In a new video release from Electric Light Orchestra’s upcoming record “Alone In The Universe” which is due November 13th, Jeff Lynne’s life flashes before our eyes in the video for “When I Was a Boy”. The ballad finds him reminiscing about the hopes he had for the future when he was young. In the video as he narrates his life story with images of kids playing, a band loading up a van and a teen staring at the group’s UFO insignia pass by. Eventually, it shows the Lynne himself playing a climbing guitar solo.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Lynne explained the origins of the song “My interest in music grabbed me when I was a boy,” he said. “I used to go under my bed listening to the crystal set [radio]. There weren’t many good stations back then. You only got about an hour of pop music and that was on a Saturday night. That’s what led to the song, which was one of the quickest I’ve ever written lyrically and musically.”