1387. Here's a treat we stumbled on in reading traffic from the ELO Yahoo! Group, mr_blue_sky.Bev Bevan, the drummer throughout the band's career, evidently functioned as something of a band historian. Also, having been part of the Brum community of up-and-comers (equally the calibre of the Liverpool lads, though one hears considerably less about them) he was also around for the salad days, including being one of the core members of Roy Wood's famous band Move (the one which gave birth to ELO).
In 1980, at the inflection point after Out Of The Blue and before Discovery he compiled words and images into a published history of the band to that point. The book, with the rather un-preposessing title of The Electric Light Orchestra Story, told the story of those early days through the big time of summer and lighntning (and the great glowing hamburger) from an upclose, personal, and frank (though nuanced) point of view.
Toward the end there's even a section with a brief bio of each member, including what city they lived in and marital status.
The scanned PDF is 178pp, about 118 MB in ZIP archive, and available by clicking this link right here. Credit where due; poster "Trap" at this post in the ELOLand forums.
Tags: Electric Light Orchestra, Bev Bevan, Jeff Lynne, Out of the Blue, Move, Roy Wood
2 comments:
I bought this book from another ELO fan in Canada.
It's definitely good reading.
What I liked the most about it was the stories of band politics, making decisions about who to fire, and they're told in this personal style that really didn't cast aspersions on the jettisoned player - sometimes people just don't work together - and the honesty in his saying that one of them took it quite hard.
Music fans (this one included) don't have any idea about the work it takes to actually make a band tick, in the business sense. I like finding out about that stuff.
Of course, the insider-photo-perspective is t.d.f.
If I found this book on sale somewhere, I'd snap it up if I could, and no mistake.
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