"The Way Life's Meant to Be"

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When I listened to Time on Wednesday, I thought the bass part from "The Way Life's Meant to Be" sounded like it would be pretty easy to figure out, so I spent some time yester-day doing that.  And then I figured out the guitar chords too.  It's actually pretty easy to play; it's almost a three-chord song, and the bass part is usually just the root note of whatever chord is on top of it.  Some phrases in the vocals are basically just descending diatonic phrases too.

I think the original is with twelve-string acoustic guitars, but I don't have a twelve-string acoustic guitar, so I just used my six-string.  It's not the best recording because I'm still not very good at equalization.  Also, I'm a bit unsure of the chords at the end of the first and third lines in the bridge.  This isn't the whole song because - since I know so little of it - that would be boring (although it's not very interesting as it is).

In learning how to play this I discovered that there's a slight difference between the chords for the verses and the chords for the solo.  During the verses, there are two bars of Eb major, but during the solo, there's only one.

Time

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I started working on this post at the end of August, but I was having trouble with transcribing the lyrics (typing so fast made my hands hurt), and then I started a listening schedule of the albums in my cover projects in which get around to ELO only every six weeks.  I am going to try to write initial posts on Secret Messages and Balance of Power before the year is over though.

Anyway, things about Time.

"Twilight"

There's some really great parallelism combined with alliteration in the first line of the second verse: "Am I awake or do I dream."

"Yours Truly, 2095"

There's some more parallelism here, in the first verse:

I sent a message to another time
But as the days unwind
This I just can't believe
I sent a note across another plane
Maybe it's all a game
But this I just can't conceive

Later, there's the line "But she has a heart of stone."  There are earlier hearts of stone in "Showdown" and "Turn to Stone."

"Ticket to the Moon"

I've noted this before, but it seems like there are a lot of characters in ELO songs who just stand there.  "Ticket to the Moon" has an-other one.  I don't have all of the words (I think I'm missing "would," but I'm not sure), but it's:

Wondering sadly if the ways that led me here
[Would?] turn around and I would see you there
Standing there

"The Way Life's Meant to Be"

I might be making too much of this, but there's more standing:  "And here I stand in the strangest land' and "Although it's only a day since I was taken away / And left standing here looking in wonder."

"Rain Is Falling"

Jeff Lynne uses blue again in the first line: "the sky was very blue."

Also, more standing: "Standing on an island."

I'm not sure what to call it exactly, but there's an interesting poetic feature in the line "But with all their great inventions, and all their good intentions, here I stay."  There's a close resemblance between "all their great inventions" and "all their good intentions."

Sort of hidden in the background, there's the line "The old man is snoring" (and possibly others) from "It's Raining, It's Pouring."

"Here Is the News"

In the last verse, the news is that "Somebody has broken out of Satellite Two."  Satellite Two is also mentioned in "Ticket to the Moon" - "Flight leaves here today from Satellite Two."  I'm not sure if the songs are meant to be connected though - that the singer/speaker of "Ticket to the Moon" is the one whose break out is mentioned in "Here Is the News."

"21st Century Man"

All but one of the verses here start with parallel lines.  There's "A penny in your pocket / Suitcase in your hand," "Fly across the city / Rise above the land," "One day you're a hero / Next day you're a clown," and "You should be so happy / You should be so glad."  But then it changes for the last verse: "Things ain't how you thought they were / Nothing have you planned."  The beginnings of the verses all have a clear structure until it gets to that last one, which explains how things didn't work out.

Also, there's a great rhyme ("wheels of tomorrow" / "fields of sorrow") in "Though you ride on the wheels of tomorrow / You still wander the fields of your sorrow."

—Bonus Tracks—
"When Time Stood Still"

At the end of one of the verses, there's the line "Such a lonely world," which is almost identical to the line "It's such a lonely world" from the end of each verse in "Latitude 88 North" - a bonus track on Out of the Blue.  However, in the liner notes to Out of the Blue, Lynne says that he added the "It's like" to "Latitude 88 North" "20 years later," which would make it about 1997, so the "such a lonely world" in "When Time Stood Still" might actually be older.  I'm not sure if he changed the other "Latitude 88 North" lyrics when he added the "It's like."

Near the end, there's the line "No submarines, no plastic flowers," which I think is a reference to the Beatles, specifically "Yellow Submarine" and the line "Cellophane flowers of yellow and green" from "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."

There seems to be a connection between this and "The Way Life's Meant to Be," since both mention "plastic flowers" and either "ivory halls" (in "When Time Stood Still") or "ivory towers" (in "The Way Life's Meant To Be").

"Julie Don't Live Here"

The first two verses start very similarly: "I wandered through the town" and "I walked along the street."  If the lines were any closer, I'd say it's parallel structure.

One of the verses seems particularly indebted to the Beatles:

I walked up to your door
Last night I saw your face in the window
But it was different now
The lonely light where we used to meet was gone

Walking up to the door, seeing someone through the window, and a light are all elements in the first verse of the Beatles' "No Reply" from Beatles for Sale:

This happened once before
When I came to your door
No reply
They said it wasn't you
But I saw you peep through
Your window
I saw the light
I saw the light
I know that you saw me
'Cause I looked up to see
Your face

There's quite a bit of time between these songs and the Beatles' songs, but - like I've mentioned before - because of the "pick up where 'I Am the Walrus' left off" quote, I'm more disposed to consider those connections.