← Behind The Song: Classic Rock Chronicles
Behind The Song: Classic Rock Chronicles
The ELO song scientifically proven to make you happy
00:14:13
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
Janda
97.1Fm the drive presents the behind the Song podcast, taking you deeper into classic rock's most timeless tunes. Here's your host, Janda it's one of the happiest songs of all time. A glorious symphonic rock masterpiece scientifically validated as a spirit lifter with all the right bright and bouncy ingredients and instruments, piano, tasty guitar riffs, a thumping rhythm section, an impressive string arrangement, staggeringly great harmonic vocals and a few surprises, a vocoder inspired by a children's audio series from the 1950s, and a fire extinguisher used as a percussion instrument. It stands alone as a kind of mini pop opera. And yet it's part of an album side released as A Concerto for a Rainy Day, the final song on side three of the Electric Light Orchestra's 1977 double album magnum opus out of the Blue Mr. Blue sky shines bright among ELO's sparkling catalog of songs, A great example of why Jeff Lynn is called Jeff the Genius and why John Lennon was once quoted as saying that if the Beatles had continued, they would have sounded like elo even though it wasn't a major hit at first, it is one of those songs that's come to be a part of pop culture at large due to its repeated use to punctuate happiness in commercials, movies and TV shows. And for such a bright, happy song, would you be surprised to know that it all came about after Lynn had been suffering from a weather induced writer's block, a mental funk while holed up in Switzerland? A funk that literally ended when the sun came out? Let's dig into the story of Mr. Blue sky in this episode of the behind the Song podcast. If you get a kick out of this episode, you know what to do. Give it a thumbs up and hit subscribe. Ever since Jeff Lynn left the move and started elo back in 1970, his imaginative approach to making music has been compared to the Beatles. And why not? There is no reason he wouldn't have been compared to the fabs who came before him, the first group who really used the studio as another instrument. Think about songs like A Day in the Life and I Am the Walrus. And there you have the blueprint for marrying pop rock with classical music. Jeff Lynn really embraced this with his version of Chuck Berry's Roll Over Beethoven, which the Beatles had also previously covered. Lynn's version of that song, released on ELO2 in 1973, includes a mashup of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in an intricate eight plus minute whopper that'll knock your socks off. Lin has admitted many times over the years that he is basically a studio guy, much more comfortable spending up to 14 hours a day in the recording studio, perfecting the sounds he has in his head over performing the finished songs live in concert. In fact, ELO were one of the first bands to use recorded backing tracks in concert out of necessity, to get the elaborate sounds created for the songs on the albums across the audience, for which he was criticized by some in the music press. And there was even a lawsuit over it filed by a Detroit concert promoter in 1978, which was settled out of court. Now, mind you, back in 1978, the technology wasn't what it is now when it came to live performances. And one of the only reasons ELO were called out at the time was because the music is so heavily produced. That's part of the beauty of elo. As we fans all well know, ELO released an album a year between their second album and 1977's Double out of the Blue, including their 1976 platinum seller, a New World Record. To write the follow up to that, Lin rented a chalet in the Swiss Alps, just north of Lake Geneva in the spring of 1977, and the weather there during that time was terrible. It was a period of what Lynn called relentless rain, gray skies, and he got the blues to the point that he had writer's block. He told the BBC in an interview, it was dark for two weeks and I didn't come up with a thing. Suddenly the sun shone and it was, wow, look at these beautiful Alps. For the first time in weeks, he could see the magnificent landscape around him, the enormous views offered up once the skies cleared. The sun was what the doctor ordered, so to speak. After that moment, he wrote Mr. Blue sky and 13 other songs for out of the Blue in the next two weeks, making it one of the most appropriately titled albums of all time. The working title for Mr. Blue sky was originally Thou Shalt Not Number Seven, which hints that even though the verses were written in a flash, after the sun finally came out, both literally and in terms of Jeff Lynn's weather induced depression, the writer's block was still hanging on. The rest of the song was written during the recording sessions for the album, which took place over the summer of 77 at Musicland Studios in Munich. And that's where the magic happens for Jeff Lynn. It was there that he teamed up once again with German engineer Reinhold Mack, with Lin himself producing, as they had done since ELO's second album, a couple of things to note about Mr. Blue sky from a production standpoint. First, what sounds like it could be a cowbell in the percussion of the song is actually your typical red fire extinguisher on hand in the studio to put out a fire if needed. We have drummer Bev Bevan to thank for that one, who started banging on the fire extinguisher to give the song that clanging sound you hear. That's one of the little Easter eggs in this song. And for another, Jeff Lynn put the vocoder in front and center on this whole album, using it in several songs, including on Mr. Blue Sky. The robotic voice you hear was actually inspired by a sound Lin remembered from his childhood, in particular, an audio story called Sparky's Magic Piano. This was part of a series of children's albums from the 50s in which Sparky, a little boy with a big imagination, has adventures with objects that magically come to life and talk to him. In Sparky's Magic Piano, Sparky takes piano lessons, but hates practicing, until one day the piano comes to life and tells Sparky that he will help him learn how to play in this voice. It is I, your piano. That sound was achieved through something called the Sono Vox, a precursor to the vocoder. The Sono Vox consisted of one or two loudspeakers placed on the throat to change the sound of the voice, with the performer whispering the words while the speakers take the place of the human voice box. It was also used for the talking train in Disney's Dumbo. Jeff Lynn obviously never forgot it. During the recording sessions for out of the Blue, Lynn found out that another prototype of the vocoder had just been built in Stuttgart, which was about a three hour drive from Munich. So they had it brought into the studio and put it to work. On a side note, the mid to late 70s was big for this type of technology. A tube in the mouth talkbox vocoder was of course, made very famous by Peter Frampton. You might be surprised to find that the final words spoken through the vocoder at the end of Mr. Blue sky aren't what they sound like. At first it sounds like the voice is saying the title of the song, but it isn't. I'll get to that in a bit. The song starts with a tinny radio announcer's voice forecasting the weather, calling for blue skies. And the lyrics are as upbeat as the sun parting the clouds after a long period of rain. And they go like this sun is shining in the sky. There ain't a cloud in sight. It stopped raining Everybody's in the play. And don't you know it's a beautiful new day Running down the avenue See how the sun shines brightly in the city on the streets where Once was pity Mr. Blue sky is living here today and then the chorus which repeats, Mr. Blue sky, please tell us why you had to hide away for so long where did we go wrong? It's all right there. Lynn painting a full picture of how it feels for the rain to stop, both literally and figuratively, in just a few lines. And he introduces Mr. Blue sky as a character while he's at it. After a little guitar bridge, here's the next part. Hey, you with a pretty face welcome to the human race a celebration Mr. Blue Sky's up there waiting and today is the day we've waited for and then the second chorus. And then it's on to the next transition. Hey there, Mr. Blue we're so pleased to be with you look around, see what you do Everybody smiles at you and it's at this point in the song that you hear the vocoder voice say Mr. Blue sky repeatedly. And then another character is introduced in the next verse. Mr. Blue, you did it right but soon comes Mr. Knight creeping over now his hand is on your shoulder Never mind, I'll remember you this way in concert, ELO typically make this a funny moment, with a band member putting their hand over Jeff Lynn's shoulder as he plays Mr. Knight coming back for Mr. Blue sky, almost like characters in some kind of children's nursery rhyme lyrically. The chorus repeats, and then things change with the concerto coda at the end, a killer vocal harmony part culminating in an orchestral string arrangement. And then we get to the song's famous final ending at the very end of this symphonic, soaring, yet firmly rock and roll extravaganza. The final track of side three of out of the Blue, you hear that vocoder voice say what many think is Mr. Blue sky, which is what it sounds like at first, and it makes sense since Mr. Blue sky is said repeatedly earlier in the song, but what is actually said is a request to please turn me over. This only works, of course, when you consider that in 1977, vinyl albums were how most people consumed their music, where you'd have to literally flip the album over to start side four. It's one of the cool things about this rock era, the careful attention that was paid to the ordering of songs for albums and how they would be heard when listened to in their full splendor, as planned. It is genius. Isn't it? In 2020, a researcher from the Netherlands named Jakob Joelij conducted a study in the search of what he called the feel good song formula in an effort to pinpoint from a scientific standpoint the world's happiest music. The study included 126 songs from a span of 50 years, surveyed by 2,000 people to ask which song made them feel the happiest and testing their brainwaves while listening to the songs. His findings concluded that Mr. Blue sky was the cheeriest, with all the check marks for the formula, over 150 beats per minute in a mostly major key, with positive and slightly nonsensical lyrics. It replaced Queen's Don't Stop Me now in the top spot from a previous survey. Out of the Blue was released in October of 1977 and it went to number four on the Billboard chart in the US. It soon went multi platinum, making it one of the best selling elo albums. When Mr. Blue sky came out, it went into the top 10 in the UK, but barely squeaked into the top 40 in the US. Regardless of how it performed back then, it has become one of ELO's signature songs because of how much it's used in movies, TV shows and commercials, including in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 in which the Groot character is lost in the song while a major battle rages all around him. And that's what this song is, an elevator up out of whatever negativity might be going on. This music that Jeff Lynn created sounds like a sunny day through a Sgt. Pepper's filter. The album version is a perfect 5 minutes and 6 seconds of highly orchestrated moving parts, scientifically guaranteed to brighten the day. Part of his blue streak of incredible songs in the 70s with blue in the title, Jeff Lynn put it simply in his very unassuming anti rock star way, saying that the secret of Mr. Blue sky is that it makes you feel good and it is a proven antidepressant. In audio form, it's a signature song for eloquence, a song to celebrate a sunny day or whenever you need a little burst of sunshine. I'm Janda and this has been behind the song. If you like this episode, give it a like and subscribe to the channel. Special thanks as always to Christian Lane for the music you hear on these podcast episodes. Check us out on TikTok and you can find me on the air at 97.1fm the drive in Chicago and@wdrv.com on the way. Much more Click Classic Rock and roll.