At one point or another, most classic artists or bands go for broke. For Electric Light Orchestra, that moment came with their 1977 double album Out of the Blue. Jeff Lynne and company went for the gusto and nailed it on that record, starting with the brilliant opening track “Turn to Stone.”
What is the song about? How did Lynne rally from a case of writer’s block to write this and the other smashes from that album? And what interesting little touch did ELO add to liven up the song? Here are the answers to those questions and more, as we explore “Turn to Stone.”
Blue Move
It wouldn’t be accurate to say ELO was at a crossroads when they made Out of the Blue. They were actually coming off their greatest commercial success to that point with the 1976 album A New World Record, which spawned three Top-25 singles in the U.S. But Jeff Lynne, the band’s songwriter and producer, felt they needed some kind of shakeup to keep things from getting stale.
That’s when he was challenged by one of the bigwigs at his record label to try a double album. Lynne quickly warmed to the idea. The only problem is he went into it without any songs in the hopper, meaning he’d have to write this massive project from scratch.
When he settled into a chalet in the Swiss Alps to write, he found a stretch of depressing, rainy weather wasn’t exactly conducive to the creative process. With a deadline to write the thing in a month, he spent most of the first two weeks stuck in writer’s block. Luckily, the weather cleared, and that opened up the floodgates for Lynne. The bulk of Out of the Blue, including “Turn to Stone,” came from that stretch.
A Clever “Turn”
Lynne and his band recorded Out of the Blue in Munich in summer 1977. More than ever before in the band’s history, he took control of many aspects of the recording, to the point many core members of ELO were largely left out of the process. For “Turn to Stone,” which featured a rhythmic pulse that flirted ever so slightly with disco, Lynne decided on an unusual tactic to spice things up, as he explained in an interview with Rolling Stone:
“There’s a part in the middle where I talk super fast. I just felt like it needed something simple in the middle of the song. I often used to put a funny little piece in a song just in case I get bored with it. I’d go, ‘Well, maybe this is going on too long. I’ll think of something daft to put in there.’”
That crazed, mostly a cappella section did indeed help “Turn to Stone,” which also features swirling strings and call-and-response vocals, stand out. It was the first single released off Out of the Blue, hitting No. 13 in the U.S., and it also kicked off the album as the lead track.
What is the Meaning of “Turn to Stone”?
Jeff Lynne uses vivid imagery throughout “Turn to Stone” as the narrator describes his surroundings, or, as he refers to it, my blue world. And it’s all to distract himself from the fact that he’s missing his love: I turn to stone / When you are gone / I turn to stone.
The secondary vocals do a wonderful job of putting a finer point on Lynne’s descriptions. For example, after he sings, The dying embers of a night, the response quickly comes: A fire that slowly fades till dawn. Through this malaise, he maintains hope this woman will return again to help him transcend it all: You will return again someday / To my blue world.
The ambition of “Turn to Stone,” both as a composition and a recording, let everyone know ELO was about to go for broke with their newest release. That Jeff Lynne and company were able to rise to the occasion with a record whose excellence matched that ambition helped solidify the band as one of the greats in the annals of rock and roll.
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