When it comes to music, Electric Light Orchestra mastermind Jeff Lynne can do it all, and he proves it in a new video that premiered Friday on RollingStone.com. The clip uses some camera trickery to show Lynne performing his new cover of the vintage blues tune “Mercy, Mercy” accompanied by himself on guitars, bass and drums. The track appears on Long Wave, one of two new albums the multitalented musician and producer will be releasing on October 9.
Long Wave features renditions of a dozen cover songs that helped inform Lynne’s musical tastes when he was growing up.
“Long Wave is really an album of songs I used to hear on the longwave radio, which in England was one channel — the BBC,” he explains to Rolling Stone. He adds that for the tracks, he tried “to recreate the feeling of an old-fashioned radio, the sound of it.”
The other Lynne album arriving on October 9 is Mr. Blue Sky: The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra, which boasts rerecorded versions of many popular tunes by his old group. He tells Rolling Stone that, after years of working as a producer for many acclaimed artists, he felt he’d be able to improve the sound of ELO’s original tracks by updating them. He explains that he began with one song, “Mr. Blue Sky,” and was very happy with the results, so he just kept going.
Lynne also reports that he’s well on the way to finishing an album of new original tunes.
“I’ve done eight songs so far, and I need another three or four, maybe,” he maintains. “And that will hopefully come out next year.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
