Today’s telephone-themed classic song of the day is “Telephone Line” by Electric Light Orchestra. This one, released as a single in May of 1977, went to #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #4 on the Cash Box Top 100. It was ELO’s biggest hit in the U.S.
ELO was a British band led by multi-instrumentalists Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood. The group incorporated (often synthesized) strings in addition to the typical rock band instrumentation, giving them somewhat of a classical orchestral sound.
Jeff Lynne wrote and produced “Telephone Line.” He chose to open the tune with the sound of an American ringtone, not a British one, because he was aiming at the much larger American market. Interestingly, they didn’t use a recording of a real ringtone, but reproduced the sound on a synthesizer, as Lynne remembers:
“To get the sound on the beginning, you know, the American telephone sound, we phoned from England to America to a number that we know nobody would be at, to just listen to it for a while. On the Moog, we recreated the sound exactly by tuning the oscillators to the same notes as the ringing of the phone.”
Which leads us to today’s daily bonus video of the day, Jeff Lynne and Electric Light Orchestra performing “Telephone Line” live on the February 18, 1977, episode of The Midnight Special. Nice tune.
