David Myhr - Soundshine

The “near Jeff Lynne experience” I could have lived without

Posted: April 4th, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: post | Tags: , , , | Comments Off on The “near Jeff Lynne experience” I could have lived without

As my old band The Merrymakers once sang: “It’s so sad. When you’re losing what you never had…”. (On Spotify here)

This is still a bit painful to talk about only hours after the fact. But I could really use some sympathy right now. Since my wife and I were in the UK anyway for this event that I talked about in the last blog post I had also signed up for the “one in a million” chance to win super exclusive tickets to Jeff Lynne’s ELO’s ”the day before the world tour premiere” show in front of an extremely small audience in Liverpool. It was so unlikely that we would win so I had kind of forgotten about it.

Imagine, then, my incredible excitement when an e-mail came saying “Congratulations – you have been successful in winning a pair of tickets to the exclusive Jeff Lynne’s ELO event today, Monday 4th April. Your name will be on the guest list on the main door.” I was kind of shaking in a way I haven’t since the day I met Paul McCartney when I realized that we could be one of a hundred lucky people watching from only metres away the full production of this first world tour in decades. The tour that we (and 49,999 others) were partly responsible (according to Jeff himself) in making happen through participating in the legendary Hyde Park come back show two years ago (see us singing along with Jeff here). I could go on forever about how Jeff Lynne, his E.L.O., as well as his productions from ”Got My Mind set on You” (George Harrison), ”Free Fallin’”, ”I won’t back down” (Tom Petty), and ”Free as a bird”, ”Real Love” (The Beatles!) among many many others has formed an enormously influential part on my own musicianship since I was a teenager.

Now, try to imaging the horror realizing that we should more or less ALREADY have jumped on the train from London to Liverpool in order to have a fighting chance to be in time for the 4 ó clock(!) showtime. Why not 5? Why not 6? Why didn’t I read my e-mail an hour earlier? WHY WASN’T IT SENT OUT A DAY IN ADVANCE? (I saw the e-mail when we had just ordered some sushi a little bit after one). In a moment of despair I called a woman at the PR agency behind the send-out in hope she would say that it would actually start an hour or two later that would make it all possible (or at least that it would still be possible to get in even an hour into the show). Instead, she only confirmed my three biggest fears. That it would start at four. That there would only be 100 people (can it get more exclusive?) in the audience and that any latecomers wouldn’t be able to get in. She could probably hear the increasing pain in my voice and she told me (only to increase the pain even more) that the first e-mail send-out had “bounced back”(wtf!!!???) and that she ”was sorry” about the late notice.

Skärmavbild 2016-04-04 kl. 22.07.00

Jeff Lynne is my biggest musical hero after the Beatles (on par with Tom Petty and Jellyfish) and it would obviously have been a memory of a life-time. Did my eyes tear up when realized how close we were? Yes. Had I preferred not being contacted at all considering how it all ended? Yes. Do I hope that ANY MEMBER OF JEFF LYNNE’S TEAM OR MANAGMENT OR BOOKING AGENCY sees this, feel incredibly sorry for  me, and decide to contact me in order to compensate us with a VIP experience on an upcoming show on his tour? YES!!! (Worth sending out a prayer anyway…).

Thanks everyone for reading and comforting me in these “troubled times” (as I once sang here). You can’t win them all, can you? See you some other time Jeff! Best of luck on the tour! Come to Sweden! Peace and love!

 

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