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Post by lawrev on Jul 7, 2023 0:04:02 GMT
While listening to a Jeff Lynne interview from several years ago where he talked about DBMD, and referencing "the engineer" (but not naming the famous engineer working on Discovery), it gave me the incentive to pull out the September 2013 interview with Reinhold Mack. I wanted to hear his reflections on that song but also working with Jeff and the band. Here is the article:
No wonder he is such a highly regarded producer and engineer - the list of bands he worked with beyond ELO is testament to that. But all Jeff could say was "the engineer" working on the album. Mack deserved more than that.
A fantastic article to read in terms of all the technical aspects that went into engineering an ELO album. I highly recommended it.
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Post by Timeblue on Jul 7, 2023 6:23:43 GMT
Jeff's genius is there for all to see but humility isn't one of his stronger points. His failure to recognise other talents in the room has always let him down I think...
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Post by pelo on Jul 8, 2023 7:00:55 GMT
I don't know Jeff Lynne personally, but in the interviews he gives, he seems rather too humble to me.
As for Reinhold Mack: You can also overinterpret things. In the Flashback booklet, Jeff calls him "Mack - our great engineer at Musicland". What I infer from a passage from Dave Morgan's book is that Jeff Lynne must have been quite bitter about band members suddenly wanting song credits for parts they contributed. It's absolutely true that by then he'd readily accepted a lot more ideas ( mainly with regard to the arrangement)from others, but giving credit for them wasn't at all common in the '70s. It seems that because of this experience he prefers to work all by himself now. ( Dave Morgan also pointed out that Jeff helped him a lot with some of his songs and never asked for a credit.) There is also a report by Jeff's post- ELO audio engineer Richard Dodd, who said something along the lines of wanting to pitch Jeff with an idea, to which Jeff is said to have replied, "Stop it or it's not my song anymore".
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Post by lawrev on Jul 8, 2023 15:13:46 GMT
The article cited above is, I think, the most extensive technical discussion of Jeff's approach to songwriting, working in the studio, his working with Mack, etc. What he describes is a bit different than what band members mentioned before the Face the Music album - namely, that members of the band contributed ideas and actual musical notes to songs. Not to mention Kelly's lawsuit against Jet/Jeff re the bridge on Mr. Blue Sky (as reported in the UK media then). Clearly his process was more locked down as the band became famous and wealth was being generated (no doubt recommended by Don Arden). The last quote by pelo seems to be logical conclusion to his songwriting approach. Of course, when he worked with his heroes later the songwriting credits were liberally shared by all of them, even if they contributed a single word or two (as Jeff even admitted). The interview with Jeff I heard has been making the rounds on social media and was in connection with a recent songwriting award (2017 - present), much later than Flashback in 2000.
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