All Across the Havens

"All Across the Havens" was the B-side of Elton's "Lady Samantha", released in January 1969.

It starts out with a twangy slide-guitar-and-piano-driven country-rock intro, which pops up again at certain intervals. The verses, though, are in a meandering, mid-tempo organ-enhanced Procol Harum mode.

Bernie's lyrics find him learning just how pretentious he could be and get away with it; while there are several self-consciously arty passages overall they're not bad. What it's about, well, your guess is as good as mine- it seems to be written from the point of view of a young man who's feeling guilt about things he's done, or the way he's treated his love, or something like that, and is seeking peace and forgiveness "across the havens to the waterfall". It's pretty typical of his Empty Sky-period output.