One advantage to forgoing a showy rock ’n’ roll persona is that you never get too old to pull it off. Fronting a version of the band once known as the Electric Light Orchestra on Saturday night at Inglewood’s Kia Forum, 76-year-old Jeff Lynne looked — and pretty much sounded — like he has for the last half-century: dark pants and jacket, fuzzy hair and beard, eyes hidden behind a pair of aviator shades as he sang his finely sculpted melodies in a still-winsome voice. Nothing about the 90-minute concert suggested that Lynne couldn’t go on doing this for years if he wanted — though nor did anything about it suggest he has any desire to continue.
Indeed, despite the durability of his vibe, Lynne announced last March that his current tour will be the last for the group billed these days as Jeff Lynne’s ELO; a gig scheduled for next summer at London’s Hyde Park, where ELO returned to the stage in 2014 after a couple of decades away, is being advertised as his grand farewell. Why hang it up? Age undoubtedly has something to do with it: Elton John was also 76 when he wrapped his lengthy Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour ; so was Don Henley at the outset of the Eagles’ latest goodbye excursion — you know, the one they keep extending at Sphere in Las Vegas. Then again, when I visited Lynne at his home in Beverly Hills in 2015, he told me he’d hated touring even as a younger man.
“You wake up at 9 o’clock, have a horrible hot dog at the airport for breakfast, .
