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After 55 years, numerous albums, and that weird period where society was forced to reckon with the memory of both ELO and ELO Part II, the band originally known as the Electric Light Orchestra—and billed in more recent years as “Jeff Lynne’s ELO”—has apparently played its final show. And not the final show that was previously expected: Lynne revealed today that, due to his suffering from a “systemic infection,” the concert that was supposed to be the band’s farewell show, scheduled for Saturday in London’s Hyde Park, has been canceled, and will not be rescheduled.
Which means, per Consequence, that ELO actually had its final show back on Wednesday, at a Manchester show that the 77-year-old Lynne apparently “struggled to get through.” A statement provided to press said that Lynne “is currently in the care of a team of doctors who have advised him that performing is simply not possible at this time nor will he be able to reschedule. The legacy of the band and his longtime fans are foremost in Jeff’s mind today—and while he is so sorry that he cannot perform, he knows that he must focus on his health and rehabilitation at this time.”
This small farewell tour for the group has actually been on the books for a while, and was originally announced back before the COVID-19 pandemic. (In fact, it was delayed for so long that Lynne’s primary collaborator in the latter era of ELO, keyboardist Richard Tandy, died in 2024, before the already-announced tour could be launched.) The cancellation today would seem to bring to a close the long, odd history of the group, which started in the late ’60s, and then splintered when Lynne announced he was done with the project in the 1980s. (Drummer Bev Bevan then re-launched the band, with Lynne’s permission, as ELO Part II, which eventually changed its name to The Orchestra; of the various members of that still-extant group, only violinist Mik Kaminski was ever a member of the original ELO.) Lynne and Tandy reformed “Jeff Lynne’s ELO” in 2014; they would eventually release two albums, Alone In The Universe and From Out Of Nowhere.
