Anyone at ELO’s concert at Wembley Stadium on Saturday June 24, 2017, will have felt elated at the end, but deflated by the fact that it was all over. With this DVD you can relive the warm summer night that ELO finally came in from the guilty pleasures cold to be embraced as prog’s greatest pop ambassadors since The Beatles. Even Jeff Lynne – an unassuming man, inconspicuous as ever in his casual black shirt and jacket – is moved by the enormity of the occasion, describing it as “the most ambitious thing I’ve ever done. A real big-time-Charlie job”. He jokes in his Brum burr that, nervously awaiting the show, he expects to be “half-man, half-lavatory”. You can share his awe as the camera pans, from the stage, across the sea of ELO-adoring humanity as they savour every last note of Mr Blue Sky, Evil Woman, Livin’ Thing and the rest.
Behind the scenes, Lynne admits this is the version of the band he had in his head all along, bringing his studio perfect catalogue to sonically precise life. And although he doesn’t do rock’n’roll revelations, we do learn that Do Ya was written in his parent’s front room, and that Xanadu is his favourite of all his songs. Strangely magical.
