My friend Jeff Lynne has asked me to write some liner notes for his CD.  In a cavalier moment when he was worried about writing them I airily offered to do the job.

“Oh would you?  You’ll be able to do it easily” he said “Because I can’t.”

“But Jeff” I said “you have done everything else.  All the writing, all the recording.  All the singing.   All the selling.”

“But I haven’t a clue what to do, or how to write liner notes” he said.

“Nothing to it I said.”    But I lied.  My only previous experience was writing liner notes for the second Wilbury’s album, and I think I just copied what Michael Palin had done for the first.  Clearly the thing to do was to find somebody funny and copy them, so my first move was to co-opt Billy Connolly into joining us for dinner.

“Liner notes” he said, “they still have liner notes?   I thought they went out with the Titanic.”  “That’s Liner, Billy” I said.

The story so far.   In a fit of egotistical madness Eric Idle has agreed to write the liner notes for Jeff Lynne’s album, but so far he has no idea what to do.  He is assembling for dinner with Jeff and Billy at an expensive West Hollywood watering hole, called The Expensive West Hollywood Watering Hole.  He has sat with Billy for half an hour and made a bad joke about Shark Infested Waiters at the Peninsular.  They are waiting for Jeff.  He appears.

“How are the Liner Notes going?” he asks.

“Nothing to it” I lie.

But it’s a dilemma. I have Billy Connolly to help me, but he isn’t much help, he just keeps collapsing into a pile of giggles and staring wistfully at the waitress.  The waitress is really worth a stare, but she has no place on these liners notes.   I ask Billy what he wants to eat.  He says “I want nothing bouncy or jiggly.”

“Seems to me”  I say “the waitress falls into that category.”

Billy stares morosely into the distance.   I know that look to mean he’s thinking.  “For the serious collector” he says “the vinyl CD.”

“Oh yes and you can download it” I say.  The idea slips into the sand and drains away.

“I like that” says Jeff.

“How about we say originally it was a Virgin record?  It had no hole in the middle.”

“That’s not funny” said Jeff.

“Alright” I say “we’ll improvise. Its 1932….” I begin.

“I had just woken up and was feeling wretched” continues Billy.

“I was lying in the street next to a donkey.   Nice ass I said.”

“’Listen to this mate’, said the donkey putting on a Jeff Lynne album and a small sleeveless Fair Isle knitted pullover…”

“Adding a small moustache he set off to invade Poland….”

“Because he couldn’t spell Czechoslovakia.”

This too sank into the sand.  There was a moment of silence as Billy stared at the long legs of the waitress.

“They’re all strumpets!” he said suddenly and very loudly in his Scottish pastor voice. “Whoors, harlots and strumpets the lot of them!”

“First of all they’re not strumpets,” I said, “One or two of them may be on the sluttish side, but I never met a slut I didn’t like.”

“Put that down” says Jeff, “that’s good.”

“For the liner notes?” I say in disbelief.

“Maybe” he says.

I know Armchair Theater very well.   It’s a lovely album isn’t it?  I mean either you know it or you’re about to, and either way you’ll love it, but nowhere is there anything in it about sluts.  Even I don’t think that’ll fly. We abandon our pathetic attempts to be funny and drift on to other subjects and an enormous amount of food is eaten.

“Are you still doing my liner notes?” says Jeff, as he reaches for the check.

“Oh yes,” I lie.

 

Jeff Lynne has two new albums out at the moment:  Long Wave, and  Mister Blue Sky, the very best of Electric Light Orchestra.  Amazon.com for details and downloads. 

 

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