I ran a search of all my posts
to see how many times I had
written about or at least named
Elton John in a blog entry.
The result: nineteen times.
He was my first rock star idol.
I was a fourth grader and my
cousins played me Goodbye Yellow
Brick Road from start to finish.
Almost immediately after, I would
have asked my dad if I could order
Elton records from his record club.
Perhaps one of the most significant
fatherly things he ever did was to
allow me to order my first records,
which were all, initially, Elton
John albums. And I have written
about this before but it bears
repeating: the first record I ever
bought with my own money
in a record store (the very day
it was released, no less), was
Elton John’s Captain Fantastic and
The Brown Dirt Cowboy. I was 11.
None of the Elton vinyl titles in my
collection are my original albums.
Like I did with many of my favorite
artists, after the great vinyl purge
of ’88, I spent years retrieving favorite
titles in the CD format and have
amassed over the years all of the Elton
that was significant to me during this
1970 to 1976 era, after which I would stop
listening to new Elton music until 2006,
when he released the sequel to Captain
Fantastic in a fashion that struck me as
truly back-to-form. But from 2010 forward,
as a reformed vinyl enthusiast, it was
impossible for me to resist collecting
certain titles of his AGAIN, one of only a
few artists whose records I have purchased
three or four times in my life, somewhat
embarrassingly.
It’s safe to say that Goodbye Yellow Brick
Road and Captain Fantastic and the Brown
Dirt Cowboy are two of my favorite albums
of all time. As a child, I listened to both of
these records so many times, and have
returned to them since so many more,
I can sing along nearly word for word
to every song, even the deep cuts. Elton
in the early to mid seventies was edgy,
creatively on the very top of his game,
his band was phenomenally rocking, and
Bernie Taupin’s lyrics were cinematic,
narratively complex, and even though
I could not have told you that as a kid,
I sensed it; I knew the words were evocative,
that they unveiled worlds to me and
characters and attitudes that would all
be brand new to my young and developing
brain. These two albums feel as fresh
to me today as they ever did and it is
something like an ecstatic experience
to sing along with them again. Caribou,
the album sandwiched between these
two, is also a marvel, containing as it does
gigantic songs like “The Bitch is Back” and
“Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me,”
thrown together with some of the weirdest
stylistic and lyrical turns in all of Elton
up to that point. A masterpiece, but one
without the same kind of staying power
for me as the bookends around it, even
though “I Have Seen The Saucers” stands
out as one of my all time favorites.
I think I have managed to collect on vinyl
my very favorite Elton albums beginning with
Don’t Shoot Me, with a couple of
exceptions that are nevertheless stellar:
On 11-17-70, a live album I had
never heard before I bought it used for $1,
the band performs as a three piece
(piano, bass, and drums) for about 125 people.
This set rocks especially hard,
way harder than one would expect,
and it’s an astounding, revelatory listen.
And Blue Moves is such a strange departure.
I remember liking it, but being vaguely
disappointed, and it would be my last new
Elton album for 30 years, as the 80’s were
a dismal decade, at least for me, when it
came to his output, and by the time the
90’s rolled around, I had kind of written
him off–fairly or not, I couldn’t tell you.
Blue Moves features mallet percussion,
horns, strings, full-on orchestrations. It
feels at first not to be a rock album at all,
and that’s probably the thing that turned me
off as a 12 year old. I didn’t do legit music.
I was completely into Kiss and AC/DC at this
point, maybe listening to Rush for the first
time and Cheap Trick. Not yet a new wave
punker, but enough of a rocker that this music
would have left me a bit cold, wishing for
more drums and a couple of guitar solos
at least. Listening to it now, it is not without
its rocking moments, its funky here and there,
and it ventures now and then towards
something like prog, and something like
classic early 70’s Elton, and the songs are
good, strong, maybe great. My twelve year
old brain just couldn’t make the adjustments.
Now, it’s a big record, tight, groovy, moody.
Maybe the last great Elton John record of my
childhood, even though I didn’t know it then.
He did, after all, beat XTC to the question
a whole decade early: “If there’s a God in
Heaven, what’s he waiting for?”
Let’s conclude with a rhyming couplet on
the impact of Elton in iambic pentameter:
I would not be the man I am without
Elton John, there can’t be a single doubt.
Notes on the vinyl editions:
- 11-17-70, Universal City Records, 1971, black vinyl, used copy in super clean condition, but jacket is worn, purchased for $1 who knows where.
- Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only the Piano Player, Rocket Records, 2023 (50th anniversary edition of the the 1973 recording), double album, white and red swirl vinyl, original album + demo sessions.
- Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, MCA Records, 1973, double black vinyl, used, not in great shape, but playable.
- Caribou, Rocket Records, 2024 (50th anniversary edition of the 1974 recording), double album, opaque blue vinyl, original single album + bonus tracks and demos, including the non-album single “Pinball Wizard.”
- Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, Rocket Records, 2025 (50th anniversary edition of the 1975 recording), double album, pink, red, purple, black swirl.
- Blue Moves, MCA Records, 1976, double black vinyl, used edition bought for $3, again, who knows where. Not in great playback condition. Some skips here and there, a lot of pops and crackles and noise. “Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word” is mostly skipping. This one would be worthy of a recapture on CD–or maybe later this year, a 50th anniversary repressing! There’s no news around that. I think it would definitely be worth tracking down a remastered CD.
In case you don’t already know: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing at least one, sometimes two or three long skinny poem-like-things in response for each artist, and on a few occasions, writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response to more than one artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic or lyric.
michael jarmer 