When Jeff Lynne wrote “I can’t get it out of my head,” probably not wanting to set up a meta-prophetic proclamation. But with days to go until the 50th anniversary of that song’s release as a single, it’s an unshakable worm, along with at least two or three dozen others just as indelible – a good number of which make up the setlist for Jeff Lynne’s ELO Farewell Tour. In the 1970s, Lynne was the king of pop, or at least the king of hooks that got in your head and never left. And now he gave it to the fans Electric Light Orchestra (as the act was first known) a chance to say goodbye to this playlist as a living thing.

LA area Kia forum shows Friday and Saturday night’s concerts were scheduled to be the conclusion of the American leg of the Over and Out tour, before Lynne performs her final, truly final UK concerts in Hyde Park next summer. Domestic finality didn’t quite work out as planned: a recent sick day and the rescheduling of the affected Phoenix date means Lynne’s US tour will now wrap up in Arizona on Tuesday. Because of this, there may have been a little less excitement about Saturday’s concert than anticipated. Not that any ELO show in history was ever destined to be a tearful affair, given the music’s emphasis on sugar rushes over sentiment, and given the unlikelihood that Lynne – never a verbal stage performer or expressive – to give farewell speeches in the style of Elton. The concert was a dizzying explosion of joy from start to finish for 90 minutes, to the point where it took a little work to make you feel sad about it. (Some of us are willing to put in the work.)

One reason not to take Lynne’s live retirement too hard is that touring was actually a recent development for him; we were not used to his face. Electric Light Orchestra played somewhat like a normal band when in fact it was band in the 70s, before Lynne became an official full-time studio rat. ELO played the pre-Kia Forum, then the Fabulous Forum in ’77 and ’81, and then that was just for shows in LA (or wherever) for the next 35 years. There was a TV taping before an aborted tour in 2001, a Fonda concert in 2015, a Hollywood Bowl Orchestra event in 2016, and finally… a return to full-scale, real touring in 2018, including a stop at Forum. The reasons why Lynne let her recessive traits come to the fore for the better part of four decades are probably multiple: waning interest in her own spectacular hit streak, a real penchant for a studio tan, stage shyness, and especially the way he presented it—an inability to make all those elaborate pop concoctions and mini-symphonies sound right without resorting to excessive, unnatural enhancements.

Those with long memories may recall that ELO’s 70’s tours were met with some controversy when it looked like some of the parts were on Memorex… the kind of thing people didn’t stop out of sight about a quarter of a century ago. Whatever the truth, there was a deep and delicious irony in the fact that Saturday night’s Forum performance could have been live-The best thing he’s done on that stage in all of 2024. He put that down to the workforce, saying when the previous tour was launched that “we can cover any song we’ve ever done with this number of people, with three keyboards, two cellos, violin, four guitars, bass, drums, percussion, choirs – everything is covered.” Truth be told, he probably had the budget to hire so many executives decades earlier than him. But ELO fans didn’t feel the need to look this gift horse in the mouth, no matter how late it arrived.

It shouldn’t be as pleasantly surprising as hearing such rich music with real players doing their thing throughout. Drummer Donavan Hepburn had the biggest part in making sure the audience knew they were keeping things real. He emphasized the thunderous tom-toms almost as much as original drummer Bev Bevan did back in the day, even on later songs when Bevan was toned down. Back-up singer Melanie Lewis-McDonald earns some VIP stripes, between her ability to duplicate the slightly shrill sound of the original female vocalists on “Evil Woman” and her ability to sing the operatic lead on the rock-classic crossover “Rockaria! ” A string trio (Amy Langley, Jess Cox and Jessie Murphy) manages to bridge ELO’s early art-rock days, when Lynne made a cello sensation “I Am the Walrus” for “10538 Overture” on the group’s eventual disco. – the era of violins.

Lynne himself was clearly not only “Steppin’ Out” (to name a song that made an unexpected comeback on the set), but he stepped up to the mic and generally gave his fingerprint in a good way. On a few scattered lines or for a few exchange lines, the frontman was kicked to a backup singer, but not often. His sweetest voice of the night came on “Strange Magic,” a song he (strangely) didn’t do on the previous tour and which it would have felt wrong to do without. While you don’t necessarily look to ELO for overt expressions of deep emotion, there was a tenderness to his take on this that felt affectionate. The same could be said for the even more melancholic “Can’t Get It Out of My Head,” the night’s other major highlight—a song as beautiful as it appeared in the 1970s and just as heartbreaking now.

One notable change from ELO’s last pre-pandemic tour is that Lynne no longer plays electric guitar, and although she plays an acoustic throughout the evening, none of it can be heard in the mix. It’s no surprise that, at 76, he may no longer be able to peel off the rockabilly licks in a “Roll Over Beethoven,” for example, which is no longer on the set. However, there are three other guitarists to fill that role for him – a veritable six-string orchestra – and no one will fault him for focusing on his vocals at this point in his career. (He’s certainly not focused on turning up the stage noise, though he seemed in truly brilliant spirits as he frequently gave the crowd thumbs up.)

There’s a joke somewhere about how ageless Lynne is, most of the time looking and sounding distant, exactly as she did 40 years ago, compared to the weathered portrait of Dorian Gray that is some of us in public. It didn’t hurt that he somehow had the foresight to protect himself from the future, between the obscuring beard, moptop and shades; look a little older before your time comes in handy later. With Lynne being the ultimate master of vocal stacking, it would be easy with such a large team to build a show around whatever shortcomings a 76-year-old singer might face, but the choral support he received felt organic and the amount of time we got his voice alone in the mix was satisfying, for a fan who always felt his vocal tone was as understated as it was hard to define.

His place in history? Listening to the best part of ELO’s run of top 10 singles played, it was hard not to feel that Lynne was THE pop meister of the 1970s. Even if you’re a McCartney maniac, there’s an argument to be made, at least, that in this era, the student lived up to and even surpassed the master. The Bee Gees, another obvious influence on what Lynne was doing, must also be considered part of the equation, so here in 2024 it may still be too early to jump to conclusions. But hearing this pop greatness compacted into such a fleeting set certainly felt like proof that when it came to melodic genius and arrangement, no one did it better.

And the fact that it actually records they were The thing, for ELO – and the live shows lately have been just a wonderful cherry on top – is the only reason not to bemoan the fact that the touring side of Lynne’s legacy is “a terrible thing to lose”. Still, given the caliber of these shows at the Forum, and knowing there are a few more to come in July, it’ll be hard for LA fans who’ll pass up the buzz not to consider booking one last plane to London.

Jeff Lynne’s ELO setlist at Kia Forum, Inglewood, CA, October 26, 2024:

One more time
bad woman
Yes
Confrontation
Last train to London
believe me now
Exit
Rockery!
10538 Overture
Strange magic
Sweet talking woman
I can’t get it out of my head
Fire on High (excerpt)
Living Thing
Telephone line
All over the world
Return to Stone
Shine a little love
Don’t Knock Me Down
(encore) Lord blue sky