Jeff Lynne playing a Veleno aluminium guitar with ELO in 1973

guitarz.blogspot.com: Speaking of aluminium guitars...

I saw this archive clip on television earlier this week: the Electric Light Orchestra playing "Showdown" from a 1973 edition of BBC1's Top Of The Pops. I was very interested to see that Jeff Lynne was playing a Veleno guitar. Veleno guitars were legendary for having been completely crafted from aluminium and for featuring a real ruby inset into the headstock.

Note how in typical Top Of The Pops fashion, when the song goes into the guitar solo, the camera focusses on the drums! When the camera DOES alight onto the guitar then they apply a colour synthesizer to the image. Frustrating for all us guitar spotters!

As well as having a new solo album of cover versions due to be released, Jeff Lynne has recently re-recorded 12 classic ELO songs playing all the instruments himself, which is being released as "Mr. Blue Sky - The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra". You can read more about this project in this Music Radar interview.

G L Wilson

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