My friend Jeff Lynne has asked me to write some liner notes for his CD. \u00a0In a cavalier moment when he was worried about writing them I airily offered to do the job.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh would you?\u00a0 You\u2019ll be able to do it easily\u201d he said \u201cBecause I can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut Jeff\u201d I said \u201cyou have done everything else.\u00a0 All the writing, all the recording.\u00a0 All the singing.\u00a0\u00a0 All the selling.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I haven\u2019t a clue what to do, or how to write liner notes\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing to it I said.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But I lied.\u00a0 My only previous experience was writing liner notes for the second Wilbury\u2019s album, and I think I just copied what Michael Palin had done for the first.\u00a0 Clearly the thing to do was to find somebody funny and copy them, so my first move was to co-opt Billy Connolly into joining us for dinner.<\/p>\n
\u201cLiner notes\u201d he said, \u201cthey still have liner notes?\u00a0\u00a0 I thought they went out with the Titanic.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cThat\u2019s Liner, Billy\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
The story so far.\u00a0\u00a0 In a fit of egotistical madness Eric Idle has agreed to write the liner notes for Jeff Lynne\u2019s album, but so far he has no idea what to do.\u00a0 He is assembling for dinner with Jeff and Billy at an expensive West Hollywood watering hole, called The Expensive West Hollywood Watering Hole.\u00a0 He has sat with Billy for half an hour and made a bad joke about Shark Infested Waiters at the Peninsular.\u00a0 They are waiting for Jeff.\u00a0 He appears.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cHow are the Liner Notes going?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n \u201cNothing to it\u201d I lie.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s a dilemma. I have Billy Connolly to help me, but he isn\u2019t much help, he just keeps collapsing into a pile of giggles and staring wistfully at the waitress.\u00a0 The waitress is really worth a stare, but she has no place on these liners notes.\u00a0\u00a0 I ask Billy what he wants to eat.\u00a0 He says \u201cI want nothing bouncy or jiggly.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSeems to me\u201d\u00a0 I say \u201cthe waitress falls into that category.\u201d<\/p>\n Billy stares morosely into the distance.\u00a0\u00a0 I know that look to mean he\u2019s thinking.\u00a0 \u201cFor the serious collector\u201d he says \u201cthe vinyl <\/em>CD.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh yes and you can download it\u201d I say.\u00a0 The idea slips into the sand and drains away.<\/p>\n \u201cI like that\u201d says Jeff.<\/p>\n \u201cHow about we say originally it was a Virgin record?\u00a0 It had no hole in the middle.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s not funny\u201d said Jeff.<\/p>\n \u201cAlright\u201d I say \u201cwe\u2019ll improvise. Its 1932\u2026.\u201d I begin.<\/p>\n \u201cI had just woken up and was feeling wretched\u201d continues Billy.<\/p>\n \u201cI was lying in the street next to a donkey.\u00a0\u00a0 Nice ass I said.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c\u2019Listen to this mate\u2019, said the donkey putting on a Jeff Lynne album and a small sleeveless Fair Isle knitted pullover…\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAdding a small moustache he set off to invade Poland\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c<\/em>Because he couldn\u2019t spell Czechoslovakia.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n This too sank into the sand.\u00a0 There was a moment of silence as Billy stared at the long legs of the waitress.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re all strumpets!\u201d he said suddenly and very loudly in his Scottish pastor voice. \u201cWhoors, harlots and strumpets the lot of them!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFirst of all they\u2019re not strumpets,\u201d I said, \u201cOne or two of them may be on the sluttish side, but I never met a slut I didn\u2019t like.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPut that down\u201d says Jeff, \u201cthat\u2019s good.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFor the liner notes?\u201d I say in disbelief.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe\u201d he says.<\/p>\n I know Armchair Theater very well.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s a lovely album isn\u2019t it?\u00a0 I mean either you know it or you\u2019re about to, and either way you\u2019ll love it, but nowhere is there anything in it about sluts.\u00a0 Even I don\u2019t think that\u2019ll fly. We abandon our pathetic attempts to be funny and drift on to other subjects and an enormous amount of food is eaten.<\/p>\n \u201cAre you still doing my liner notes?\u201d says Jeff, as he reaches for the check.<\/p>\n \u201cOh yes,\u201d I lie.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jeff Lynne has two new albums out at the moment:\u00a0 Long Wave, and\u00a0 Mister Blue Sky, the very best of Electric Light Orchestra.\u00a0 Amazon.com for details and downloads.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My friend Jeff Lynne has asked me to write some liner notes for his CD. \u00a0In a cavalier moment when he was worried about writing them I airily offered to do the job. \u201cOh would you?\u00a0 You\u2019ll be able to do it easily\u201d he said \u201cBecause I can\u2019t.\u201d \u201cBut Jeff\u201d I said \u201cyou have done […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":259,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions\/259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}