The Roy Wood quote Jeff Lynne resented more than his ELO departure: “Where The Beatles left off…”
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Fri 21 November 2025 20:00, UK
Spending months cooped up on a sweaty tour bus or a claustrophobic recording studio, steadily building resentment for the musical comrades you once considered your closest friends; being in a band is certainly no picnic, and it often doesn’t take very long before ‘musical differences’ begin to kick in – something that Jeff Lynne found out the hard way.
Although Jeff Lynne’s entire existence within the musical realm is often – understandably – viewed as being inseparable from the output of the Electric Light Orchestra, it was actually Roy Wood who first vocalised his desire to blend orchestral arrangements with rock music. When ELO first emerged, though, its backbone was formed by the partnership between Wood and Lynne, along with Bev Bevan on drums.
Ultimately, though, the early period of ELO was not a particularly harmonious one. Despite the trailblazing genius of ‘10538 Overture’, the 1972 debut single, which perfectly laid out the group’s sonic manifesto, their output was otherwise struggling to keep up with ideals. Their live performances during those early years, for instance, were pretty disastrous. Given that they were attempting something entirely new, there were no real blueprints to follow, and the result of that was poor sound quality and a chaotic mess of instrumentation.
In the end, that first incarnation of ELO didn’t last very long. Only a few months after their inaugural concert, and mere weeks after the release of that debut single, the inter-band tensions had already become too harsh to handle, and Roy Wood left the band, quickly forming Wizzard in their wake. However, the songwriter’s parting gift to Jeff Lynne and ELO was to give them a virtually insurmountable quote which would follow them throughout the decades.
According to many music historians, Lynne once claimed that the inherent aim of ELO was to “pick up where [The Beatles’] ‘I Am The Walrus’ left off.” Given that The Beatles altered the course of musical history forever, and that 1967 classic is among their most experimental and far-out tracks of all, that quote almost appears to be setting ELO up to fail. As it turns out, though, Lynne was just as uncomfortable with its promise as everybody else.
“That was never really my thing,” the songwriter told Rock Cellar in 2016. “Actually, Roy Wood said that, not me, and he left the group two months after and lumbered me with that kind of quote – ’Oh really? Thanks a lot, buddy.’”
Although, to his credit, Lynne appears to have forgiven his former bandmate in the years since, the promise that ELO would match or even eclipse the sounds of prime Beatles was a rather heavy sword to hang above the band’s head.
Setting the record straight, Lynne continued, “My intention behind the sound of ELO was simply to get away from what all the other groups seemed to be doing around that time.” In that sense, Wood’s optimistic quote certainly makes more sense. However, it would appear that the moniker of ELO picking up where The Beatles left off caused more resentment towards Wood than his actual departure from the band a few months later.
In many ways, ELO did carry on where The Beatles left off. After all, Lynne was an absolute devotee of the Fab Four, and certainly shared many of the same musical sensibilities with their more experimental late 1960s offerings. Nevertheless, for a – at the time – brand new band to be seen as comparing themselves to the greatest band to ever enter the airwaves left ELO with a very steep mountain to climb, and one which Jeff Lynne wasn’t overly grateful for.
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