Elton John - 11-17-70 (1971)

(It was forty-three years ago today - Tuesday, November 17, 1970 - that Elton John performed a radio concert for New York rock station WABC-FM, which later changed its call letters to WPLJ, and then its format to Top 40.  The resulting LP, 11-17-70, was released in May 1971.)

Elton John came out of nowhere in 1970 to provide a lift to a pop music scene devastated by the breakup of the Beatles that year, breaking through in America with an historic engagement at the Troubadour Club in Los Angeles that August.  He followed that up with more live shows in the United States, including an appearance at Philadelphia's Electric factory that sparked big sales of his self-titled second album nationwide.  By the time he gave a live performance at A&R Recording Studios in New York for WABC-FM before an audience of a hundred or so people that November, he was well on his way to stardom; a recording of this show, released to discourage bootlegging, preserves for posterity the excitement of discovering Elton for the first time as a performer.

11-17-70 documents Elton's music at its most basic and most raw.  Performed in a small studio, without the benefit of either the theatrics of his later concerts or the elaborate strings of arranger Paul Buckmaster from the Elton John album, Elton relies on the music and the energy behind it to carry the day.  It does just that, in splendid fashion.  The sound quality is good and the instrumentation is sparse, with Elton's piano supported only by bassist Dee Murray and drummer Nigel Olsson, who would soon form the nucleus of his backing band.  Murray provides some meaty rhythms and steady, solid pacing to complement Olsson's thunderous drum fills, but the most raucous sounds come from Elton; his fingers move from delicate keyboard flourishes to pounding riffs in the style of Jerry Lee Lewis, with little in the way of letting up.  Songs familiar to Elton fans take on a whole new context here; "Sixty Years On," a mournful ballad about an old man, sounds more menacing and biting, while "Take Me to the Pilot," which on Elton John is perhaps the best melding of an orchestra and a band in all of rock (sorry, Jeff Lynne) is leaner and more edgy.  

Elton also displays his versatility through some unexpectedly delightful covers; he throws in a tongue-in-cheek but respectful performance of the Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Women" and follows a spirited reading of his own "Burn Down the Mission" from his Tumbleweed Connection LP with a medley of the Elvis Presley standard "My Baby Left Me" and the Beatles' "Get Back." He delivers the Elvis tune in as faithful a tribute as anyone who reveres Elvis should, and he proceeds to inject a toughness in "Get Back" absent from the Beatles' original version.  (The original show lasted an hour, with forty minutes' worth of material used for the LP, but reissues of 11-17-70 have added performances of "Amoreena" and an obscure B-side, "Bad Side of the Moon"; both tracks are tight performances that accentuate the original record quite nicely.) 

Anyone who's ever been to one of his theatrical concerts knows that Elton is a great entertainer, but in the end  it's about the music.  Elton would never have gotten as far as he has without the talent to back it up.  On 11-17-70,  as a nascent performer unburdened by superstardom and expectations, Elton provides the purest expression of that talent in spades.