Alex McCurthy
The Electric Light Orchestra (ELO), the legendary band founded by Jeff Lynne, will host what is announced to be its last concert ever, scheduled for BST Hyde Park in London, 2025. According to organizers, the concert has been labeled the “final goodbye” of the band. Started in Birmingham in 1970, the group became a name that is hard to forget and has stayed synonymous with perfect combinations of classical music, Beatles-style pop, and rock, appealing to audiences across the world for more than five decades.
Tickets to the show will go on sale this Friday, but fans will be able to buy them for what promises to be an electric concert on 13 July 2025. The show is the final term for many of them. The mastermind behind ELO, Jeff Lynne, reconstituted the band in 2014 after they originally broke up in 1986. He led a new, rejuvenated version back onto the stage under the title “Jeff Lynne’s ELO.” This second version, like the first, is exciting audiences as the original captured fans’ hearts decades ago with such classic songs as Livin’ Thing, Mr. Blue Sky, and Telephone Line back in the 1970s and 1980s.
Sorrow, however, comes with the last performance. Original bassist Richard Tandy, who also eventually became the keyboard player after cofounder Roy Wood left, passed this year at age 76. For ELO, much of what defined their sound came from Tandy’s bass line, so his absence will be large during this last show.
Looking back at the history of the band, ELO certainly left its mark in the world of music. For them, nothing else defines all their contemporaries in that they merged orchestral arrangements with futuristic rock. In fact, the influence of the band was so great that in 2017, they were inducted into the hallowed halls of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Of course, Jeff Lynne himself has led an amazing career. He played a centric role in ELO’s commercial and musical domination but was recognized outside of it. In 2015, he won a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, an undisputable gratitude of his contributions toward music. Indeed, he was appointed an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in 2020 in services to the music industry.
Recalling the journey, Lynne said BST Hyde Park means a lot to him on personal level. “My return to touring started at Hyde Park in 2014,” he said. “It’s the perfect place to do our last show. As the song goes: we’re gonna do it One More Time“. It’s referring to ELO’s track One More Time from the 2019 album From Out Of Nowhere, which many fans will certainly consider an apt anthem to mark the end.
Although it’s the last show at Hyde Park, it won’t be the last show for the fans to watch ELO on stage. The outfit is actually doing a farewell tour across the United States, and this Saturday is the final date at Inglewood, California.
He discusses how it is such an honor for them to host the final concert of ELO to Jim King, Chief Executive of European Festivals for AEG Presents. “Jeff Lynne’s ELO are beloved around the globe,” he comments of the global appeal. He called their live shows “nothing short of extraordinary” and said hosting their final performance at London will be “a true honor.”
And so it is that while the Hyde Park wait continues, one thing is more than sure: ELO’s legacy will long outlive their final notes once they disappear into the air. It is over five decades in terms of musical depth in the ability to create timeless music-a phenomenon that resonates with so many generations, after all-is a very rare form of achievement. This would be the band’s farewell concert as well as for their die-hard fans, marking a most memorable occasion since it would celebrate a career that has forever left its mark on music history. Known for the innovative use of genres and the unpretentious live performances of Jeff Lynne and Electric Light Orchestra, they will surely be as one of the greats. As they prepare to take that final bow, it’s sure that they will be leaving, their leaving will be sure to echo within the hearts of music fans all around the world.
