OLIVIA NEWTON JOHN AND ELO – "Xanadu"

Xanadu – I’m thinking Citizen Kane here rather than S T Coleridge and the Person from Porlock – seems an apt metaphor for both record and film. Both were monstrous follies, although the record seems to have been less so than the film.

The record was pleasant and enjoyable but an anachronism even then. The film was an ordeal and I’d rather pedal a fixed-wheel track bike up Porlock Hill than sit through the film again.

On reflection I see 1980 as one of those transition years, where lots of different things are being tried and none quite gets a toe-hold for a while.

If we’re analysing the reasons for popularity, then this was a classic case of bunging two bankable acts together, (who had possibly been plateau-ing a little too long), flagging the collaboration as a Major Event, capturing two fanbases, and hence landing the Big One.

Of course, there’s an in-built problem with such ruses: namely that subsequent releases can feel like a comparatively poor deal. Unless they’re very, very good. And tellingly, this did indeed mark the beginning of the end for ELO (only one more Top 10 hit to come) and Olivia (likewise).

At the time, this struck me as a crass cheapening of ELO’s craft. (I was no big fan, but the 1979 Discovery singles had done much to win me over.) But on the other hand, its euphoric pop clout was impossible to fully resist. (We can’t say G****y P******e any more, can we?)

These days, I have no problem in embracing it as a sparkly, spangly, kitschy delight – particularly when viewed through the prism of a dozen drunken nights down at Duckie (Saturdays at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern), where its status remains unassailably anthemic. Catch me in the right place at the right time, and I’ll tell you it’s the Best! Record! Ever!

At all other times, it’s a fond 8 from me.

It is of course the second number one with Xanadu in the title…

incidentally, it struck me yesterday — while working on a completely different project — that one very significant reason for the mainstream dadrockmag urge to “reassess” ELO* is of course the massive looming 90s bulk of Oasis

*i mean apart from the fact that they are awesome, which i don’t take to be a prior consideration with consensus reassessments

clearly the world’s listeners are sensibly waiting to see where the results of my “completely different project” point them

Wasn’t this the last major cultural project involving Gene Kelly?

Another one I don’t think I’ve heard since the day it dropped out of the chart, so obviously not one that oldies radio favours greatly. On one of his last Radio 1 shows Nicky Campbell had a great little interview with ONJ, getting her to admit to various flops while still keeping on very good terms with her.

I’ll have to confess that I’m not these days a great lover of ELO. Can’t remember quite the context in which it cropped up before (maybe the extensive G—– P——s discussion we had instead of talking about Gilbert O’Sullivan!) but I said then that I found much of their stuff overproduced and fairly lifeless (with some honourable exceptions) and thought it was a shame Jeff Lynne was the one to produce the “new” Beatles singles. In fact at around this period (time to don the Sandi Thom tin hat again) I quite enjoyed the band Sky – John Williams, Herbie Flowers et al. Their version of “Toccata” was a highlight of the 1980 chart for me, and their classical/commercial crossover had a greater lightness of touch. Saw them at Manchester Apollo in fact – they all sat down throughout the gig, and they did my favourite piece, “Connecting Rooms” which starts very quietly, straight after the interval when people were still loudly taking their seats.

elo are a complete musical blind spot to me – although I only know them from the singles. What irritates me about them in particular is the persistant use of multitracked vocals which show nothing like the harmonic inventiveness of the Beatles – who they claimed to emulate.
Any lingering affection for their melodies took a blow when they featured heavily in probably the worst episode of Dr Who ever – the one with Peter Kay and the girl who gets turned into a paving stone.
Thankfully I have only a faint memory of this particular song – I seem to remember ONJ swirling around on roller skates but maybe thats my memory playing tricks

We have quantitative data on knownness! This was played as a question at the 2008 Norwegian individual quiz championships. Fifteen players out of 47 got the singer *and* band right.

Like Village People’s Can’t Stop The Music, this was another of those projects which in between commissioning and release found itself somewhat stranded on pop’s incoming tide. It all got forgotten about rather quickly and filed away in the collective memory as an emblem of disco-era tack. I loved this at the time though – a solid 7 from me.

Re 17: Nope, I don’t recall I’m Alive at all. But I remember how the follow up, All Over The World, goes right down to the vocoder bits.

One of the contributing factors to the death of the pop musical was the sheer speed pop was moving on in this period. On paper in 1978 when this was mooted started nothing could go wrong with Xanadu (except perhaps it having a bit of a shit script and a creepyish Gene Kelly). But by the time summer 1980 came around ONJ, ELO, roller disco and some truly aweful effects just jarred and seemed dated. To make a successful pop musical you needed to get a band ont he crest of their wave, and thus was biorn the Eighties phenomenon : the dancical. Films like Fame and Flashdance in many ways ensure their success by leaving the music often to the very last minute (and often the dances were not done to the final songs, but rather post synched). Coupled with an increasing use of location filming which made more noticable the jarring effect of characters bursting into song, Xanadu was the final nail in the cinematic pop musicals coffin for nigh on twenty years.

The writing was on the wall though. The trailer does seem a bit on the desperate side:

to get a bit socio-economic for a moment, the 60s and 70s had seen the ballooning possibility of “sheer techno-spectecle” (which technology itself encouraged), but the crowd-size issue of pays-for-itself scale and the punter-sense of how excluded you were willing to feel sparked not just a backlash, but a whole layer of other (smaller, quicker, cheaper) ways of achieving force or energy or flash or amazingness: all this combined with oil fuel rises and general economic slump

the secret text of all opera and musicals is the tale of how the project pays for itself: with wagner’s solution at one end (gesamtkunstwerk as the zeitgeist expression of the New Human) and “let’s put the show on here!” at the other

I think the disco bubble had burst*, and we were well after the Saturday Night fever backlash. Also Michael Beck was a very weak leading man in comparison to say John Travolta. Perhaps one of Xanadu’s failings was to try and appeal to more than one generation (by stuffing Gene Kelly in there).

*Not that ELO are particualrly channelling much disco here, rather an over-treated electronic prog-pop! Which may also explain a lot.

Roller disco is much more fun to do than to watch!

I was about to say the song isn’t like 70s disco in that the backing strings have been replaced by synths, but listening to it just now on youtube I see I’ve misremembered, it does have strings, it does sound a bit seventies after all. The piano in it reminds me a bit of Dancing Queen.

Love this. Major sucker for ONJ.

OK, heard this out last night and ate it up, so I want to revise my score (at #31) for this up to at least a 6 (humble pie, yummy!). Film still absolutely wretched of course.

#33 – I’m on an ELO binge at the moment, and just thought I’d drop by to remind myself what was said about this one. Broadly speaking, I agree with the review and everyone’s comments.

However, I’m also going to lend my support for the brilliance of “Twilight”, which might be Jeff Lynne showing off and trying to cram as many pop hooks into one single as he can manage, but it’s irresistible. Certainly in my top five ELO singles of all time, and deserved much better than the insulting, meager number 30 UK chart placing it ended up with.

I also agree that while ELO’s commercial fortunes declined significantly during the early eighties, I don’t think they went ‘off the boil’ creatively – at least, not immediately. If you try to push its slightly woolly “time travel” concept to one side – or re-imagine it in a Super Furry Animals/ Neon Neon/ Flaming Lips context, as I tend to do – 1981’s “Time” has other marvellous tracks to be heard besides “Twilight”.

Similarly, while there is a decline in quality on 1983’s “Secret Messages”, it still contains songs which are up there with some of their best offerings, not least the cold war paranoia of the title track, and the weary melancholy of “Stranger”.

Early eighties ELO tends to be overlooked by fans, critics and casual buyers alike, but the heavier use of synthesisers and the gradual sidelining of the orchestral elements does take them to some interesting new places. You can certainly hear a crossover between that period of ELO and parts of Neon Neon’s “Stainless Style”.

Typically routine and humdrum stuff from ELO imho. 4/10.