Street Kids

A Damon Runyan-esque song about juvenile delinquents headed for a street fight of some sort, accompanied by keening synths, Stonesy guitar and a descending rapid fire run of notes on the piano.

Perhaps Bernie had been watching a lot of films like Angels with Dirty Faces or some of the Bowery Boys series, who knows. He was always drawing inspiration from Hollywood, and perhaps this was just the latest example. Elton doesn't seem terribly interested in it, though, although he does belt out a few verses with a professional sort of gusto, and the presentation is too mid-70's Rock to have any sort of nostalgic-for-Leo Gorcey effect. It's also about two minutes too long for my liking, devolving into monotony before it's done.

Of course, it's possible that Bernie was reacting to the then-in-its-infancy Punk movement, but 1975 was just a little early and Taupin was never usually that ahead of the curve...