Elton John

He'd write a song in the time it took me to make a sandwich

(Davey Johnstone, Elton John's guitarist)

Before becoming the darling of English aristocracy, the pampered star of jet-set gossip columns and an icon of the most unbridled luxury in the music business, Reginald Kenneth Dwight was one of the most talented artists to emerge from the UK's evergreen pop machine. His decade above all others was the Seventies, which saw the astonishing metamorphosis of the awkward, baby-faced pianist from Bluesology into the eccentric Rocket Man, capable of setting massive crowds alight in every corner of the globe. Of this unforgettable decade, "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" was both the summa and the peak, arguably the unmatched pinnacle of an unprecedented fusion between rock exuberance and soft romanticism, (post-)prog grandiloquence and pop immediacy. All topped with a pinch of that glam stardust which, in the age of glitter and Ziggy Stardust, certainly didn't hurt.

From Jamaica to the French chateau

In 1973, a now fully uninhibited Elton John - having broken free of his oppressive father and all the constraints of buttoned-up Albion - shows no sign of slowing down. After the tentative debut of "Empty Sky", he'd already won over critics with the knockout one-two of 1970 ("Elton John" and "Tumbleweed Connection") and cemented his fame with astonishing productivity and at least two more remarkable albums ("Honky Château" and "Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only The Piano Player"), even scoring his first US No. 1 with the irresistible fifties-flavoured pop'n'roll of "Crocodile Rock". Now he's waiting for the definitive record that will launch him worldwide. And with the small/great help of his friend Bernie Taupin - his trusted lyricist - he'll get it right away, despite a troubled gestation.

"Goodbye Yellow Brick Road", in fact, was supposed to be recorded in Jamaica, "just as the Rolling Stones had done for 'Goat's Head Soup'", but when Elton starts to spot the barbed wire surrounding the Dynamic Sounds Studios and some rather unsettling characters carrying machine guns - Kingston at the time was a powder keg, caught between political unrest and the Joe Frazier vs. George Foreman boxing event - he wisely decides to turn on his heel and head back to his hotel, also citing difficulties in sourcing recording equipment.

That brief “infernal” stay didn't stop the irrepressible Reginald from cranking out most of the songs in Bernie's room in front of an electric piano. Nothing strange, after all, for a man who – according to legend – wrote “Rocket Man” in a flat ten minutes.

So when Elton, Bernie and the rest of the crew (Dee Murray on bass, Davey Johnstone on guitars, Nigel Olsson on drums) relocated to the Château d'Hérouville in France (already used for the production of “Honky Château” and “Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only The Piano Player”), the recording sessions were wrapped up in just two weeks. The result was a whopping twenty-one songs, seventeen of which would make up what, despite its author's initial reluctance, would become the first Elton John double album.

Yellow bricks in the kingdom of Oz

But “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” is not a concept album, despite its obvious nods to “The Wizard of Oz” – the famous Victor Fleming film based on the novel by L. Frank Baum – starting with the cover art devised by Ian Beck, depicting Elton in platform boots and a silk jacket stepping into a poster of “The Wizard of Oz” and setting off down the fateful yellow brick road. The narrative conceit, however, is picked up only in the title track, with an ambivalent meaning: on one hand, a farewell to the innocence and carefree spirit of adolescence and the passage into a more mature phase of life; on the other, a rejection of the golden allure of showbiz – in Baum's book, the yellow brick road symbolizes gold and the power of money, and is the path Dorothy must travel to reach the Wizard. “From Bernie's point of view, the song meant: 'I want to go back to my farm in Lincolnshire.' Maybe he felt disillusioned. As for me, I was having the time of my life,” Elton John would later comment in his own way.

But beyond the delicious contradictions of the lyrics, the piano-driven title track unleashes one of the most sumptuous melodies in pop history, soaring skyward on the words “blues”, “road” and “ground”, with a jaw-dropping falsetto vocal performance from a thoroughly inspired Elton who, buoyed by the backing vocals and the orchestral sweep, declares: “You can't plant me in your penthouse/ I'm going back to my plough”... “I'm not a present for your friends to open/ This boy's too young to be singing the blues”. A masterpiece of timeless nostalgia.

The other heart-wrenching ballad is of course the now overplayed “Candle In The Wind”, which before becoming the grim soundtrack to Lady Diana Spencer's funeral in 1997 (as well as the best-selling single in history, with over 40 million copies sold), was simply a wistful, touching elegy in memory of Norma Jean Baker, who as Marilyn Monroe embodied the most seductive and cruel of Hollywood parables (“Hollywood created a superstar/ And pain was the price you paid/ Even when you died/ Oh, the press still hounded you/ All the papers had to say/ Was that Marilyn was found in the nude/ And it seems to me you lived your life/ Like a candle in the wind/ Never knowing who to cling to/ When the rain set in”). There's naturally no comparison between the original waltz on the record, dotted with electric guitar touches and backing vocals, and the bloated requiem-like versions that followed in all its subsequent live (and funerary) renditions.

Rounding out the prodigious foursome of singles are two decidedly livelier tracks, where John lets loose all his most full-blooded rock'n'roll verve: introduced by artificial (and inexplicable) live applause, the potent blend of glam and r'n'b of “Bennie And The Jets” marks out, over the piano's driving beat, the story of an imaginary band fronted by a female leader kitted out in electric boots and a mohair suit, who bears a striking resemblance to the Bowie-esque crew of Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars; the infectious “Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting”, with its powerful hard-rock riffs carved out by Johnstone's guitar, recalls the memorable pub brawls of a fifteen-year-old Taupin after one too many pints: “It was the first time I ever recorded standing up, singing and jumping around the studio like a madman,” an enthusiastic Elton would later recall, and besides releasing the song as the lead single, he would keep it as a fixture in his live sets ever after (not to mention the inevitable covers, courtesy of the Who and Queen among others).

The four singles were a worldwide success, though paradoxically the only one to hit No. 1 (on the Billboard Hot 100) was the very one its author didn't want to record, deeming it not catchy enough: “Bennie And The Jets”.

A diary on 33 rpm

Not a concept album, then, as noted, but certainly a diary. Autobiographical and otherwise. A collection of stories, feelings and memories. The protagonists of Taupin's lyrics are mostly everyday people, often shady, murky, desperate figures, following in the footsteps of Lou Reed, with plotlines always clearly drawn that blend together into a choral narrative as you listen. “I tried to focus attention as much as possible on images and human stories, with lyrics capable of evoking them and merging them with Elton's melodies,” his lyricist would later recall.

But above all, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” is a showcase for the overflowing compositional creativity of 1970s-vintage Elton John, a distillation of his all-devouring musical passion, ranging from classical to pop, taking in blues, rock'n'roll, folk and country along the way. Upending the canonical, classicizing use of the piano, Mister Dwight pounds away at breakneck speed, turning it into a rhythmic engine driving his rock charges, only to caress it tenderly in his more theatrical, melancholy ballads. He's the one virtually conducting the orchestra on the majestic, quasi-prog opening one-two punch of over eleven minutes, “Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding”: the instrumental overture – with David Hentschel's brooding Arp synthesizer setting a grandiose sonic scene – almost recalls the intro to Wendy Carlos's “Clockwork Orange” before Johnstone's guitar and Olsson's drums pave the way – via an A-major chord acting as a bridge – into the infectious rock of “Love Lies Bleeding”, where the English singer-songwriter's warm voice bursts onto the scene. A spectacular calling card, which Elton John explained by talking about the kind of music he'd want to hear at his own funeral, and admitting his love of sad melodies of any kind – a concept later trivialized a few years down the line in the hit “Sad Songs (Say So Much)”.

It's precisely the solemnity of the opening suite that sets the tone for the record, which never entirely loses its grandeur, poised somewhere between classical symphony and Hollywood musical. So even a seemingly transitional episode like the folk-pop of “This Song Has No Title” (one of the most brilliant titles ever) manages to leave a mark, with Taupin's enigmatic, touching lyrics weaving together with flute, piano and Elton's voice (also on Mellotron and organ duty); the same goes for the uptempo “Grey Seal”, with Murray's driving bass and John's boogie piano shaping a kind of proto-disco that completely overhauls the original version released as a single in 1970, doing away with Paul Buckmaster's lush arrangements in favor of a heavy use of synthesizer and keyboards.

It's almost with surprise, then, that we arrive at the first real filler on the tracklist, sitting in seventh position: the fake-reggae divertissement called “Jamaica Jerk Off”, which evokes Jamaican misadventures but ends up coming across as a tasteless joke, breaking the spell of the show that the cinematic “I've Seen That Movie Too” immediately tries to restore, leaning into sentimentality with Del Newman's orchestral arrangements, but without the intensity of a “Rocket Man” or a “Your Song”.

The other side of the show

Having fired off nearly all its showstoppers on the first of the two records, Elton John devotes the second to his more intimate, reflective side, yet he's in such fine form that he moves you from the very first attempt. Boasting the most underrated melody of the bunch, “Sweet Painted Lady” strikes straight at the heart with its retro 1940s sound, which Newman conjures with touches of brass and accordion, framing the story of a prostitute and her nighttime encounters with a sailor down at the docks: “Many have used her and many still do/There's a place in the world for a woman like you...”. Such romantic tenderness, however, is withheld (to put it mildly) from the unfortunate “Dirty Little Girl”, onto whom Taupin pours a hefty dose of his notorious misogyny (“I guess I'm really hard/ But I'm gonna put buckshots/ In your pants/ If you step into my yard... Someone grab that bitch by the ears/ Rub her down scrub her back/ And turn her inside out/ Cause I bet/ She hasn't had a bath in years”). Closing out the saga of the hapless young women of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” is the story of the unfortunate Alice, a sixteen-year-old lesbian at the mercy of bored middle-aged ladies, who ends up murdered in the subway (the aggressive rock of “All The Young Girls Love Alice”, with Hentschel again on the Arp synthesizer, percussionist Ray Cooper on tambourine, and Kiki Dee on backing vocals).

The other side of the yellow brick road holds further gems, though, from the western setting complete with saloon piano of "The Ballad Of Danny Bailey (1909-34)" (the story of an imaginary Dillinger-style outlaw killed in Kentucky by "a punk with a shotgun") to the swaying, Dylan-esque country-waltz in honour of the cowboy "Roy Rogers" astride his horse Trigger (inspired by a popular American TV series of the 50s, and built entirely around the dialogue between piano and guitar effects mimicking a steel guitar). Country flavours also permeate "Social Disease", a kind of parody of day-to-day living, complete with barking dogs, banjo and twangy guitars keeping pace with the piano's honky-tonk chimes. And while the circus swagger of "Your Sister Can't Twist (But She Can Rock 'n Roll)" winks at 50s (Crocodile) rock, with its obligatory backing vocals and John's fine embroidery on Farfisa organ, the closing "Harmony" is as understated as the opening was grandiose: just an acoustic guitar, a gentle melodic progression and one last helping of vocal harmonies are enough to bring a double album of incomparable grandeur to a fitting close.

The long and yellow road

A technicolor showcase of the best of Elton John in the Seventies, "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" would top the US chart for eight weeks and the UK chart for two, while reaching No. 5 in Italy. To date it has sold over 30 million copies worldwide (eight million in the US alone). In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine placed it at No. 91 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, and it also features on Time's list of the 100 most influential albums in music history from the 1950s to today. A deluxe edition was released in 2003, consisting of two CDs (including several bonus tracks) and the DVD "The Making Of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road".

Elton John himself was immediately aware he'd landed the decisive blow, the one that would soon see him play to a hundred thousand people at the Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, a venue no rock artist had set foot on since the days of the Beatles. Taupin's longed-for farewell to the golden road of the music business could wait. Perhaps indefinitely. Because despite the dip in creativity that would dent his career from the 80s onward, the rockstar destiny of the pudgy, eccentric Reginald Dwight was already written in the stars. Neither the artistic flops, nor the personal excesses, nor the tabloid scandals of the years to come would manage to halt his triumphant march down his own Yellow Brick Road.

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16/01/2022