Goodbye

"Goodbye" closes out Madman Across the Water in similar fashion to the way that Shakespeare has his Puck close out A Midsummer Night's Dream, beginning with

And now that it's all over
The birds can nest again
I'll only snow when the sun comes out
I'll shine only when it starts to rain

Pointing out his, and his mouthpiece's often contradictory nature.

He then works in some self-effacing, and just a bit smirky, pseudo-religious imagery:

And if you want a drink
Just squeeze my hand
And wine will flow into the land
And feed my lambs

And references, in self-deprecating fashion, the Tin Pan Alley-esque nature of his profession:

For I am a mirror
I can reflect the moon
I will write songs for you
I'll be your silver spoon

But then closes with more mock humility, again with a smirk:

I'm sorry I took your time
I am the poem that doesn't rhyme
Just turn back a page
I'll waste away, I'll waste away
I'll waste away, I'll waste away
I'll waste away, I'll waste away

(lyrics © 1971 Dick James Music Limited)

And thusly delivers a kind of calling card as well as a mission statement, ostensibly to close out the record but also serving notice that the John/Taupin team have arrived as songwriters, far advanced from their early efforts. And although their greatest successes were still ahead, this was very true.

This message is delivered by Elton on piano, with a measured, calm-after-the-storm feel and with the full Buckmaster Philharmonic Orchestra accompanying him; appropriate since Elton would never again make use of Buckmaster's talents as extensively as he did on this album. Desiring to streamline and simplify, he cut out the ponderous strings on his next album, Honky Chateau.

Listen to "Goodbye" on the streaming service of your choice.

And with this, the Solar Prestige a Gammon blog is concluded. I've pretty much made it through every Elton song that I consider of consequence in the 1969-1977 period; I have omitted some non-cover live tracks and a couple of Rare Masters demos that EJ recorded that were released by other people but not by Elton himself. I've had a small but steady readership, and a lot of great feedback and comments, and for that I'm thankful. It's been fun revisiting most of these songs (most of which I'd probably listen to fairly often anyway!) but listening harder, trying to glean some insight into them. It's a testament to the stylistic and lyric diversity of the John/Taupin team's body of work that it could provide enough grist for me to be able to write somewhat intelligently about it.

Anyway, thanks again to everyone who's been reading, even those who keep clicking on the link to the John Brown painting in the "Burn Down the Mission" entry, thus driving up my visitor stats. I don't know if I'll do any more dedicated music blogs, but you never know. If you like my writing, feel free to check out my still free-to-all Substack. And, by all means, continue to leave comments if you desire; I'll be notified and will respond when necessary.

From all of me to all of you, goodbye.

Curtains

Captain Fantastic's closing track doesn't exactly conform to the unwritten rule of concept records, that of a grand statement to provide contrast and clarification, not to mention closure, to the other songs in the album.

It's a slow-building track, which seems to be constantly working up to the Grand Statement about Their Career to that Point one expects, but Taupin undermines this by instead providing a backward-looking rumination on his childhood and his first songwriting efforts, culminating in this verse:

But that's okay
There's treasure children always seek to find
And just like us
You must have had
A once upon a time

...and if there's supposed to be some sort of summation or observation about where they stood in 1969, on the cusp of stardom, I'll be darned if I can see it.

Elton seems to be striving for a "Hey Jude" approach, with each verse accompanied by instrumentation that's similar in nature to their "Lucy in the Sky" cover, and eventually punctuated by chorus "whoa-oh-ohs" following directly after the verses are done. Then, in what surely seems to be a move to get lighters and hands swaying to the concert audiences to come, the chorus singers take over as Olsson's staccato drum fills and Johnstone's guitar/Elton's piano riffs play, Elton sings a line over and over again in a falsetto voice (which defies my best efforts to make out exactly what he's saying- sounds like "love to love again" or something like that), all building to...not much, really. The song plods on to its extanded fade conclusion, and Captain Fantastic is done. The lyrics are vague, the message is therefore muddled, and the music builds up to a cathartic moment that never really comes.

It's a lovely melody, but I don't think it achieves what it sets out to do. Others, I'm sure, will disagree.

Just Like Strange Rain

The breezy, blues-rocking "Strange Rain" was the B-side of Elton's third solo single, "It's Me That You Need", from 1969.

It's another searching-for-a-signature-sound attempt, again sounding a lot like Joe Cocker, Baldry or Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac; i.e., the British Blues Boom sound. As such, it's a success if a bit slight; Caleb Quaye's stinging guitar stands out, as well as Elton's fey Empty Sky-style vocal delivery.

Insofar as the subject matter goes, Taupin's lyrics are trying to emulate the Lysergic-tinged wordsmithing of the late 60's with its mention of colors and rainbows and "strange rain washing his thoughts away". In the Rare Masters booklet notes, he admits as much: "...very much an acid piece, we were trying to be part of the times. I think it was probably influenced by people like Traffic."



Lyrics/sample

Seasons

A lyrically spare ode to young love, tricked out with the full Buckmaster Philharmonic treatment.

The first two and a half minutes are instrumental, strings and oboe predominant; the next minute-twenty five is Elton on piano crooning Bernie's almost sonnet-like lyric, a pledge of love and devotion that ends with the film's concept and title repeated twice. Just the thing for a movie soundtrack song.

It's a very lovely track, all things considered.

Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters

Honky Chateau opens up with the Honky Cat, ready to leave the hicks from the sticks in his rear view mirror and make his mark in the big city, specifically New York. And on this, the album's penultimate track, he finds that having made that mark it's not all it's cracked up to be, and disillusionment has set in. The Cat has seen the casual hardheartedness that exists in certain circles, and sums his experience up thusly:Subway's no way for a good man to go down
Rich man can ride and the hobo he can drown
And I thank the Lord for the people I have found
I thank the Lord for the people I have found

But he's not entirely soured upon the experience, taking pains to inform that there are some good people...just not enough of them. Feeling discontent, he decides

This Broadway's got
It's got a lot of songs to sing
If I knew the tunes I might join in
I'll go my way alone
Grow my own, my own seeds shall be sown in New York City

Taupin has often seemed to have a love/hate relationship with New York City many times, and this is an eloquent summing-up circa 1972.

Music is Elton on piano plus chiming mandolin by Johnstone and understated percussion by Olsson. As befits the subject matter, it's given a melancholy melody, one that's quite catchy and creates an air of reflection, almost a calm-after-the-storm feel. I suppose that it doesn't close the album (which would seem most fitting, given its bookend status with "Honky Cat") because of this downbeat feel; it would seem that John wanted to finish on an upbeat note, hence the upbeat, somewhat silly doo-woppish finale of "Hercules".

Elton and Bernie updated/revisited this track several years later, in the late 80's, on his Reg Strikes Back album; I've only heard a couple of excerpts, and a look at the lyrics reveals a too-broad, almost crass update, set to a blaring typical 80's Big Production Sound...a disappointment typical of Elton's output in that decade. The Indigo Girls did a decent live cover that appeared on their Rarities album.

One Horse Town

Ushered in by the sudden return of James Newton Howard's bombastic orchestral arrangement, which almost makes it seem like an extension of the album opener "Tonight", "One Horse Town" is an equally abrupt departure from the dominant Blue Moves psychodrama in its depiction of a dissatisfied young man who lives in a rural community and yearns to escape to the bright lights of the big city. A common subject for Bernie; it's as if the Honky Cat didn't learn his lesson after all.

And that link is quite remarkable in its own right; it's a swaggering cock-rock electric guitar riff, accompanied by dissonant keyboard sounds (or perhaps percussion) that reminds me of someone striking a soda pop bottle with a drumstick, and the strings swirl and eddy around this in the background. Then, abruptly, the tempo increases, the strings become more prominent as the guitar steps back into rhythm mode, and we're off with the song proper as Elton steps up, spitting out the lyrics.

It's an odd vocal performance; Elton sometimes struggles to keep up with the headlong rushing tempo, and in doing so alternates between lower register asides and falsetto passages...along with his notorious penchant for weird pronunciation quirkiness that comes to the fore as he sings about the old folks on the porch and how "they'll peeek (pick)...ahwl noyt..."

In Taupin's lyrics, there's a bit of casual condescension directed at the local yokels of this "Alabama mud-bed town", but this is Bernie writing in character with a smile rather than a scowl so it's easy to look past it. For example:

Saw a Cadillac for the first time yesterday
I'd always seen horses, buggies, bales of hay
'Cause progress here don't move with modern times
There's nothing to steal
So there's not a great deal of crime

As far as the rest of the arrangements go, it at least rocks out a bit but the bells and vibes and busy strings kinda work against it insofar as the subject matter goes; it would have been a fine country-rock Tumbleweed Connection or Madman Across the Water-era track, but it sounds a little off on the more urbane and polished pre-Disco Blue Moves. Still, I like this track and this album could have used a few more of these.

Listen on the streaming service of your choice.

Grey Seal

"Grey Seal" is one of a select few Elton songs which exist in two released versions. Originally written in 1969, and issued as the flip side of his "Rock and Roll Madonna" single in January of 1970, lyrically it's very much in the anti-Higher Education (a la Roger Waters' "Another Brick in the Wall" years later), anti-authoritarian, vaguely sci-fi mode that Taupin seemed to find himself in in those early days (a la Empty Sky's "Hymn 2000"), with lines like these:

On the big screen they showed us a sun
But not as bright in life as the real one
It's never quite the same as the real one

and

I never learned why meteors were formed
I only farmed in schools that were so worn and torn

All very yearning and searching for meaning and truth in that late-60's early 70's youth-must-be-served way.

Musically, the original version is more restrained and conventional when compared to the 1973 remake, which speeds the tempo up and takes advantage of Davey Johnstone's studio prowess as the lanky guitarist serves up soul-brother wah-wah guitars and jazzy flourishes in the breaks between verses. Elton plays frantic triplets ("Pinball Wizard" style) on a regular piano instead of the somewhat dinky-sounding electric piano of the original. The first version's ending is somewhat different; Elton sings scatted vocals over strings and vibes and the song works towards a faded-out conclusion, but the remake features the whole band vamping towards a frenetic finish, with minimal string accompaniment.

Don't know why they chose to redo it and add it to the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album; maybe they felt like they needed another track to pad the running time, who knows. I haven't read anything about it one way or the other. The new version is, I think, an improvement but the song itself, in either rendition, just isn't that strong.

Lyrics and samples of both versions

Lady What's Tomorrow

A folky, gentle ballad with lyrics that seem to convey a "let's live for today" type message, best summed up by somewhat bucolic lines like

Now look and see the lilac tree
The lily pond, the skylark's song
The open air but no one cares
If branches live and die out there

Unfortunately, this being early Bernie we get a clunker like this repetitive stanza:

Look up little brother
Can you see the clover
Oh sorry but it's over
Now there's concrete and no clover

Despite a decent enough melody, and although the sentiment of the song gets across, this remains one of Elton's less memorable selections.

High Flying Bird

Don't Shoot Me's album-closer is a plaintive little elegy, which tells us of an apparently high-spirited young lady that meets with a bad end.

Bernie floridly describes her in the opening verses:

You wore a little cross of gold around your neck
I saw it as you flew between my reason
Like a raven in the night time when you left

Apparently the singer is trying to be a steadying or calming (or restrictive, more like) influence on her, because in the chorus he laments:

My high-flying bird has flown from out my arms
I thought myself her keeper
She thought I meant her harm

And indeed, someone seems to have meant her harm, as the second stanza informs us:

The white walls of your dressing room are stained in scarlet red
You bled upon the cold stone like a young man
In the foreign field of death

Perhaps Bernie means to imply that she's a suicide, or the singer him/herself may have done the deed, in jealous rage- or perhaps he's adopting a paternal voice, saying in so many words "I told you so". I guess it's open for interpretation. Either way, this "you should have behaved yourself and listened to me" tone is a little troubling, and unfortunately consistent with so many of Taupin's songs that dealt with women.

Elton bails this song out, though, providing the pathos with a strong, beautiful melody and once more, using those stellar Elton/Johnstone/Murray/Olsson group vocals in all the right places.


Lyrics and a sample.

Hard Luck Story

"Hard Luck Story" is, I believe, a very good example of how far Taupin had come as a lyricist since the late 60's. Ultimately a continuation of a theme that ran through "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" and "Snookeroo" (written for and performed by Ringo Starr on his 1974 album Goodnight Vienna), that of the working class joe and the things he has to do to get by, when you scan the lyrics on their own, you get a vivid portrayal of a fellow who's determined to keep on doing what he has to do and doesn't want to hear any complaining. Taupin eschews clever wordplay and metaphor, and writes directly to the listener.

So curiously, Elton casts the track in the same kid of hopped-up disco-flavored boogie shuffle that comes across as a warm-up for the excesses of next year's Blue Moves finale, "Bite Your Lip (Get Up and Dance)". Of course it's tuneful, and of course it does rock out, but the "Oo-ee-oo-ee-ooh"s that he begins every line of the chorus with wear out their welcome quickly, and become annoying as he repeats it ad infinitum as the song slowly fades out.

This one is credited to "Ann Orson and Carte Blanche", which are the pseudonyms Elton and Bernie used when writing for others, especially Kiki Dee (who contributes to the BV's on Elton's version)- and sure enough, here's this track, apparently released as a 1974 non-LP single. I don't know how Kiki finessed the gender-specificity, since I haven't heard her version, but it does point out that this track predates Captain Fantastic as well as Westies.

Grimsby

According to Wikipedia, Grimsby (or archaically Great Grimsby) is a seaport on the Humber Estuary in Lincolnshire, England. Bernie Taupin, who lived in nearby Humberston and Tealby near Market Rasen, would have of course been familiar with and spent time in this town, and for some reason decided to write this tune as a tribute to the everyday pleasures that the community offered.

It does have a tongue-in-cheek, slightly bemused feel to it, and it's good to see that Taupin could be as nostalgic about his background as he was the American Old West. As we all know by now, Bernie could be very snide lyrically when he chose to be- and really, I don't get that here. As verses like this bear out:

Take me back you rustic town
I miss your magic charm
Just to smell your candy floss
Or drink in the Skinners Arms
No Cordon Bleu can match the beauty
Of your pies and peas
I want to ride your fairground
Take air along the quay

The main reason this travelogue works as well as it does is the bopping musical arrangement that Elton gives it, with a wonderfully dipsy-doodle guitar riff, punctuated by a little whammy-bar action, by Davey Johnstone and those ubiquitous Classic Elton Band harmony vocals echoing several lines in the verses and chorus.


Lyrics/sample

Talking Old Soldiers

Elton on solo piano, singing the imagined conversation of a couple of Civil War (I'm assuming, given the Old West theme of Tumbleweed, but it's not specific) veterans, in his best Ray Charles voice.

It's meant to engender sympathy for the speakers, perhaps even to deliver a subtle anti-war message as well. It certainly is a bleak set of verses:

Yeah that's right, you can see me here most every night
You'll always see me staring at the walls and at the lights
Funny I remember oh it's years ago I'd say
I'd stand at that bar with my friends who've passed away
And drink three times the beer that I can drink today
Yes I know how it feels to grow old

But the decision to perform it in solo piano, I believe, works against it- rendering it static and dull and blunting the impact. It's not a favorite track of mine from this album, sorry to say.


Lyrics and a sample

Whenever You're Ready (We'll Go Steady Again)

This one's a homage to the Killer, Jerry Lee Lewis, and it certainly follows his pound-the-piano template. There's also room made for the squalling slide guitar of Davey Johnstone, which accompanies throughout. Lyrically, it's a not-bad "you done me wrong, but I love you anyway" type work.

It's a hard-rocking and fun, if not especially memorable, track that was paired with "Jackrabbit" on the B-side of "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting".

Take Me to the Pilot

With its stop-and-start piano intro, chunka-chunka wah-wah guitars, passionate Leon Russell-style vocal and gliding Buckmaster string arrangment, "Pilot" is the album's most prominent rocker and a favorite of Elton fans, especially among the songs on the Elton John LP.

Because it's such a head-nodding rock song, I think a lot of people are able to ignore the lyrics, which find Bernie sending lyrics-readers scurrying to their dictionaries with lines like

Like a coin in your mint
I am dented and I'm spent with high treason

and head-scratching with lines like

Through a glass eye your throne
Is the one danger zone

But it's all right- Taupin was still working out his writing voice, trying to make what seems to be a standard woo-pitching song more interesting- and a good beat can often make the most questionable lyric content palatable.

This was released as the second single from Elton John in 1970, with a little ditty called "Your Song" as its flip. DJs preferred the B-side, and thus was history made.

Birthday Greetings

Happy 61st birthday to Sir Elton John!



Only one song left on each album, and a handful of singles! We're in the home stretch. Thanks to all who have stopped by, and especially those who have commented, so far!

Honey Roll

Appropriately funky and salacious piano boogie workout, which for some reason reminds me a little of "Take Me to the Pilot" but without the Buckmaster strings. It does feature the chorus vocals prevalent in his music at this time, along with a first (at least to my knowledge): a sax solo. Lyrically, it's a simple come-on, nothing fancy even though there's some odd references to "paying alimony" in the first verse, not a subject you'd think someone would breach when pitching woo.

Obviously, as Taupin notes in the Rare Masters booklet, one of the tunes designed to appear "in the movie whenever someone turned on the car radio, or something". Even though it's an obscure track, it's a pretty good one considering its humble beginnings.

Listen to "Honey Roll" on the streaming service of your choice.

Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me

Well, I'm sure you're all familiar with this one- it's one of Elton's biggest hits, was fricking all over the radio in not one, but two, decades via the remake duet with George Michael, who is at his most obsequious, seemingly in rapture at being in the presence of his idol. I don't know if there's much I can tell you about it that you don't already know, but I haven't let that stop me yet so here goes...

It's difficult to guess exactly what inspired Bernie to write this- the singer seems to be simultaneously coming on to and apologizing to the subject. Apparently there has been some sort of misunderstanding between the interested parties, and the singer fears being shut out and cut off from any further affection. Maybe it's directed at Maxine, maybe even at Elton. Hard to say, and I've been unable to turn up any anecdotal evidence with my meager resources.

The song's strong points are the lovely backing vocals, featuring Beach Boy Carl Wilson and arranged by another sometimes Boy, Bruce Johnston, as well as its stately and strong melody; it sounds a lot like a processional, especially during the chorus. The recording of most of Caribou sounds like it was a rushed affair between mammoth tours, but this one sounds like a bit more time and care was spent on polishing it up- I'm sure all concerned had this earmarked as the lead single from day one, which it was, coming out a month before the album's June release.

In its initial release, it hit #2 in the States but could not dislodge John Denver's "Annie's Song" at the top of the charts. The UK showing was less impressive, only achieving #16 over there. The aforementioned 1991 duet remake, however, capitalized on Michael's additional star power and went straight to #1 in both countries.

Here's to the Next Time

If the late 60's found the newish John/Taupin partnership frantically trying on many musical hats in order to find the best fit, "Next Time" sounds like an attempt to approximate the British Blues boom a la Joe Cocker, Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac, and of course Long John Baldry, Elton's early mentor. Taupin's Rare Masters liner notes claim, while not addressing this cut specifically, that Dick James had been pressuring them not to experiment but to shoot for an Engelbert Humperdinck or Tom Jones sort of sound. The A-side is Engelbert all the way, but the flip is more up Jones' alley.

As with its A-side (Elton's first single release), "I've Been Loving You", this one's Elton all the way on both music and lyrics. Recorded in 1967 and released on the DJM label in 1968, it's a not-bad horn-driven blues with a generic sort of "You can leave if you want but you'll be back, baby" lyric slant.

Tonight

Out of all the morose songs to be found on Blue Moves, none, not even the downright suicidal "Someone's Final Song", are more genuinely miserable than this track, which is the de facto album opener after the brief fakeout instrumental "Your Starter For...".

The singer and his significant other are trapped in a relationship which has broken down seemingly beyond all repair, and despite the singer's forlorn hopes of reconciliation, lines like

It's late, too late
To chase the rainbow that you're after
I'd like to find a compromise
And place it in your hands
My eyes are blind, my ears can't hear
And I cannot find the time

suggest that the damage is done, and his/her hopes are doomed to failure. Knowing what we know about Bernie's relationship issues, which inform much of this album, it's difficult not to see that he's pouring his heart out on the paper this time out.

Elton, for his part, sets this in music that is as elaborate, heavily orchestrated, and theatrical as anything from the Madman Across the Water album- strangely enough, even though Paul Buckmaster did contribute to the album, this score isn't his- it's by keyboardist James Newton Howard, who signed on as part of the Westies band. It's a beautiful arrangement, with ebbs and flows and washes of strings, punctuated by horns. Elton accompanies on piano. The melody itself is tender and poignant, perfectly complimenting the song.

"Tonight" is a rewarding and outstanding track, if you're able to listen objectively as one man lays out all the hurt, confusion and despair he feels at the breakdown of his marriage. It's defintely uneasy listening, for sure.

Listen on the streaming service of your choice.

Social Disease

As the thundering hoofbeats of "Roy Rogers" fade into the aural distance, we're left with a bleary voice, mixed down very low, singing the first few lines of "Social Disease", as if the drunken reprobate we will come to meet is slowly coming out of an alcoholic stupor, perhaps one spent zoning out to old cowboy movies. Eventually, the vocals are joined by a vaudeville-style banjo, but it stays distant and low-volume only until the last line of the second verse:

I get juiced on Mateus and just hang loose

When it suddenly lurches into the chorus, at full strength:

And I get bombed for breakfast in the morning
I get bombed for dinner time and tea
I dress in rags, smell a lot, and have a real good time
I'm a genuine example of a social disease

And that pretty much sums up the gist of the song, in which the singer describes what a neer-do-well and rascal he is, but fortunately he's a likable one who's resigned to living out his life this way:

And the ladies are all getting wrinkles
And they're falling apart at the seams
Well I just get high on tequila
And see visions of vineyards in my dreams

It's a lighthearted, jokey lyric, and Bernie does a real good job getting it across; even the slight misogyny of the description of his landlady is balanced with humor.

The arrangement is livened up with the aforementioned banjo throughout, and also with a nifty sax solo that pops up in the middle section, in which Elton and the band provide a handclap-funky foundation to make this another enjoyable cut on a side full of them. If Yellow Brick Road was a double album that would have been better served as a single, then it's always been my opinion that side 4 (all cuts beginning with "Your Sister Can't Twist" to the end on CD) should remain intact.

The inner gatefold of the LP, which featured the lyrics along with an illustration for each track, had an amusing hand tinted picture of Elton, in a goofy hat and sunglasses, swigging from a big bottle of wine, perfectly summing this one up.