What characterizes a "Jeff Lynne" production?

We do?

 

I have always liked ELO's sound, for ELO....
I guess if that is the sound you're looking for, you call Jeff

 

Gloss

 

Like paint, sometimes I want gloss, sometimes I want Matt, and sometimes I want textured

 

And sheen.

 

He loves compression. No space in the arrangement in general.

Drums are always lousy.

Love Jeff, but he's not perfect.

 

If the drums sound like Don't Bring Me Down, you're in the right place

 

He had a definite sound on the 80's when he was in demand. He did OK on the first Dave Edmunds album he produced but the next one really dropped off. And yeah, it sounded like Dave fronting ELO.

 

Yes. But he uses it in a musical way. I HATE compression but i can like it when properly and cleverly used.
The fact is his production touch works most of the time and with great results :

Harrison's Cloud Nine and Brainwashed,
Roy Orbison's You Got It,
Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1,
Tom Petty's Full Moon Fever and Into The Great Wide Open,
McCartney's Flaming Pie...

Even his narrow panning mixing don't bother me because his mixing techniques tend to focus on the songs, not the sound.

 

I don't think it works. In fact, it would not be overstating it to say that I hate Jeff Lynne's signature sound. I am a massive Tom Petty fan and I rank Into the Great Wide Open way at the bottom, despite thinking there are amazing songs on it. I abhor that drum sound. Lynne took an amazing drummer (Stan Lynch) with feel and swing and turned him into a Jeff Lynne metronome. I hate the overall glossy feel. It doesn't suit a terrific American rock 'n roll band like the Heartbreakers at all.

 

ELO became a different sounding band in 1979 by disbanding the orchestral strings for the Discovery album. They had many different sounds throughout the years.
A bit like Yes did for 90125.
The 'Jeff Lynne sound' is probably closest to the 'Discovery' sound.

 

Yea, ELO's debut, and even New World Record don't sound much like Time or Secret Messages...
I guess in the eighties Jeff settled on a style?

 

I don't know how you can say that is doesn't work :

Cloud Nine (1987) was a massive commercial and critical comeback for George ! Got My Mind Set On You was number 1 in a dozen countries !
Full Moon Fever (1989) was commercial and critical success. It sold 5 millions copies in the US alone !
Into The Great Wide Open (1991) was a little less successful in the US but did better in european charts (i remember hearing Learning To Fly and Into The Great Wide Open on the radio in France week after week).
Roy Orbison's You Got It (1989) was the ultimate hit, reaching the 9th position on the US Hot 100 and the third European Hot 100 Singles ! Roy's first top 10 in 25 years !
Flaming Pie (1997) was a higly critical success and is considered one of Macca's best solo album if not the best (according to me). A massive Deluxe edition of this album is coming soon by the way...

But the overall winner is Harrison's Brainwashed (2002) IMO :

Brainwashed by George Harrison

You can say that you don't like the sound, the production etc. but you can't say that you "don't think it works" because your statement doesn't reflect the reality.

 

I don't think it worked artistically, specifically and especially in regards to the Tom Petty collaborations. Jeff was better matched with the ex-Beatles. I have no problem admitting that these albums were commercially successful. My personal taste and opinion is that I find it aggravating and annoying to listen to and it showed a misunderstanding of what made Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers great. I wasn't speaking for the whole globe. It doesn't work for me.

 

I like those hit albums that he produced. I heard them back then without knowing he worked on them; I was a kid going into my teens at the time especially when Into The Great Wide Open came out.

 

I love Jeff Lynne and ELO and have enjoyed a lot of his productions mentioned above, but have always felt a little bit uneasy that they usually sound like a Jeff Lynne album with a different vocalist, rather than bringing out the characteristics of the artist in question. He's definitely not a producer who hides in the background - the music goes through the JeffLynne-a-liser and comes out sounding like that. But I guess that's what they bought into when they hired him, and there's no question that he can deliver the hits!

 

I don't mind JL's production style, but I enjoy best in smaller doses. A full album of Jeff''s production idiosyncrasies has me reaching for Chuck Berry or BB King as my next record. I need a little sweat and swing after that!!

I guess that's my biggest issue. I could live with the dry DI guitars and that JL drum sound, if the songs/performances actually rocked. Once in a while it works, but boy, a lot of the time Mr Lynne spends too much time on the *rock* and not nearly enough time on the *roll*.

 

I understand.
It could be interesting for the discussion that you develop what makes you find Jeff Lynne's production touch "aggravating and annoying to listen to" (even if i have some clues... ) and most of all how it showed a "misunderstanding of what made Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers great". Really and genuinely interested in your answer about that.

 

at least it doesn't sound like a concrete-walled cubicle, like early Phil Collins solo records.

I know that Daniel Lanois loves those echo-ey atmospheric production touches, and plays them up at every turn. Lanois is sort of like Lee Perry- all of Perry's records have the same sound, too, but I wouldn't want it any other way. It works for me. It isn't cold. And I think Lanois has good taste in the material he decides to work on. "Somewhere Down The Crazy River", "Ring Them Bells", "Dreaming Of You"...the spacey-smoky production style matches those songs really well. Lanois can step out with amplified anthemic dynamics, too, like on those U2 and Peter Gabriel records.

As for Jeff Lynne, he seems to have copped a lot of George Martin, to the point where I realize how much was added to that production style by the idiosyncrasies of low tech in the Beatles era. It doesn't sound as good when it turns into an easily replicable formula, with reliably stable, smoothed out dynamics. Maybe it's just early conditioning, but I prefer my multilayered pretensions with a side order of patchy spontaneity, retrofits, and kluge fixes.

I like the first Wilburys record a lot, though. There's more of that Sun Studios feel in there (although "Handle Me With Care" is Lynne, through and through. Copping some of that All Things Must Pass sound with Harrison on board, of course.) And I like the Lynne-produced Tom Petty records fine. Lynne is a much better match for those songs than Lanois would have been, at any rate. And if you want the classic Heartbreakers band sound on those tunes, the live records are there.

 

As soon as the drum sound was mentioned, specifically the snare. I examples that easily fit the criteria: "Handle With Care" and "Into The Great Wide Open"

 

and