Elton John: Rock of the Westies (1975)

(Note: I am going to try to review a classic or, if  I can find one that deserves it, contemporary record album every Sunday, after having reviewed records in the past on my blog and having failed to follow up with more. For the time being, I am going to reprise reviews I have already written on this blog, written back when no one was reading it.  This review of Elton John's 1975 album Rock of the Westies originally appeared in July 2003, and appears here to mark Elton John's 65th birthday today.)

Elton John has rarely gotten the respect he deserves as a rock and roller, largely because he's sung so many ballads. After all, his first big hit was "Your Song," and subsequent hit singles like "Rocket Man" and "Daniel," while not ballads in the traditional sense, were rather light pop numbers. The Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album and the 1974 single "The Bitch Is Back" should have solidified his place as a rocker once and for all, but Elton (you can't call him John) was still being lumped in with the wimpy, overproduced popsters he shared AM radio with in the seventies. Elton, of course, knew just what to do. He set songwriting partner Bernie Taupin's direct lyrics to his own straightforward music, ditched his slick rhythm section of bassist Dee Murray and drummer Nigel Olsson (but kept guitarist Davey Johnstone), got some of the roughest, most undisciplined session players he could find, took them with him to Colorado, and recorded the new songs with his team at Caribou Studios.  The result was a milestone in Elton's career.

Rock of the Westies found Elton in his most rocking mood since he stunned patrons at the Troubadour Club in Los Angeles half a decade earlier. Producer Gus Dudgeon offered a crisp, uncluttered sound; Kenny Passerelli's bass is rock-steady here, and Roger Pope's drums crackle with life. Also involved are ace keyboardist James Newton Howard and master percussionist Ray Cooper. And Davey Johnstone is no slouch here either, having the freedom to be more of a guitar hero than usual, even with a fine guitarist like Caleb Quaye matching him almost note for note. They are all excellent but they play with the full knowledge that they're serving the guy whose grinning mug is on the LP's front cover.

Elton himself serves the material well, keeping his voice pure while concentrating on delivering Bernie Taupin's lyrics. Rock of the Westies - the title is a pun on the phrase "west of the Rockies" - starts off with "Yell Help/Wednesday Night/Ugly," a medley of unrelated song fragments about unenviable situations that flows seamlessly even as the music cooks. From there, Elton delivers cutthroat rockers like "Street Kids" and domestic laments such as "Hard Luck Story" with a passion that suggests a greater telepathy with Taupin's lyrical style than anything that had come before. "Grow Some Funk Of Your Own," a hilarious culture-clash rocker about an Englishman picking up the wrong girl in a Mexican cantina, is a hoot, but the best number remains the hit single "Island Girl," a racially ironic, melodic reggae-rocker that finds a Jamaican fellow acting even more paternalistically towards the island call girl of his desires than her clientele in the big American city. Taupin loves seamy lyrics like this, and only Elton and his seemingly innocent music could get such a single in the Billboard charts. With their new-found toughness on Rock of the Westies, it seemed that Elton and Bernie had a future brighter than their already luminous recent past.

They didn't. Burned out from ten studio albums (one a double set) in six years, the duo followed up with the weepy, overproduced Blue Moves the following year (1976); the punk revolt soon followed, and Elton and Bernie went their separate ways. They reunited full-time in 1983, and they've had some fine moments since then, but they haven't been the same since their seventies heyday. It didn't matter; thanks to Rock of the Westies, Elton's place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was assured.