Indeed, opening song “Magic” was a number one single in the USA, so he worked his magic (sorry) on this soundtrack too, but I’m going to have to disagree with millions of record buying Americans, because I find it inoffensive, but really rather bland. Unfortunately, these songs comprise half of the record, so it would be wrong to ignore them and just pretend they weren’t there… as much as I would like to.Įach of the five songs on the first half of the album are written by John Farrar, a successful songwriter and long-time collaborator with Olivia Newton-John (he wrote “Have You Never Been Mellow”, as well as “Hopelessly Devoted To You” and “You’re The One That I Want” on the “Grease” soundtrack), so his track record is impressive. Being completely objective, I can’t say that there is much on side one of the album to interest me and the fact that ELO share a soundtrack with Cliff Richard is one that causes an uncomfortable shifting in my seat. However, the silver lining to this cloud is the handful of excellent Lynne-penned songs which appear in the film and, subsequently, on the soundtrack. It was named amongst the worst films of the year by critics and was even an inspiration for the Golden Raspberry Awards, formed specifically to ‘honour’ bad motion pictures. Sadly, I do think it’s a shame that Jeff Lynne and the Electric Light Orchestra had anything to do with the 1980 film “Xanadu”, such was the negative critical response. Honestly, I am not writing these words to upset fans of the film or of Olivia, Cliff or anyone else to do with the project. chart-topper.Full disclosure here: I’m writing this review because of my interest in The Electric Light Orchestra and have to admit that I feel utterly indifferent to Olivia Newton-John’s music it is not something that has ever interested nor offended me (although I do think “Physical” is rather awful). At the very least, “Xanadu” gave ELO their first and only U.K. However, Lynne never regretted doing the film, and neither did Newton-John or anyone else. ”ĮLO didn’t survive for much longer after Time and it may have been due to Xanadu. “Maybe it does have too much of a pop approach to it,” Lynne said. However, Lynne was trapped in his contract to give the filmmakers what they wanted. Lynne also acknowledged that some backlash came from many people’s feelings that ELO’s Xanadu songs were too pop. “They’re saying, ‘We don’t want to touch them after that bloody film.’ It’s because the film is so bad, and it’s a failure and we’re associated with it… It’s because the film is so bad and it’s a failure and we’re associated with it.” Lynne blamed Xanadu during an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer. Lynne thought some radio stations were reluctant to play the album. George Harrison Once Admitted That It Was a ‘Bit Ironic’ That He Loved Working With Jeff Lynne The producer thought the flop hurt ELO
ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA XANADU MOVIE
I don’t think I’ll ever see the movie after reading the reviews.” I don’t suppose anybody else has, either. Lynne told Rolling Stone (per LA Weekly), “I wrote half the songs, though I’ve never seen the thing. All of Lynne’s hard work was for nothing. “I’m really pleased with the music,” he said in Going Back to Xanadu. In the end, his five songs satisfied Lynne. “We were in Munich at the time doing it, and it became a very frustrating experience, making what should have taken a couple of hours took about three or four days, as I remember.” “So when we came to record it for real, we had to keep in time with the demo, and the demo was not in time, so it was a bit of a nightmare to actually record the thing. “It was a really difficult song to record because Jeff had sent the demo of the song to the studio in Hollywood, and they had actually shot the dance sequence to the demo,” Bevan said. While working on their part of the soundtrack, Lynne had to write songs under the tight constraints of his contract.ĮLO drummer Bev Bevan told Martin Kinch (per Ultimate Classic Rock) that recording the title track was exceptionally hard. Lynne said he can’t watch Newton-John’s ‘Xanadu’
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