Biography
Kelly Groucutt ranked among the Electric Light Orchestra’s longest-serving sidemen, holding down the bass chair and sharing vocal duties for nearly ten years between 1974 and 1983. Born Michael “Kelly” Groucutt in Coseley, Staffordshire, in 1945, he displayed an early passion for music, taking his first singing job at fifteen. Two years later he picked up the guitar, then adopted the bass at twenty-one. Several short-lived groups—Greenwich Village and Marble Arch among them—preceded his early-seventies stint with Sight & Sound, a pop-leaning progressive outfit that had once included Rick Price of the Move.
Groucutt next entered the ELO lineup, where he functioned as bassist and, for an extended period, co-lead singer with Jeff Lynne. His debut solo effort, the 1982 RCA album Kelly, drew contributions from fellow ELO members Bev Bevan, Richard Tandy, Louis Clark, and Mik Kaminski. By the early eighties, however, his standing inside the band shifted: Lynne curtailed Groucutt’s vocal parts and began overdubbing the bass lines himself. The resulting friction culminated in lawsuits triggered by Lynne’s decision to dissolve the group; Groucutt ultimately secured a settlement.
Thereafter he worked under his own name and, briefly, as a member of the ensemble Player alongside Mik Kaminski. The pair later adopted the moniker OrKestra, reviving ELO material they had helped originate and recording the albums Beyond the Dream and Roll Over Beethoven. In the early nineties they also performed with Bev Bevan’s Electric Light Orchestra Part II before becoming permanent members. Separately, Groucutt mounted occasional solo shows throughout the Midlands, delivering songs from the fifties and sixties under the names Kelly G or Michael Groucutt. He died of a heart attack in early 2009 at the age of sixty-three.
Groucutt next entered the ELO lineup, where he functioned as bassist and, for an extended period, co-lead singer with Jeff Lynne. His debut solo effort, the 1982 RCA album Kelly, drew contributions from fellow ELO members Bev Bevan, Richard Tandy, Louis Clark, and Mik Kaminski. By the early eighties, however, his standing inside the band shifted: Lynne curtailed Groucutt’s vocal parts and began overdubbing the bass lines himself. The resulting friction culminated in lawsuits triggered by Lynne’s decision to dissolve the group; Groucutt ultimately secured a settlement.
Thereafter he worked under his own name and, briefly, as a member of the ensemble Player alongside Mik Kaminski. The pair later adopted the moniker OrKestra, reviving ELO material they had helped originate and recording the albums Beyond the Dream and Roll Over Beethoven. In the early nineties they also performed with Bev Bevan’s Electric Light Orchestra Part II before becoming permanent members. Separately, Groucutt mounted occasional solo shows throughout the Midlands, delivering songs from the fifties and sixties under the names Kelly G or Michael Groucutt. He died of a heart attack in early 2009 at the age of sixty-three.