Stinker

Once in a while it was incumbent upon Elton to simply rock out and show his listeners a good time, and this is one of those songs created for that purpose. More often as not, he chose a Baldry/Stones blues/rock sound for this, and ably aided by the Tower of Power horn section, that's what he gives us here.

Bernie piles on every filth-related metaphor he can squeeze out of his thesaurus, cuing the listener that he's a loveable, filthy rascal a la the characters in Don't Shoot Me's "Midnight Creeper" and Yellow Brick Road's "Social Disease".

I don't think this will ever be on anyone's short list of Elton classics, but it does rock out convincingly in a swaggering, bluesy way, and EJ can sing the line "burnin', vermin stink" as good as anybody out there...