Jeff Lynne‘s Electric Light Orchestra will perform their final show next July in London’s Hyde Park. The concert is the first to be announced for the annual outdoor BST Hyde Park music series and is set for July 13. Tickets go on sale Oct. 25 at 9 a.m. BST with a pre-sale starting Oct. 23 at 10 a.m. BST.
“My return to touring began at Hyde Park in 2014,” Lynne said in a statement. “It seems like the perfect place to do our final show. We couldn’t be more excited to share this special night in London with our U.K. fans. As the song goes, ‘We’re gonna do it one more time!’”
Jeff Lynne’s ELO is currently on its farewell tour across North America, which kicked off in August in Palm Desert, CA, and is set to conclude on Oct. 25 in Los Angeles. The band is a resurrected edition of beloved ’70s and ’80s group who were brought back to life under the new name Jeff Lynne’s Electric Light Orchestra. The reformed band kicked off their touring career with an outdoor concert in Hyde Park in 2014.
“I had all these negative thoughts before agreeing to play Hyde Park,” Lynne told Rolling Stone in 2016, “but the crowd just went bananas all the way through. They loved every minute of it. It was the best show I’d ever been involved with up until that point.”
The original incarnation of Electric Light Orchestra ran from 1970 to 1986, landing timeless hits on the charts like “Mr. Blue Sky,” “Evil Woman,” “Strange Magic,” “Don’t Bring Me Down,” and “Turn to Stone.” When frontman Jeff Lynne dissolved the group to produce other artists, including George Harrison and Tom Petty, ELO drummer Bev Bevan carried on with new musicians under the moniker ELO Part II, creating bitterness between the two camps that lasts to this day.
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The reaction to the 2014 Hyde Park show inspired Lynne to bring ELO back on the road for a series of successful arena tours between 2015 and 2019. A 2020 tour was canceled due to Covid. The group’s first show since 2019 took place Nov. 12, 2023, at Joe Walsh’s VetsAid concert in Chula Vista, California.
Rolling Stone‘s Andy Greene wrote of the band’s farewell show at Madison Square Garden last month, “Time has been very kind to Jeff Lynne‘s wonderfully unique fusion of prog rock, orchestral music, disco, and pop.” He added that the tour is “a well-deserved victory lap for a true pop genius, and a gift for fans to take a ride on his spaceship one last time.”
