Monday, December 9, 2013

Jukebox blowin' a fuse (ELO) #109

Electric Light Orchestra Roll Over Beethoven/ Manhattan Rumble (49th Street Massacre) (Harvest, HAR 5063, 1972)

I admit it - ELO were a guilty pleasure that I denied for a while but eventually I capitulated and outed myself.

Early ELO has a different feel to the more commercial version that would have all the great hits, which I also love. For one reason, Jeff Lynne plays some hot guitar on those early tracks such as this standout guitar wig out (and others on ELO 2 which featured an 8 plus minute version of Roll Over Beethoven).

The song itself is, of course, a remodeling of the Chuck Berry original with a great great intro (the fragment of Beethoven's fifth symphony gives way to that awesome guitar riff).

Hidden Gem: The B side is a weird off kilter instrumental work out for the band. All disjointed and jagged strings and piano. It's probably quite clever and makes allusions to all sorts of classical or musical stuff that I've heard of before. I don't like it much.

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