Jeff Lynn - Hidden Secrets Contained Within ELO Songs

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Overview Jeff Lynne's propensity for putting hidden things into his music has a long history throughout his career. Certainly it can be attributed in part to his cheeky nature that he would sneak little things here and there, but his inspiration probably came, in part, from The Beatles. They were known for putting hidden little things in their music, such as the "Paul is dead" story. As Jeff was a big fan of them, he probably noticed this and couldn't help but do things himself.

He began slipping simple, harmless little hidden things into his music (and covers) as early as the Idle Race's first album in 1968. Nearly every project since then has had some hidden little treasure to discover. This culminated in two different instances. The first was in 1974 when Jeff was accused of putting backwards Satanic messages in his song Eldorado on the Eldorado album. This was something that Jeff flatly denied and his response was the rather obvious backwards message on 1975's Fire On High telling them to not waste their time believing such nonsense. This didn't stop Jeff from continuing to put odd little things in for people to discover from time to time. The second culmination was 1983's Secret Messages album which was also in response to the continued accusations. This album was chock full of silly hidden things to discover, some of them fairly obvious and some buried and almost impossible to find.

In addition, some errors slipped into the songs that have been mostly missed by fans and critics. This may include a bad edit or odd mix that was left in for unknown reasons.

This page attempts to lay bare all those little hidden things (with apologies to Jeff!). Each item is addressed, one at a time, evaluated and described. Each item is also given a score of accuracy, from CONFIRMED TRUE to CONFIRMED FALSE and some measures in-between. The scale used is:

CONFIRMED TRUE A true fact, confirmed by an authoritative source (Jeff Lynne, band member, record company, management, etc.)
SURELY TRUE A true fact, based upon observable evidence
MIGHT BE TRUE A true fact, believed to be true, but doubt exists
UNDETERMINED An undetermined fact; may or may not be true
MIGHT BE FALSE A false fact, believed to be false, but doubt exists
SURELY FALSE A false fact, based upon observable evidence
CONFIRMED FALSE A false fact, confirmed by an authoritative source (Jeff Lynne, band member, record company, management, etc.)

Sound samples and images are supplied where available.