How was Electric Light Orchestra's "Time" received when it was released?

I think the way it was originally received was a bit of a mixed bag. There were a few songs I liked but definitely not my favourite.

 

"Another Heart Breaks" reminds me of Love and Rockets, circa 1985.

 

As a drummer myself, I've become fascinated with figuring out just how reliant Jeff became on drum machines after first using a loop to create Don't Bring Me Down. Indeed, it's claimed that by the end of ELO, poor Bev Bevan was reduced to only playing live and adding cymbals or just overdubbing percussion in the studio, though there are a few notable exceptions:

From The End Of The World has what sounds like a few live drums, punched in at various intervals over the basic repeating verse and chorus loop (especially for the middle eight and climactic ending), while the last half of Hello My Old Friend has Bev replacing a sequenced Oberheim DMX to brilliant effect. Twilight and Yours Truly, 2095 have live elements, though I suspect Hold On Tight was either looped or a drum machine.

Also, he's definitely playing real drums in the break to Danger Ahead and most of Time After Time, while later on, during the recording of Send It, Bev used brushes on a snare triggering additional MIDI parts (as Jeff directed him from the control room). Caught In A Trap has a prominent ride cymbal that I'm fairly sure is the DMX as well, and based on the personnel involved I'm fairly sure Video! and Let It Run had a lot of help from drum machines.

P.S. I've always thought that a more dynamic remix of Time would bring out the drums, both live and looped. The pounding tom crashes on Twilight and From The End Of The World should be far more explosive, though I'd be happy if we just got to hear drums in the verses of Yours Truly, 2095 at long last... What happened, there, Jeff?

 

I was thinking:

"Julie" is where the main character finds out his old flame isn't there anymore and you can't go back. "Another Heart Breaks" is the comedown from the realization, the "emotional crash" if you will. "Rain is Falling" is the recovery from the emotional crash.

At least that makes sense to me, in this alternate track listing.

 

Same here. I bought the cassette and played it over and over.

 

It's always been my favorite ELO album, and by a country mile.

 

I realise that Another Heart Breaks was a late replacement for When Time Stood Still, but your explanation for where Julie Don't Live Here fits into the overall story makes complete sense, plus it means I don't have to separate any tracks that are already joined - I'll have to try this out!

 

Great! Tell me how that works out. I just pieced it together based on what I could gather from your information. That still leaves me confused on your original post though!

 

This is my answer, too.

 

Mine was thoroughly abused also, I think it ended up in the "Cassette tape all over the road" thread

 

To the best of my knowledge, this was (most of) the original Time tracklist before Jeff recorded Hold On Tight:

Prologue
Twilight
Yours Truly, 2095
Ticket To The Moon
The Way Life's Meant To Be
When Time Stood Still
Rain Is Falling
From The End Of The World
The Lights Go Down
Here Is The News
21st Century Man
The Bouncer

I'm still not exactly sure where Julie Don't Live Here went, plus it's never been revealed if Epilogue came before or after The Bouncer - if there was no Epilogue at all, I'd assume that Prologue was never a separate piece, instead just being the introduction to Twilight (similar to how "Welcome To The Show" is uncredited as bookends on Secret Messages). Then again, because of how well Epilogue and The Bouncer flow on the 2001 remaster, I'm willing to guess the end of the album probably went like this:

21st Century Man
Epilogue
(three second gap)
The Bouncer

As for the middle part, here's what I've currently got for my own sequencing:

The Way Life's Meant To Be
When Time Stood Still
Julie Don't Live Here
Rain Is Falling

Of course, I'm still undecided as to whether "Julie" ends the first side or opens the second, even though it's no longer really much of an issue thanks to the extra storage space the CD format allows us. Really, all we have to do is reprogram the 2001 remaster and keep everything, creating the definitive version of Time without somehow ruining its story.

P.S. In addition to Hold On Tight being recorded in Los Angeles long after the main album sessions at Musicland in Munich, several versions of The Way Life's Meant To Be were cut at various studios, including Polar in Stockholm. According to the original tape box, the working title for this song was actually "Some Russian" due to its sound, only Jeff then added some castanet overdubs to give it more of a Spanish feel!

 

ELO was one of the first "big" bands I got into back in the mid 70's and their "Out Of The Blue" tour was the first outdoor stadium show I caught (Anaheim Stadium) back in '78. ELO didn't tour for the "Discovery" album in '79 which aside from the single "Don't Bring Me Down," didn't have nearly the success of the previous few albums. Thus when "Time" came out in '81, ELO wasn't nearly as popular as they were at the end of the '70's and hard rock/metal was starting to hit it's stride plus the album itself frankly wasn't nearly as good as the previous 3 or 4 albums. Although not quite the jarring transition as the Out Of The Blue>Discovery's disco Beatles pop sound, the increasing use of bland synths vs real strings and diminished prominence of drummer Bev Bevan in the mix of "Time" revealed Lynne and ELO had fallen out with then-current trends on rock and even pop music.

That said, I picked up the album on release day and while giving up on it fairly quickly, did see them when they played the Long Beach Arena that tour. I was pretty bummed that they plowed through a good number of hits as a medley early in the set and the stage production was a drab, gray stage compared to the mind-blowing colorful flying saucer stage and lasers stadium production they had only a few years prior. Jeff Lynne had also reconfigured the live band, dumping 2 or the 3 string players and adding a second guitarist and another keyboard player giving the band a more anonymous feel. Having a cheesy R2D2-like robot buzzing around onstage at key points of the show only added to the instantly dated, rote feel of the show.

IMO, the following album, Secret Messages was a significantly better album, even if it still didn't come close to the mid - late 70's albums and failed to reverse the band's decline.

 

This is my favorite ELO album at this time. Curiously parts of it remind of Flaming Lips circa Yoshimi Battle the Pink Robots. Rob Schneider of Apples in Stereo also said Time was a big influence on his last album.

 

Yeah, I hear an ELO/Time influence in Yoshimi, as well as Pink Floyd (what a weird combination)

 

I think it doesn't really matter, because it works kind of well either way, but if it were UP TO ME, I'd have it close out side 1. We have him find out he's truly alone in the future. His IBM girlfriend didn't work out, his girlfriend from the old days is gone. Everything that was familiar to him is gone or changed. End Side 1. The beginning of Side 2 picks up where he's at his emotional lowest, dealing with that realization in "Another Heart Breaks".

I also wonder if "Ticket to the Moon" shouldn't be towards the end of the album either, instead of track 4. "Ticket to the Moon" sounds to me as if it should be later because he's exhausted all other options on Earth after he finds out Julie's gone.

 

I read somewhere (not sure where) the following suggested order:
Prologue
Twilight
Yours Truly, 2095
Ticket To The Moon
The Way Life's Meant To Be
Julie Don't Live Here
Another Heart Breaks
When Time Stood Still
Rain Is Falling
From The End Of The World
The Lights Go Down
The Bouncer
Here Is The News
21st Century Man
Hold on Tight
Epilogue

I don't think the Bouncer fits well in the above sequence (in terms of narrative and musical flow), and agree it kind of sits better after Epilogue (Even though the Epilogue is usually the end bit that closes the story).

 

Insanely popular around here. It went on to become their signature album in the Soviet Union and Ticket to the Moon by far their signature song. In fact still the only ELO song that some people know. I can hear it on the radio daily. Time is every russian fan's favorite album by a country mile.

 

Time was my first favorite album. As a 12 year old sci-fi geek, it's melancholy time travel story dovetailed perfectly with my love of Star Wars, Logan's Run, and Battlestar Galactica. Ticket to the Moon once puzzled my brain with the characters nostalgia for my future. My current self marvels at how prophetic it was. "Remember the good old 1980's. When things we so uncomplicated." Indeed.

 

OK, so I've got 2 possibilities for any of those still interested. Both are pretty similar, but check this out:



Depending on the ending of the "story" you want, The Bouncer can come first...the character is kind of hopeless either way, but if the Bouncer comes first, then he's like, "oh I'd be so happy" and it's a fun little song with some [twisted] hope...then the reality of the situation comes in at Epilogue and rephrases the "you'd be so happy" ["you should be so happy"] part but lets us know the guy is stuck there permanently.

OR you can have The Bouncer at the end, to give it a happier ending, but it's still twisted even with that little hope that he will indeed wake up.

The rest of it, I changed around some of the tracks to give it a better "narrative" and "story arc".

"The Way Life's Meant to Be" is him walking around this new time/world, checking it out and absorbing it. After that, he finds a new girlfriend [Yours Truly, 2095] and that relationship crumbles. He then decides to go find Julie afterwards.

As stated before, "Ticket to the Moon" should come AFTER the whole "Julie" arc because he has no options left on Earth. He leaves Earth for the Moon and sets up a new life there [and it fits in with the "sent you a message from the end of the world" and the whole "when I met you, you were just a sidewalk dancer"....obviously he's setting up a new life for himself on the Moon.

I took out "When Time Stood Still" because I couldn't find any decent place to put it into the story arc.

OR....here's another option....we put "Yours Truly, 2095" AFTER the whole Julie arc. That would make even MORE sense, because of the "she looks a whole lot like you"...obviously he's trying to compensate and fill in the gap that he has with Julie missing.I actually like that better than my original order above.

So we'd have:

Rain Is Falling [end of Julie arc]
Yours Truly [robot love fails]

Then of course he goes to the Moon after his options are exhausted.

Thoughts? Questions? Opinions? Concerns?

 

In a similar way to Eldorado, it seems the concept of Time is about the main character only dreaming that he's actually in the year 2095, which is why Hold On Tight worked so much better than The Bouncer. However, considering the album's theme, even this could have been even more effective if only Jeff had kept the original introduction (as heard exclusively on the Flashback set), though I suppose the hard edit coming out of 21st Century Man also serves as a more abrupt version of the same "waking up" idea. Indeed, I've heard that he only made the decision to cut out the synthesised clocks meant to have served as a segue into Hold On Tight because one of the many keyboards sequenced for this section came in a fraction too early - rather than try fixing this at the mastering stage, he simply took out the whole section, which may explain why a short gap remained on the earliest CD pressings of Time.

P.S. Do you really think Ticket To The Moon should go later? I always thought it was a good breather after the relentless pace of Prologue, Twilight and then finally Yours Truly, 2095. Also, it crossfades into The Way Life's Meant To Be, suggesting that was always its place. As for your tracklisting, I'm guessing that replacing From The End Of The World with the similarly titled From The SUN TO The World was simply a mistake, or did you just incorrectly label the right song? Based on the length I'd say it's probably more the latter, unless you trimmed down the completely unrelated song from the ELO 2 album, that is...

 

It's the right song, but when it got ripped, the database mislabeled it and I've just never changed it/caught it until tonight.

The original album flows fine as it is. However, I do feel the narrative as I put it flows better and is more coherent (maybe not musically though).

 

Can you please point me in the right direction about the bit on Flashback with the original intro?

 

For me, Time is a great ELO album and the last one I liked. I have never cared for Secret Messages, Balance of Power or Zoom. I think the songwriting on Time was Lynne's last hurrah.

 

Ah, I see now, at the end of Getting To The Point.

 

It never really gelled with me. I was 7 when the album came out and heard "Hold On Tight" constantly on the radio then. I got around to buying Time a few years later (I was buying all of the ELO albums on vinyl at that point) and I remember not being real impressed with it. It had some good songs, but I just don't remember enjoying it enough to warrant repeated plays and was better off hearing the singles from it on a compilation instead.