ELO 2 is the album where Electric Light Orchestra became Jeff Lynne’s band — the first record made after co-founder Roy Wood’s departure, and their most ambitious, progressive statement. Released in 1973, it consists of just five long, orchestral tracks, and gave the band their first US chart hit with an epic reworking of Chuck Berry’s ‘Roll Over Beethoven.’

The short version

ELO 2 (1973), released in the US as Electric Light Orchestra II, is the second studio album by Electric Light Orchestra, and the first with Jeff Lynne firmly in charge. After co-founder Roy Wood left during the sessions to form Wizzard, Lynne took the lead, backed by Bev Bevan, Richard Tandy, Mike de Albuquerque and a string section of Wilfred Gibson, Mike Edwards and Colin Walker. Made up of five extended, symphonic tracks, it’s ELO’s most overtly progressive album, and home to their breakthrough US single, a dramatic cover of ‘Roll Over Beethoven.’

Lynne takes charge

Electric Light Orchestra had been founded as a joint venture between Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne, two former members of The Move, but the partnership didn’t last. During the early sessions for their second album, Wood left to form Wizzard, playing on just a couple of tracks before departing. Far from folding, as some predicted, ELO simply became Jeff Lynne’s vehicle: he wrote four of the album’s five songs, produced it, and set the band’s course. Keyboardist Richard Tandy — who moved from bass to keyboards here — became a key part of the sound, alongside drummer Bev Bevan, bassist Mike de Albuquerque and a trio of string players. It was, in effect, the true beginning of ELO as the world would come to know them.

The sound

ELO 2 is the band at their most ambitious and progressive. Its five tracks are all long — the shortest around seven minutes — built from extended instrumental passages, dense orchestral textures and dramatic shifts in mood. Lynne’s love of the Beatles is audible, but so is the influence of the era’s progressive rock, with the cellos and violin sawing away at the heart of the sound. It’s a rawer, less polished record than ELO’s later work, and some of the material could have used tightening, but it has a bold, exploratory energy, and shows Lynne stretching his compositional wings.

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The songs

The album’s centrepiece is its cover of Chuck Berry’s ‘Roll Over Beethoven,’ a hugely elaborate seven-minute reworking that folds in the famous opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and gives the whole band room to stretch out — it became ELO’s first US hit and a live favourite for decades. The four Lynne originals are all substantial: the pounding opener ‘In Old England Town (Boogie #2),’ the melodic ‘Momma,’ the shape-shifting ‘From the Sun to the World (Boogie #1)’ and the sweeping, eleven-minute anti-war epic ‘Kuiama’ that closes the album.

Reception and legacy

ELO 2 was a modest commercial success, reaching the UK Top 40, but its real significance was strategic: ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ became the band’s first single to chart in America, beginning the long love affair between ELO and US audiences that would define their career. Bev Bevan later called it perhaps the most important single the band ever made. The album itself is now seen as a fascinating, transitional work — ELO at their most progressive, before Jeff Lynne refined their sound into the sleek, hit-making machine of their mid-1970s peak. The UK sleeve, a light bulb floating in space by design legends Hipgnosis, is a classic in its own right.

The verdict

ELO 2 isn’t the place to start with Electric Light Orchestra — newcomers should head to Eldorado or A New World Record first — but it’s essential for anyone interested in their progressive roots, or in how Jeff Lynne rebuilt the band in his own image. Ambitious, sprawling and occasionally unwieldy, it captures a band in transition, reaching for something grand. Come for the epic ‘Roll Over Beethoven,’ and stay to hear the early, adventurous sound of one of Britain’s most successful bands before the hits took over.

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