Editor’s Note: Welcome to V:News, a new series where we highlight anecdotes and passages from recent Vanyaland interviews to reflect the current day’s headlines and discussions. All the information contained within is from past published work, and can only be reprinted and repurposed with full credit and a link back to the original article.
Way back in January we chatted with Juliana Hatfield about her Electric Light Orchestra covers record, Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO, one of the many new projects the Boston musician has released in the past few years where she interprets hits and deep cuts from some of her favorite artists. During the 617 Q&A, she discussed how her relationship with New England has evolved over her career as well as the importance of a cover being organic, but it was when Hatfield went deep on her love for ELO that really stood out.
Now with Jeff Lynne’s ELO in town tonight for a gig at TD Garden as part of a farewell run dubbed The Over and Out Tour, we’ve resurrected Hatfield’s take on the iconic British orchestral pop band. She talked about the significant role the group’s often ethereal and alien-sounding music played throughout her youth, corresponding with her own feelings of loneliness and isolation, which then came flooding back during the pandemic.
“I remember it being very much a private pleasure,” she said. “It was almost like my secret love was all this music, and I would get in bed at night and the lights would be off, and I would have the radio up to my ear, and it was very much like the secret wonderful musical world that I was discovering and loving.”
Check out more of the 617 Q&A below, and maybe if you look out under the rafters tonight, you’ll see Hatfield – who is about to hit the road with The Juliana Hatfield Three – in the crowd, singing along.
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617 Q&A: Juliana Hatfield on her relationship with Boston, ELO, and organic covers, January 25, 2024 — by Michael Christopher
Michael Christopher: What was your relationship like with ELO as a child?
Juliana Hatfield: Well, ELO, they were one of the bands that came on the radio that I was listening to all the time. When I was a child, I had a little transistor radio, and it was like an AM radio station, RKO or something, playing Top 40 probably. And so, ELO was just one of the bands whose songs would come on the radio, and I loved their songs. I just thought they were so wonderful and they’re pleasurable to hear and unique and they had such an original and distinctive sound, but I didn’t know anything about them. I didn’t know the names. I didn’t know Jeff Lynne was the guy, the main guy. I didn’t know any of their names or anything. I was just a kid. All I knew was that I loved these ELO songs that were coming on the radio, except one of ’em scared me. There’s that song called “Fire on High,” I think.
The instrumental?
Yeah. That used to terrify me. There are all these ghostly, that kind of eerie ghostly choir, all the musical changes. The scary backwards voices. It scared me, but it was also fascinating. I was like, “What is this?” And then the strummed acoustic guitars would come on and then it would be fun. [Starts singing the acoustic guitar part of the song] The strings would come in and it was just really fun.
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I feel like ELO songs have always had a sense of loneliness or isolation running through them. And I wonder if it was a coincidence that you chose to do an album of them coming out of the pandemic when a lot of people were fresh from a period where they didn’t have any social interaction. Even now they may have limited social interaction, and there’s still that feeling of loneliness and isolation for many. Or do you not see ELO’s music that way?
No, I do. They have other songs that are happier, but I chose songs that were the ones focusing on loneliness, alienation, difficulty connecting. But the pandemic, for me, it was like that’s how I lived my life anyway, pretty isolated. So, when people were freaking out around me, I was like, “Oh, now you get to see how I live. And I’m like, I’m so used to this. I’m just continuing on. I mean, I had to change some things. I had to figure out how to record into my laptop. I had done all my records before that in the studio, but that was a good thing for me to have to learn how to record into my laptop. But yeah, so I don’t think that choosing the isolation themes was a result of the pandemic. It was more just a continuation of my life, and the themes of my life are loneliness, isolation, inability to communicate, feeling like an alien. That’s just my existence. And certain ELO songs really speak to that.
The songs of ELO are so multilayered and dense and slick and have all of this intense orchestration and your approach was so different to that. How do you retain the emotion and even the integrity of the song itself by stripping away all of those things?
Well, I think I just have to start with a base of connecting with the subject matter of the song and with the melodies and harmonies. I have to have the visceral reaction to the music of each song I chose, and then feeling a connection to the lyrics. And the songs are so well written, so well-built that starting from there, it makes it that much easier. The songs are not all just about a groove or a vibe; they’re actually well-written songs, they can be played on acoustic guitar alone. And then I just kind of built up from there doing my own thing.
I wasn’t trying to recreate ELO’s recordings, obviously I can’t put together an orchestra – or I could have maybe – but no, I couldn’t really manage that, and nor did I want to because I, I wanted to try to create something different, something that was more the way I would normally put a song, a recording together. So, I just did my thing. I just did my thing with his songs, with their songs and tried to make them feel like extensions of my own musical persona without altering them so much that it was awkward. I’m not trying to make novelty songs. I’m not trying to make anything that’s like, “Oh, look how weird I made this ELO song.” It’s more just trying to make it feel organic to me when I play it.
JEFF LYNNE’S ELO + ROONEY :: Monday, September 23 at TD Garden, 100 Legends Way in Boston, MA :: 8 p.m., all ages, $54.50 to $329 :: Event info :: Advance tickets
