#535: Melt the Guns (Elton’s Version)

A deep cut from the Caribou album,
I bet few of us remember that
Elton John and Bernie Taupin,
in 1974, wrote a song about a mass
shooting. As a kid, ten years old,
the song terrified me. Even though
I may not have been able to sing
it to you, I remembered the lyrics
to “Ticking” up to the very moment,
50 years later, when I bought
the remastered anniversary edition
of the album and placed it on my
turntable. Elton struck me, as a kid,
as uniquely American; it took
me a number of years before
I realized he was British. I think
of that now as I replay that horrific
and beautiful song, composed decades
before the first of a scourge
of mass shootings that would become
commonplace in the land of the free
and the home of the brave.
Elton and Bernie knew even then that guns
and the deaths they caused were
a uniquely American thing.
Whatever it was that they
had imagined and had
the courage to sing about so
many years ago now, has become
our reality. They also imagined
the way in which the phrase
“mental health” might become
ubiquitous, a red herring in
the conversation about gun
violence; anything else but
the implement itself must be
at the core of the problem.
“Now, you’ll never get heaven,”
Mama said. “Don’t ever ride on
the Devil’s knee,” Mama said.
“You’ve slept too long in silence,”
Mama said. “Crazy boy, you’ll
only wind up with strange notions
in your head.” Hear it, hear it.
Ticking. Ticking.
England, a place where mass
shootings happen three in
thirty years, while in the U. S. of A.
they occur three times every
month, produced a piano player
and a lyricist who knew
even from across the pond
that Americans were in trouble.
It would only be a matter of time,
ticking, ticking, before children
would die in their schools
again and again and again
and nothing would be done
to stop it.