Elton John...Fag of the highest order...Did that matter to me? Nope. When I was younger I used to swim competitively. I was really good, and I'm not kidding. We used to swim all over at least a five state area, and that meant other guys on the team often had to bring their friends, brothers or sisters that didn't swim along to the meets.
This one definitely goes out to K.D.'s sister. 1973. Youngstown State University. I'm looking at a three or four hour wait to swim my next event, and we're decades ahead of an iPod, so I'm trying to find someone with a boom box . K.D.'s sister turns out to be just that someone, and she's listening to Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Do I think this is a good thing? Probably. She was a Stone Cold Fox, and I was at least three years younger than her. Her friends were awesome, and just as gorgeous, if you asked me.
So their 8 Track of the moment that I remember was Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. I knew Bennie and the Jets, and I was way cool with that. I also knew Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting. This was one of the first times I actually felt like I could talk to some girls about music and maybe stand my own ground. I've mentioned before that a lot of my earlier influences on music seem to come from females, and I felt pretty comfortable talking to K.D.'s sister and her friends while she blasted this in an area where we didn't have to line up, sweat, or just be. She found a spot where she could just be beyond cool with her friends, and guys would find her and her friends.
So I felt pretty lucky being able to barely talk about how much I liked Elton John. I liked him a lot, but back then it wasn't like he was Manfred Mann or something. But to girls, he was something along the lines of the late 50's Elvis. I'm not kidding, he was truly revered by teenage girls, and if you were a teenage boy, he was one of the artists you might want to get in line with. And I did. And it was easy.
I mean, c'mon. This is a truly classic album of the Classic Rock variety. Let me lay it out for you. So you're too young to drive, but you're old enough for a boombox (which used to be no big deal until they turned into suitcases), and you can buy your own 8 Tracks. So you can rock with your friends most anywhere, but to smoke and stuff, a quiet stairwell is best. So that's where the kids go, and they listen to whatever the person with the boombox listens to. If it was a girl, it was often Elton John, and the nice thing about Elton was that he could rip off something as cool as Bennie and the Jets or Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting with the same ease as some sappy crap like Candle in the Wind. So Elton was one of those artists that almost everyone liked.
And Goodbye Yellow Brick Road wasn't some some bullshit double live album. It was two solid lp's of studio work. I'm pretty sure it had four hits on it (back when one was enough) and then it had this amazing knack of sticking with you even if you were way older than the days of wishing K.D.'s sister would notice you. I can remember more than one friend letting this one rip loud and proud on a SuperTuner from the first notes of Funeral for a Friend ( if that isn't enough to make the album worth buying right there, then I don't know what is), all the way through Harmony years later when we started driving in cars.It's a timeless kind of album, and maybe it's kind of a shame that there isn't a record like this for teenagers to listen to now. It's certainly full of adult content (Sweet Painted Lady, anyone?), but there's a vibe throughout the whole thing that this isn't a collection of songs, but a whole piece of work that spans two records.
This is one of those albums I can let nostalgia take over for the days when I thought K.D.'s sister and her friends were the living end because they loved Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Bennie and the Jets so much, but then just a few years later I can remember thinking Funeral for a Friend and Love Lies Bleeding (which never got any airplay) were real Rock Statements. I mean, I can remember talking to adults that thought Grey Seal and Harmony were songs that we probably weren't even getting the half of, and they were the kinds of things we should have got out of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. I love that almost 40 years later I still think this is the kind of album that I find fascinating on so many levels. They may be the same levels as in the 70's but as much as I like this album, I think I like it best with other people, or through other people's ears, maybe.
What a pinnacle achievement. Elton really did it on this one. I think this might be one of the greatest Rock albums ever.
The combination of Bernie Taupin's lyrics and Elton's music, along with that exceptional singing voice, is hard to beat. Unlike most songwriting collaborations, Taupin's lyrics came first, and Elton was skilled enough to build the tune and music, around those written words.
ReplyDeleteI was introduced to EJ by my older brother's copy of John's first Greatest Hits, which contained several songs on GYBR. It would be much later I bought a copy of the double album. I was sure glad I did. First I had to put aside some of my machismo.
I remember that GH album. I bought it for a firend for his birthday and begged for it for myself for xmas one year. I really loved it. It wouldn't be until later in Jr. High that for some reason Elton John or David Bowie's sexual preferences seemed to make them "uncool." I thought Elton's stupid Big Bird outfit made him pretty uncool, but I never cared who he had sex with (And no, I wasn't some enlightened teenager, I was an asshole when it came to a lot of things I didn't understand).
ReplyDeleteBut I really liked GBYR. I think I had one I used to play in my old Dynamite 8, too. Elton really fell from grace fast, though. He could overcome a lot of negativity by having a terrific band and records that just kept handing out great songs for the whole first half of the 70's. After Capt. Fantastic he lost me, but up through that one, I'm a big fan. He always seems like a genuinely nice guy in interviews and stuff, too.