Electric Light Orchestra song ‘written in a half hour’ became the band’s first worldwide hit

Electric Light Orchestra’s first worldwide hit was “written in a half hour,” according to frontman Jeff Lynne.

The band behind hits like Mr. Blue Sky, Don’t Bring Me Down, and Twilight, wrote one of their best songs in less than an hour. Lynne says it took him a “matter of minutes” to create the song, having finished most of the album beforehand. But a need for a breakout single prompted Lynne to set about creating a song worthy of promoting Face the Music, their 1974 album release. Lynne has since named it as one of his favourite ELO songs, and it provided the band with their first major hit.

Telling Rolling Stone Magazine of the speedy songwriting which led to Evil Woman, Lynne said he wanted to keep it “slick and cool.” On top of the worldwide joys the song had, charting in the UK, US and Canada, it led to larger and larger live shows, with bookings seeing an increase after Evil Woman’s success.

Lynne said: “I wrote this in a matter of minutes. The rest of the album was done. I listened to it and thought, ‘There’s not a good single.’ So I sent the band out to a game of football and made up ‘Evil Woman’ on the spot. The first three chords came right to me.

“It was the quickest thing I’d ever done. We kept it slick and cool, kind of like an R&B song. It was kind of a posh one for me, with all the big piano solos and the string arrangement. It was inspired by a certain woman, but I can’t say who. She’s appeared a few times in my songs.”

Lynne has since spoken on how the song formed later live versions and though it “got more gigs” for the band, it was not life-changing. He said: “Playing concerts in those days wasn’t fun. The sound was always bad, and we were still playing theatres and town halls, the occasional dance hall. After Evil Woman, we got more gigs, but it didn’t change my life all that much. You can’t buy a palace or anything after just one hit.”

Not for the first time, Lynne turned to The Beatles for influence. ELO’s frequent comparisons to the Fab Four appear to hold water still after the Out of the Blue songwriter confirmed he used The Beatles’ Fixing a Hole as inspiration for the opening line of Evil Woman.

Lynne will play his last shows with ELO later this summer at London’s Hyde Park.