The ELO Story
The ELO Story Jeff Lynne was born in industrial Birmingham, England, on December 30, 1947. He grew up in the then- new Shard End City Council housing estate, a high-density residential development built on the eastern edge of the city right after the Second World War, with his parents Philip and Nancy.1 He had a brother and two sisters.2 Lynne’s grandparents in his father’s side were vaudevillian performers.3 More than thirty years later, Lynne would pay tribute to his birthplace in the ELO song “All Over the World,” which mentions Shard End alongside other cities like London, Paris, Amsterdam, Rio de Janiero, and Tokyo. Lynne was a Brummie, a nickname for those blessed with the notoriously thick local Birmingham accent.4 Brummie is shorthand for Brummagem, the popular West Midlands way of pronouncing Birmingham.5 Brummie also has an unfortunate alternative dictionary definition: “counterfeit, cheap, and showy.”6 The accent, which not everyone in the city shares, has even been described as representing the least intelligent dialect in the British Isles.7 Lynne grew up listening to Del Shannon, Roy Orbison,8 Chuck Berry, and The Shadows records.9 His parents did not always approve. About Roy Orbison’s “Only the Lonely” playing on the radio, Jeff said “[t]hey were complaining that it was too sexy, or something, but that voice just made the hairs go up on my neck.”10 At age thirteen, Lynne attended a concert by Del Shannon at Birmingham Town Hall, and from that point on dedicated his life to music.11 He noticed immediately that live performances
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