Jeff Lynne brings ELO to the forum one last time

One advantage of foregoing a flashy rock 'n' roll persona is that you never get too old to pull it off.

Jeff Lynne, 76, leading a version of the band once known as the Electric Light Orchestra at the Kia Forum in Inglewood on Saturday night, looked — and sounded — much like he has for the past half-century: dark pants and jacket, messy hair and Bart, his eyes hidden behind aviator sunglasses as he sang his finely sculpted melodies in a still winning voice.

Nothing about the 90-minute concert suggested that Lynne couldn't do this for years if he wanted to – but there was also nothing to suggest that he had any desire to continue.

Despite the durability of his sentiments, Lynne announced last March that his current tour would be the last for the group, now considered Jeff Lynne's ELO; His big farewell is being announced as a performance planned for next summer in London's Hyde Park, where ELO returned to the stage in 2014 after an absence of several decades.

Why hang it up? Age undoubtedly has something to do with it: Elton John was also 76 when he completed his long Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour; The same was true for Don Henley at the start of the Eagles' last farewell road trip – you know, the one they keep extending at the Sphere in Las Vegas.

However, when I visited Lynne at his home in Beverly Hills in 2015, he told me that he had hated touring even as a younger man. “You get up at 9 a.m., eat a terrible hot dog at the airport for breakfast, and then fly three times to get to your destination,” he said. “As soon as I could stop, I said, 'That's it.'”

What seemed more likely during Saturday's show, the second of two in Inglewood, is that Lynne has simply realized he has no use for the rock star adulation that comes with being on the street. Lynne stood in the middle of the stage as ELO's musical director introduced the band's dozen-plus members, and looked genuinely uncomfortable when the guy finally said his name and he was once again showered with enthusiastic applause from the crowd.

The funny thing about Lynne's almost radically reserved presence is how insanely alive his music is. As a single act in the '70s, ELO was on a par with Elton, ABBA and Paul McCartney's Wings; The band's string of Top 40 hits – “Evil Woman,” “Strange Magic,” “Livin' Thing,” “Turn to Stone,” “Mr. “Blue Sky,” “Shine a Little Love”—delivered one delight after another, each in the context of Lynne's stated goal of combining rock and classical music, and yet each with its own distinctive flavor: a little folkier, a little more disco, a little harder and edgier, a little more R&B.

Many of the band's tracks are streamed hundreds of millions of times on Spotify; In fact, ELO has more monthly listeners on the platform than Tom Petty, George Harrison or Roy Orbison – three of the four rock legends Lynne worked with to form the Traveling Wilburys in the late '80s. (Bob Dylan, the supergroup's fifth member, has more monthly listeners.) And you can see echoes of ELO's expansive but deeply detailed approach in the work of a generation of indie-rock studio obsessives like Tame Impala, Phoenix and Vampire Weekend .

But that doesn't mean there's anyone who sounds exactly like ELO. At the Forum, where the band performed beneath a giant prop spaceship, Lynne and company were somehow crisp, lush, funky and snappy all at the same time; Often, as in the swaggering “Don't Bring Me Down,” you wondered how a riff you'd heard so many times could still have so much energy.

Lynne said next to nothing during the evening – notable only because this concert may be the last one he ever plays in his adopted hometown. At the end of the evening, he led the band through the pop-psychedelic twists of “Mr. Blue Sky” then bowed before slowly walking off stage into a life in which little about him is likely to change.