ELO Again promising complete authenticity with the greatest hits

Their frontman Ian Bostic doesn't know yet what implications Jeff's retirement will have for ELO Again: “But definitely if people are not actually able to see him, then it makes it more important that we get it absolutely right. ELO mean so much to so many people. They were from 72 to 85 or 86 and there are still such ardent fans around that come along and see us. People really do love that music. I think it was just so different. Once you got to 72 then music was changing. The 70s was a decade that had so many different genres, more than the big pop music era of the 60s. But I think what made ELO so special was just Jeff's completely unique brain. Some of the songs that you think are complex are actually quite simple, and some of the songs that you think are simple are really complex. There's just so much to it, such a unique combination.

“I adore chatting to people after the gig, and people say they didn't realise just how many ELO songs they knew. You hear them playing on the radio and you just hear them here and there. These are songs that have gone deep in everybody's psyche. Plus there really were just so many hits.”

As for the band, for Ian and the others it's a question really of studying the originals: “But we are really fortunate that we have got in post excellent musicians who are really phenomenal players. And we are really lucky that our MD knew Lou Clark. That's extremely helpful. That helps give us a level of authenticity. We spend a great deal of time making sure that the tones are right and that we get the harmonies just right, and we are really lucky that we have five vocalists in the band. It is a question of effort and it's a question of time just so that we can get as close as we really can.

“The band itself has been going for quite some time. The MD and two or three of the other guys got on board about ten years ago and I have done three and a half years. It was a bit daunting at first for me but I felt really comfortable really quickly. When you're playing with such great players and such good people it helps. It's a personal challenge to sound like the great man, and you have also got the fact that his voice changed a lot over the years. You are trying to emulate the different eras. He sounded very different in 72 or 73 to the way he did in, say, 1985. There's more of a softness to his voice.

“But the fact is that the music is such a joy to play. It is fantastic music to listen to and fantastic to perform. You just don't get bored by it because there are so many different influences and so many different things going on, disco and orchestral and rock 'n' roll, and in a two-hour show you get to hear so many different forms. I just love doing it.”