Sunday, December 2, 2007

Gotta Get a Meal Ticket

Of course, it was vital for Bernie & Elton to find someone to purchase and publish their songs in their early days, and this track details that desire, and the lengths they would go to to obtain it.

It's the hardest-rocking song on the soundtrack; while it's produced to within an inch of its life, with every rough edge sanded off, it still does work up an admirable head of steam. Johnstone's six-note riff is memorable, and his guitar work throughout is top notch.

I don't think it's exactly one of Elton's best, nor do I think it's a particularly memorable cut in regards to the John catalogue- but it does rock out agreeably, accomplishes what it sets out to do, and on the rare occasions when I give it a listen, I do find myself nodding along with it.

3 comments:

thom de plume said...

Sunday night re-post...

"At 13, I found Elton with this particular album [Don't Shoot Me], so it's always been a sentimental favorite...I've just re-discovered Midnight Creeper which, to my ears, seems far more interesting than its obvious descendant, Gotta Get a Meal Ticket."

Johnny Bacardi said...

Hm- maybe I need to listen harder, but I don't really hear a lot of similarity in those songs. They're both uptempo rockers, but "Creeper" comes from more of an R&B place, what with all the horns, and the guitars on "Meal Ticket" have a bit more crunch, making it more of a, for lack of a better term, power-pop kind of song. By 1975, Johnstone and his musicians had kinda developed a unique sound, or at least a sound that sounded like "Elton John Band" and didn't really remind me of anybody else.

brendan said...

I always liked Johnstone's guitar lick on this, very Beatlesy, not a million miles away from Day Tripper...