ELO @ Wembley Stadium

It's been around a year since I bought tickets to this gig, but finally for the first time I've seen ELO and been to Wembley Stadium.

ELO are one of those bands that I've always known existed but for the majority of my life not really known too much about. It was when they started the reruns of Top of the Pops a few years ago that I started to pay attention. Basically there were several shows where I hated every record featured except the ELO one and therefore came to realise they were quite good.

In the past couple of years Jeff Lynne has gone from the Travelling Wilburys member the man on the street has never heard of to a household name popular enough to play Wembley Stadium. What's remarkable is that it's on the strength of music that's existed 40 odd years as opposed to the music he's making now. Several years ago I wrote a music quiz and one of the questions was "Who is the only Traveling Wilburys member not in the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame?". That question is no longer valid, he is in there now.

Despite ELO having a new(ish) album out, only one track from this album "When I Was A Boy" was played at the gig, the rest were all songs from their heyday, though they also did "Handle With Care" by the Travelling Wilburys.

Where I was sitting up in the tiers, people sit down to the slow numbers such as "Telephone Line" and "Wild West Hero", and get up and dance to the more uplifting ones such as "Livin Thing" and "Shine A Little Love". They tended to alternate between the slow ones and the uplifting ones, and each time an uplifting one was played a few more people would be getting up.

The one which really got the crowd going the most was "Sweet Talkin Woman", but when it came to "Mr Blue Sky" there was hardly anybody sat down. This wasn't the end though, the encore was "Roll Over Beethoven".

What was quite impressive was just how similar the songs played live sounded to the recorded songs, particularly when you consider you have Cellos and Violins as well as guitars etc.

My only complaint was that they didn't play "Strange Magic", but they had plenty of other ones to compensate for that.

So a top gig and I would definitely recommend you go and see them live.