that.

Which is the greatest ELO album?

Out Of The Blue would have to be one of them. My favourite now, though, is On The Third Day, after I realised what a cheeky bastard I’d been. I had all the music plotted out, but there are two or three songs where I hadn’t written any words. So I just stood in front of the mic and sang the first thing that came into my gob. And I was amazed when I played it again, as it sounds pretty good. A lot of ELO songs are simpler than you might think. I could show you how to play Mr Blue Sky in 10 minutes. It’s no symphony.

ELO split in 1986, and then you were asked to produce George Harrison’s next album, Cloud Nine. How did that happen?

I‘d had enough of ELO. It was a relief to do something else. I’d been doing some recording with Dave Edmunds, and we had just finished dinner in a restaurant in Marlow. He was about 200 yards down the street when he shouted back: “Oh, Jeff… by the way, George Harrison asked if you would like to work on his new album.” For fuck’s sake! We’d spent two hours having dinner and he never mentioned it.

Were you intimidated by meeting George?

I was intimidated by George’s house [the 120-room Friar Park in Henley-on-Thames]. It was like a mansion, a castle and a palace all rolled into one. When I first turned up there I thought: “I don’t know if I can do this.” I was that worried it was going to be too posh. But George put me at ease. He said: “Look, before we start, just so we can see how we get on, shall we go to Australia to watch the Grand Prix?” I said: “Er, yeah, alright.” He said: “Great. Meet me in Hawaii in two weeks’ time.”

So 18 years after you’d watched The Beatles making the White Album, you were working with one of them.

I know [laughs]. But I didn’t feel intimidated about making suggestions in the studio. That’s what George wanted me for. But you could ask him about The Beatles’ records and he’d tell you stuff. Like how Please Please Me had been really slow to start with, like a Roy Orbison record, and George suggested they speed it up.

Who came up with the idea to put together the Traveling Wilburys?

One night, George and I had a bit of a smoke and a drink, and he said: “You and I should have a group.” I said: “Who should we have in it?” “Bob Dylan,” he said. “Oh yeah, okay… Bob Dylan… What about Roy Orbison as well, then?” And we both suggested Tom Petty. I didn’t imagine it would actually happen. But it did. We did the first Wilburys’ song, Handle With Care, in Bob’s garage.

What’s Bob Dylan actually like?

Bob’s a normal guy, friendly, not aloof… But he’s on his own wavelength. I mean, it’s Bob Dylan, so you are always a bit in awe. I kept thinking: “He wrote all those words [laughs].”

After The Traveling Wilburys, you produced Tom Petty’s first solo album, Full Moon Fever. Petty said that your arrival upset his group The Heartbreakers. Did you sense that?

A little bit, yes. But I was only interested in Tom. He’d asked me to write with him and produce, and that was all I cared about. Free Fallin’ was the second song we wrote for that album, and it was a huge hit. Full Moon Fever came together so easily. It is still one of my favourite records of all those I’ve worked on.

You’ve just re-recorded and remixed some of ELO’s biggest hits for the new collection Mr Blue Sky. What was wrong with the originals?

There was no clarity to them. They sounded like they had a sock over them. It was bugging me whenever I’d hear them on the radio. I didn’t have much studio experience when I produced the originals. Now I’ve had 30 years more experience and technology is 30 years ahead. So I tried doing Mr Blue Sky again and it sounded so much better. Then I did Evil Woman, Strange Magic, and I ended up doing 17 of them again, but we got it down to 12 for the album.

You can’t stay out of the studio, can you?

No [laughs]. They have to come and drag me out. But it’s what I do. I’ve enjoyed making these two albums more than anything I’ve ever done before. In the studio I can just block everything out. I walk in there, shut the door, sit down and think: “Ah… this is the fucking life… Happiness.”

Originally published in Classic Rock issue 178, November 2012

Mark Blake is a music journalist and author. His work has appeared in The Times and The Daily Telegraph, and the magazines Q, Mojo, Classic Rock, Music Week and Prog. He is the author of Pigs Might Fly: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd, Is This the Real Life: The Untold Story of Queen, Magnifico! The A–Z Of Queen, Peter Grant, The Story Of Rock’s Greatest Manager and Pretend You’re in a War: The Who & The Sixties.