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.

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.

Friends

Again, I haven't seen the film, of which this is the title cut, so I don't know how it fits in- according to the liner notes of Rare Masters, Bernie didn't really read the script, skimming instead and consulting with the director's son who was coordinating the film's music, and it was he who told him what it was about. So if this seems a bit lyrically generic, it can be understood- it's still a nicely warmhearted statement of the desire of (one assumes) the film's young lovers (and anybody else who chooses to identify, I suppose) to join together in friendship, both as a couple and also with the world, as summed up by the chorus:

Making friends for the world to see
Let the people know you got what you need
With a friend at hand you will see the light
If your friends are there then everything's all right

Arrangement-wise, this is pretty much Paul Buckmaster's show, and he brings the usual array of echoey strings and piping oboes, in tandem with Elton on piano. Sounds a lot like it could have fit on Elton John or Tumbleweed Connection, but the melody (and I'm not sure whether it's Elton's or Buckmaster's) is not a particularly memorable one, although the sentiment it evokes is effective and genuine.

This was the follow-up single to the smash "Your Song", but it didn't duplicate its predecessor's success- it didn't chart at all in the UK, although it did make it into the top 40 in the US Billboard Hot 100, and #17 on the Adult Contemporary chart.

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

Michelle's Song

The plot of Friends sounds an awful lot like that of later big-screen teen romances such as The Blue Lagoon and Sahara, in which neglected/abandoned/lost adolescent boys and girls come together amidst great difficulty, persevere, and find love. The titular "Michelle", then, is the Brooke Shields/Phoebe Cates half of the equation, played by Anicée Alvina, and no young gamine of the screen ever had a sweeter pop song dedicated to her than this.

Bernie has crafted an unabashedly starry-eyed love song, with this as the chorus:

So take my hand in your hand
Say it's great to be alive
No one's going to find us
No matter how they try
No one's going to find us
It's wonderful so wild beneath the sky

The sentiment and feel is similar to the duo's other notable valentine, "Your Song", and the Paul Buckmaster/Elton team dress it up with a melody in the verses that sounds similar to, but different from, the old traditional "Wild Mountain Thyme". The chorus reminds me a little of the "Bring your family down..." section of "Burn Down the Mission", of all things. Of course, they are skilled at this sort of reshuffling, so the total effect is very romantic, with Buckmaster's oboe piping along in the background with the surging strings, and of course Elton's piano and the rolling drums sound that was a feature of many of the songs from his early 70's period.

The title song, probably for commercial reasons, was the single and was a minor hit; for my part I think this would have made a strong follow-up and if not for the box office failure of the film, who knows, it might have seen release. For my part, I think it's probably the best cut on the album.

Can I Put You On

Just before "Your Song" became a smash hit, Elton and Paul Buckmaster were hired to create the soundtrack for the obscure British teenage-love film Friends, which starred Sean (The Abominable Dr. Phibes) Bury and the late Anicée Alvina. Recorded in 1970, between the Elton John and Tumbleweed Connection sessions, it featured instrumental music by Buckmaster and five new John/Taupin compositions, one of which was this R&B/Blues-style rocker.

In interviews, John has cited Leon Russell as an influence on his vocal style, and it's pretty plain here. Backing is provided by the Olsson/Murray/Caleb Quaye band, and this cut in particular sounds like it would have fit in on Tumbleweed Connection with very little fuss- in fact, the melody and tempo remind me of "Son of Your Father".

I've never had the opportunity to actually see the film, so the context of the lyrics, which seem to be a working man's lament that involves a traveling salesman that comes to town every week to sell "fancy city things", reminiscent of the sort of working-class, slice of life, Brecht/Weill-style songs that Alan Price performed in O Lucky Man! or Between Today and Yesterday, pretty much eludes me.

Not a bad song, not a particularly great song, but the extended fadeout lends itself to lots of vamping, which is (I'm sure) why Elton performed it so often in the early days. It was also included in the beat-the-boots 11-17-70, which I haven't covered due to not wanting to include live albums.