• Blinded By The Light - This song from 1976 is oft confused as an ELO song because it has a similar sound to ELO. It is not an ELO song, nor does it have any relation at all to the band. The song, written by Bruce Springsteen is by Manfred Mann's Earth Band from their The Roaring Silence album. Manfred Mann is the same artist that had a hit (before the Earth Band) in 1964 with Doo Wah Diddy. The confusion with ELO has been propogated by the artist being mislabeled on various file sharing sites.

• Love Is Like Oxygen - This song from 1978 is oft confused as an ELO song because it has a similar sound to ELO. It is not an ELO song, nor does it have any relation at all to the band. The song is from the Level Headed album by the glam rock band Sweet, whose other hits include The Ballroom Blitz and Little Willie. This song is also often mislabeled on various file sharing sites.

• Guns N' Roses' November Rain - Axl Rose had asked Jeff Lynne to produce the song in 1990 and that's where the rumors started. Jeff never did in fact work on the song as he was too busy at the time on other projects. It's not clear if the pair even actually met. Jeff also mentioned that he would consider it in a 1990 Rockline radio show interview, but the project never happened. A June 2001 Reuters news story confirms this by saying, "Axl Rose of Guns N' Roses wanted [Jeff Lynne] to work on the band's 1991 song November Rain, but Lynne was too busy to help."

• ELO's Back From Nowhere - This is a rap artist album from 2005 by Lorenzo Lawson, under the street name of ELO. This is, of course, not Jeff Lynne's ELO. Rapper ELO's album features such songs as Thug Wid You, Rhyme Spitters and the offensive F**k Y'all. The main irony of this: Lorenzo Lawson's ELO stands for Everybody Loves Originality. Yeah, Lorenzo, a little research might have saved you some embarrassment here.

• Michael Shrieve's Stiletto and The Big Picture albums - It's not entirely clear where the rumor started that Jeff Lynne produced either one of these albums, but it's simply not true. It may have first appeared on a general music website (Allmusic.com) in error and it took off from there. Several Jeff Lynne fans bought the album(s) looking for Jeff's involvement, but the liner notes bear out that Jeff was not involved in any way. No one has ever been able to confirm Jeff's involvment unofficially and it's now believed to be a simple rumor started by a database error in the late 1990s.

• A Fifth Of Beethoven - This song is a 1976 song by Walter Murphy and was released on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. It is essentially a disco version of the first movement of Beethoven's 5th Symphony. It is often confused as an ELO song, probably because of the use of classical elements to create a rock song. Even back in the 1970s it was confused as an ELO song and today it still appears on file sharing networks as such. It has no relation to Jeff Lynne or ELO at all.

• Olivia Newton-John's Fool Country - This song is the country rock number that was used in the Xanadu film, in the middle of the Xanadu dance sequence and on the B-side of Olivia's Magic single in the US and the Xanadu single in the UK. Some databases on the web (including imdb.com) have stated that this song is produced and arranged by Jeff Lynne. Jeff Lynne has no connection with the making of this song, rather it was written, produced and arranged by Olivia's long time producer, John Farrar.

• Del Shannon's Traveling Wilburys session songs - It's not clear where the rumors started that Del Shannon was to replace the deceased Roy Orbison for the Vol. 3 sessions and some songs were recorded before Del's own untimely death. George Harrison, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne have all repeatedly denied that Del or anybody was ever considered as a replacement and no such recordings exist in any form. Rumors also exist that Carl Perkins was considered as a replacement at one time, which the band also denies.

• Jeff Lynne the Welsh singer - There is a ballad/caberet singer from Wales by the name of Jeff Lynne. Needless to say, he is not the same as ELO's Jeff Lynne and there is no relation between the two other than the coincidence of the name.

That's all for now!

Robert Porter
January 2008