Fire On High

Song infobox
Name = Fire On High


Artist = Electric Light Orchestra
Album = Face the Music
Released = July 1975
September 2006 (remastered)
track_no = 1
Recorded = 1975
Genre = Symphonic rock
Length = 5:43
Writer = Jeff Lynne
Label = United Artists Records
Jet Records
Producer = Jeff Lynne
next = "Waterfall"
next_no = 2|

"Fire On High" is the opening instrumental track from the 1975 Electric Light Orchestra album "Face the Music".

It contains a somewhat disturbing opening with a backward message. When the song is played backwards, the message, in a masked heavy voice, can be heard stating, "The music is reversible but time is not. Turn back. Turn back. Turn back. Turn back." - ostensibly Jeff Lynne's shot at backmasking hysteria, after satanic allegations were made against their song "Eldorado" by alleged Fundamentalist Christianity members. [Big Secrets: Chapter 26, pages 200, 203, 204, 205 & 206. 0-688-04830-7] Snippets of "Messiah" by Handel can be heard as well.

"Fire On High" was used as the opening theme for the CBS Sports Spectacular TV show in the Mid-1970s. A slightly edited version of "Fire On High" is used on a thrill ride called the [http://www.myspace.com/astrosphere Astrosphere] at Funtown USA in Saco, Maine. The ride is a scrambler inside of a vinyl dome held up by the air pressure inside, and as the ride goes there are lighting and laser effects and strange random pictures projected onto the walls of the bubble while "Fire On High" is played extremely loud. A similar ride called GyroSphere, designed by Chris Elling and Brian Bram, located at Seabreeze Amusement Park in Rochester, New York also used "Fire On High" in the early 1980s, but the music has changed since then. In 2000, The New Jersey Devils used, along with video clips, the song "Fire On High" in an opening ceremony to all its games.

Despite being almost entirely instrumental, the song's title can be faintly heard near the end of the track by the chanting chorus.

References