The musicians Jeff Lynne couldn’t stand working with: “A rotten trick”

Jeff Lynne’s meticulous approach to recording helped make Electric Light Orchestra’s songs sound richly arranged, but he grew frustrated with the rules governing session musicians. He objected to string players having to stop at noon, even if they were part-way through a song, and said he saw the practice as unfair.

The article says Lynne, pianist Richard Tandy and arranger Louis Clark developed string parts together, leaving space for them in the rhythm tracks. By the 1980s, Lynne had tired of working with strings and welcomed synthesizers; their prominent use on ELO’s 1981 album *Time*, including “Twilight”, brought a new sound while retaining the band’s grand melodies.