Hercules

In which "Amy"'s tough-guy James Dean type makes a return to close out the Chateau album, still lusting after some unattainable inamorata who just can't see him for dirt.

Elton casts this uptempo tune in a driving 50's-style doo-wop setting, with said doo-wopish ba-ba-bas provided by the classic band of Elton, Johnstone, Murray, Olsson plus producer Gus Dudgeon and British songwriter and occasional performer Tony Hazzard. Dudgeon also chips in with a "rhino whistle" (provides that "whooee" sound you hear in cartoons when someone runs or flies away at top speed) at one juncture. You know what I'm talking about.

Dudgeon's overall production on this song is somewhat different from the other tracks on Chateau; at least to my ears- while the sound is mostly clear detailed elsewhere, this one has a compressed, muddy mix- almost mono-esque, to no great advantage or clever aesthetic reason that I can discern. Guess it made sense at the time to do so. Some of the tracks on the next LP, Don't Shoot Me, had a similar sound.

I'm unsure exactly what significance this song had for the principals involved and Elton in particular; perhaps it was some sort of in-joke or something like that. Elton's Wikipedia entry notes that "Hercules" was the name of a cart horse in the British sitcom Steptoe and Son, and that was where John got the inspiration for his adopted middle name. What this song, if anything, had to do with this is uncertain. Perhaps it's just coincidence.