Face the Music

Backdated, archival post

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Initial notes on Face the Music:

"Fire on High"

It's pretty obvious, but I'll mention it anyway: the Hallelujah chorus from Handel's Messiah is one of the sounds mixed into the track.

"Evil Woman"

The second verse starts with "There's a hole in my head where the rain comes in," which seems to be a reference to the Beatles' "Fixing a Hole" from Sgt. Pepper, specifically the first verse:

I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in
And stops my mind from wandering
Where it will go

"Fixing a Hole" doesn't specifically say that the hole is in the speaker/singer's head, but mentioning "my mind" seems to imply it.  I think the lines are too similar for this to be just a coincidence.  Both have "a hole" in the head "where the rain comes/gets in."

"Nightrider"

There’s a bit of parallelism between the first and second verses.  The first starts with "I remember…," and the second begins with "I recall…."  The full line is "I recall the situation clear," which exhibits a flat adverb ("clear" instead of "clearly").  I don't think this is for purposes of rhyme though, so maybe it's just because the full adverb would have been one syllable too many.

"Down Home Town"

The second verse starts with the line "The monkey business in this town," which might be a reference to Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business."  Even though that phrase is pretty common, ELO covered Berry's "Roll over Beethoven" and they mention him by name in "Rockaria!" so I have some confidence in that reference.

In the last "But it's no, no, no" section, the second "No, no, no" is preceded by "She loves you" in the backing vocals (which then also sing the "No, no, no" along with the lead vocals), so it's the opposite of the Beatles' "She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah" from "She Loves You."  The lyrics and the musical phrases to which they're both set are so similar (even using the same notes that the Beatles did! - D, E, G, G, F#, E) that I don't think this is just a coincidence.  It's clearly an homage of sorts.

"One Summer Dream"

This contains one of Jeff Lynne's many uses of the word blue:  "Blue mountains high."

Before I transcribed the lyrics (although my transcription is still incomplete and probably inaccurate in places), I hadn't noticed that the first lines of the first and third verses later combine into a new free-standing couplet.  "Deep waters flow out to the sea" starts the first verse, and "Oh, summer breeze flows endlessly" starts the third.  Later, they re-form into: "Deep waters flow out to the sea / Warm summer breeze flows endlessly."

The verses also contain the three states of matter (discounting plasma).  There's liquid in "Deep waters," solid (land) in "Blue mountains high," and air in "Warm summer breeze."

Eldorado

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I finally got around to listening to Eldorado and writing up more detailed versions of my past notes.  I also found some new things.

"Boy Blue"

I'm having a lot of trouble understanding the lyrics to the early ELO songs (so my transcriptions are all over the place in terms of accuracy and completeness), but I think one of the lines in "Boy Blue" is "I've seen bald nights," which is probably a reference to Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain.  I listened to Night on Bald Mountain immediately after Eldorado, and while there do seem to be similarities in mood, I didn't find anything specific that links them.

"Poorboy (the Greenwood)"

This mentions "sweet Maid Marian" who comes from the Robin Hood stories, so there's a connection between this song and the earlier "Can't Get It out of My Head," specifically the line "Robin Hood and William Tell and Ivanhoe and Lancelot."  (Incidentally, Raleigh's Ivanhoe and Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur are both on my to-read list, so once I get around to those, maybe I'll understand those allusions better.  I read Howard Pyle's The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood last summer, so that could stand re-reading at some point too.)

"Mister Kingdom"

This contains the line "Go to sleep, perchance to dream," which is a reference to and quote of Shakespeare's Hamlet - "To sleep - perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub!" (III.i.73).

"Nobody's Child"

"Nobody's Child" exhibits anaphora:  every line in the verses starts with the vocative "Painted lady."  There's also some alliteration in the line "Painted lady, don't you do these dirty deeds."

"Eldorado"

There's a recurring section that goes something like:

And I will stay
I'll not be back
Eldorado
I will be free, yeah
Of the world
Eldorado

The last one of these, however, breaks off halfway through, so that it's just "And I will stay / I'll not be back / Eldorado."  That last section is left incomplete, as if the speaker/singer indeed hasn't come back.

"Eldorado Finale"

This is also present in "Eldorado Overture" but the lines aren't successive.  In both though, there are lines that mention "The unwoken fool" who is "High on a hill in Eldorado," which might be a reference to the Beatles' "The Fool on the Hill."