NOTE: This is a pre-production transcript and may not match the final show precisely.
Hello! And welcome to the next episode of How Good It Is, the show that takes a closer look at songs from the rock and roll era, and we check out some of the stories behind those songs, and the artists who made them famous.
My name is Claude Call, and sometimes itâs almost like I know what Iâm doing.
Remember to check out the website, How Good It Is Dot Com, and the Twitter, and the Instagram, and of course the Facebook page, which can be found over at Facebook dot com, slash, (ow) How Good It Is Pod.
[PR/PSA]
Hereâs a neat bit of trivia for ye today: during the body of the show weâre going to talk about an unusual musical instrument thatâs mistaken for something else, and that got me to thinking about another song that has an instrument thatâs kind of hard to identify. Listen to this clip; itâs from Walter Eganâs 1977 hit âMagnet and Steelâ. Now, Iâve equalized the clip to emphasize the higher frequencies, so it might sound a little odd, but I also wanted to make it a little easier for you to hear the instrument. Listen for the âtink-tink-tink, tink-tink-tinkâ sound here:
[MAGNET & STEEL CLIP]
Got that? Thatâs the instrument I want you to identify. Let me give it to you one more time:
[MAGNET & STEEL CLIP]
I know what I thought it was, and I was wrong, wrong, wrong. So what instrument is that? Iâll have that answer to that question near the end of the show.
Iâve seen in several placesâincluding a quotation from John Lennonâthat the Electric Light Orchestra is what the Beatles would have sounded like if theyâd kept going in the 1970s. And I tend to agree with that assessment, even if Jeff Lynne kinda put his foot on the scale a little bit when he worked on the Anthology singles in the mid-90s. BUTâthis comparison takes on extra weight because âMr. Blue Skyâ, the song weâre looking at today, was in particular compared to a bunch of different Beatles tracks after it was released.
Let me tell you something: when this double album, Out of the Blue, was released in 1977, it created a bit of a sensation with the advance sales, and the TV adâyes, kids, sometimes record labels aired commercials for new albumsâshowing the ELO spaceship for the first time, and I got a copy as a birthday gift in early 1978, by which time there had been three singles from the album released, so this was clearly a big deal by then. And I think I listened to that album for a few months, solid. And despite that, there are a few things I didnât catch, but Iâll get to those shortly.
Before we talk about âMister Blue Sky,â we need to talk about that entire side of the album. Side Three of Out of the Blue was essentially a rock and roll suite of songs called Concerto for a Rainy Day. And while all of the songs are connected to one another, they were recorded and mastered as four separate tracks on the album. Each track addresses the weather and how itâs going to affect your mood. The first two tracks, âStandinâ in the Rainâ and âBig Wheels,â both take place in rainstorms, but by the third track, âSummer and Lightning,â it looks like the sky is about to clear and finally we get to âMister Blue Sky,â where the sun finally breaks through and everything is wonderful again. And similarly, the tone of the songs goes from somber to bright and peppy. Jeff Lynne explained that he wrote most of Out of the Blue, and the Concerto for a Rainy Day, while he was holed up in a Swiss chalet, looking for something to follow up A New World Record, ELOâs previous album. He told the BBC, “It was dark and misty for two weeks, and I didn’t come up with a thing. Suddenly the sun shone and it was, ‘Wow, look at those beautiful Alps.’ I wrote ‘Mr Blue Sky’ and 13 other songs in the next two weeks.”
[STANDINâ IN THE RAIN]
But itâs not just the weather theme thatâs tying stuff together. If you listen in on the beginning of âStandinâ in the Rainââand you AREâthe first thing you hear when the song starts in earnest is a crash of thunder, but itâs not thunder youâre hearing in this case. In fact, itâs keyboardist Richard Tandy announcing the Concerto for a Rainy Day through a Ring ModulatorâŚ
âŚâWhatâs a Ring Modulator?â I hear you asking, and Iâm glad you did. A Ring Modulator is a signal processor that takes the input of a signal, usually a guitar or a synthesizer, and uses that input to modify a carrier signal that canât be heard. The two tones together create a kind of metallic, robotic sound. The frequency of the carrier determines what that final output is going to sound like. So for instance, if you took this sound:
[RM1]
And ran it through a Ring Modulator set to 2.5 Kilohertz, it comes out like this:
[RM2]
Nowadays ring modulation is actually built into synthesizers. Anyway, they took Tandyâs voice, popped it through a Ring Modulator and got that. That said, some of the thunder and rain noises were, in fact, recorded by Jeff Lynne from just outside that chalet in Munich.
[BIG WHEELS SEGUE]
Likewise, at the end of âStandinâ in the Rain,â we hear Tandy again through the Ring Modulator, setting us up for the next track by reciting some of its lyricsâŚ
Heâs saying, âThe big wheels, keep turning, they turn forever and ever.â And with almost no break in between weâre into the next track, âBig Wheels.â
Now, âBig Wheelsâ ends again with Tandy saying âBig Wheelsâ through the Ring Modulator, and again itâs a very tight jump to âSummer and Lightning.â The songs are lightening in tone.
[MR BLUE SKY]
Now, âSummer and Lightningâ doesnât have any modulated voices, but it does pretty much segue into âMister Blue Skyâ, as it fades out, leaving behind the sound of static, which then gives way to a piano and a radio announcer, both with the lows equalized out to sound kind of tinny.
The announcer tells us itâs going to be a sunny day, and suddenly weâre back into full fidelity sound and weâre carried along, down this bouncy, happy roadâŚ
[after first verse]
So as I mentioned earlier, âMr. Blue Skyâ as a track was directly compared to the Beatles. In fact, it was compared to SEVERAL different Beatles tracks, including the general happiness of âMartha My Dearâ, the complexity of âA Day in the Life,â the hypnotic effects of âI Am The Walrusâ, the bass line of âHello Goodbye.â Iâve even seen a VERY academic analysis of the songâs harmonics, comparing the first four chords and harmonic rhythm with âYesterday.â Seriously, itâs insane how deep this document goes, and I have to admit that because Iâm no musicologist, I barely understood half of it.
Now, electronic voices come back to the Concerto, but this time itâs a regular vocoder that Richard Tandy is using. In the bridge of the song. Tandy sings âMister Blue Skyâ three different ways, but I also need to call your attention to the other thing going on there, and throughout the record really. You may notice a cowbell sound being used to emphasize the transitions through each segment of the record, but thatâs not a cowbell.
Believe it or not, thatâs Bev Bevan banging on the side of a fire extinguisher with his drumstick, and if you watch videos of the band in action, you might catch him banging on an honest to goodness fire extinguisher.
And once again, one of the things that really struck me about the song is something that struck another reviewer. Dominic King from the BBC noted that what he called the âmusical ambushâ at two minutes and 51 seconds is just thrilling.
Listen in as Jeff Lynne sings the words âIâll remember you this wayâ and thereâs absolutely ZERO pause between that and the last iteration of the chorusâŚ
âŚI just love that. And the other thing that King and I both liked is the last segment, which he described as a Swingle Singers/RKO Tarzan Movie/Rachmaninoff symphonic finale. King describes it as âKitsch, yet truly exhilaratingââŚ
The song was the second single from Out of the Blue, and while it was a Top Ten single in the UK, it only made it to Number 35 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart here in the US. In fact, when I got the album in February of 1978, I wondered when this was going to be released as a single. Turns out it already had come and gone, and it just didnât get much airplay in my part of the country. But the song met a similar chart fate in Canada, Ireland, and Germany, and it only peaked at Number 87 in Australia.
In 2012 Jeff Lynne went back into his home studio and re-recorded this, and a bunch of other ELO tracks, which was the source material for the album Mr. Blue Sky: The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra. But this part of the song is missing from that album, and likewise nearly all of the âorchestraâ part of Electric Light Orchestra is missing, with a credit for âstring arrangementsâ made to Marc Mann. The fact is, Out of the Blue is pretty much the last time Jeff Lynne used Mik Kaminski, Hugh McDowell and Melvyn Gale to record the string parts, though they do appear in some subsequent videos. Even since the reformation of ELO in 2014, the orchestral end of things remains sadly lacking.
Oh, and the electronic voice comes back here at the end of the song, when we hear Richard Tandy closing out side three of the album.
Most people hear that as a heavily distorted âMister Blue Skyâ but in fact heâs saying âplease turn me over.â Remember, this was in the heyday of vinyl records, and so heâs telling you itâs time to flip the record over so you can listen to Side Four. So letâs do that: flip the record over and drop the needle on Side Four so I can finish out this thing:
[SWEET IS THE NIGHT]
OK, so whatâs left? The song has been covered a few times. In 1998 it was a band called Nerf Herder, which gave it a little bit of a punky edge, in 2014 a teenager named Connie Talbot, who got her fame from the Britainâs Got Talent TV show, recorded it on her album, and Weezer released their cover in 2019. Theyâre all pretty faithful to the original, though none of them appeared to think that the fire extinguisher was necessary.
And, of course, the song has been used in a bunch of TV shows, including as the theme to a short-lived NBC series called L A X., plus itâs appeared in about a dozen films, perhaps most famously in the opening credits of the 2017 film Guardians of the Galaxy 2, where a dancing Baby Groot works his way through a huge alien battle.
And weirdly, itâs played before the start of every Birmingham City Football Club match. Now that teamâs nickname is the Birmingham Blues. And itâs weird because Jeff Lynne, who is a big fan of the team, wrote a song on the same album that was meant to be homage, called âBirmingham Blues.â So why âMr. Blue Skyâ? Possibly because the fans connect the song to former player-turned-Manager Trevor Francis, who is supposed to be a friend of Jeff Lynne.
And finally: in 2018, researcher Jacob Jolij did some research. He studied over 100 songs from the past 50 years, plus he surveyed over 2000 people. And through his research he determined that âMister Blue Skyâ is the worldâs happiest song. This is something weâre going to revisit in a future show, methinks.
And now itâs time to answer todayâs trivia question. Back on Page Two I asked you about the instrument that Walter Egan uses in the chorus of âMagnet and Steel.â Letâs hear the clip once more without all the equalization:
[MAGNET AND STEEL CLIP 2]
Did you guess glockenspiel? Thatâs what I thought it was for a long time, but in fact what we have there is Steve Hague playing a toy piano. Specifically, heâs playing a very professionally made piano built by a company called Schoenhut, which specializes in pro-grade toy musical instruments built for children. I couldnât discover which model he used, but Schoenhut pianos run anywhere from about $100 to $300. Theyâve been in the business for nearly 150 years and have never had a safety violation in their entire history, making Schoenhut one of the safest toy makers ever. Oh, and while itâs Steve Hague playing that piano, Walter Egan says that the idea of using it came from co-producer and backup singer Lindsey Buckingham.
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Next time around, weâre going to find out How Good It Is when The Kinks invite us to Come Dancing.
Thanks for listening, and Iâll talk to you next time.