Elton John - Madman Across the Water (1971)

The musical arranger Paul Buckmaster, who died this month (November 2017) at 71, worked with artists ranging from David Bowie to Carly Simon, but he will be bestremembered for his work with Elton John, for whom he concocted orchestrations on songs on the latter three of Elton's first four albums.  Madman Across the Water, from 1971, is the best of those three records.

Mind you, Madman Across the Water isn't perfect; some of the songs, the lyrics of which were of course written by Bernie Taupin, border on pretentiousness, and the music sometimes seems overproduced - which is to be expected with an album with over twenty different backing musicians across nine tracks.  But the album overall is a solid amalgamation of disparate influences, with some stinging rock and touches of country and gospel blending with art rock and stately chamber music. 

Part of what makes this album work is how Buckmaster understood the drama and poignancy in each song and how he knew when to bring his orchestra in and when to hold back.  The results are fascinating, from the stirring strings and choir of "Tiny Dancer" (Taupin's valentine to his first wife Maxine), anchoring steel guitar riffs with great dignity, to the drama of the title track, a biting rocker about a mental-hospital patient, in which the orchestra comes in crashes in with a loud, ponderous sense of doom.  Buckmaster restrains himself at the right times; he leaves a gritty blues-rock tune about lowlifes like "Razor Face" alone, and his work on the country-rock of "Rotten Peaches" bubbles quietly under the surface.  Yet he brings some symphonic flair to "Holiday Inn," a charming song about a rock star's life on the road (though Family's "Part Of the Load" remains the best song on that subject) that somehow manages to blend a mandolin with a sitar successfully.

Bernie Taupin's progress as a lyricist here shows steady growth over the songs on Elton's two previous albums (the Black Album and Tumbleweed Connection, both from 1970), but while he is more accomplished with song form on Madman Across the Water, he still goes overboard at times; the majesty of "Levon" is almost undermined by his impressionistic words, and however sympathetic "Indian Sunset" is to the plight of native Americans, his images of indigenous American culture sound clichéd and ill-informed (the Iroquois and the Sioux never fought each other because they lived in different regions of North America).  But ultimately, this is still Elton John's record; his music is solidly written and gives Buckmaster and producer Gus Dudgeon a strong foundation on which to build.  Elton's piano is impeccable throughout, and his peerless vocals bring meaning and urgency to even Taupin's most pompous lyrics.  "Levon" is a musical masterpiece, with Elton's impassioned performance rising to the occasion opposite Buckmaster's stirring strings, and the sensitivity that Elton brings to the other songs on Madman Across the Water shows how well he responds to Dudgeon's direction.

Elton's confidence here is in full bloom on the choir-dominated gospel-influenced "All The Nasties," in which he and Bernie answer their critics, a demonstration of how he was more than ready to charge ahead into the seventies, a decade he would come to dominate musically.   But having made an album worthy of Phil Spector's grandest ambitions, he was ready to move on; he wouldn't work with Buckmaster again for awhile.  Madman Across the Water's weepy but mercifully brief and appropriately titled closing cut, "Goodbye," signified the end of Elton's London orchestral phase.  Soon he and his production team would be in a rundown recording studio in France (re)discovering the joys of simpler pop.   But Madman Across the Water is why Elton is regarded as a serious artist and why Buckmaster is regarded as the person who helped him become the artist he is.  (Rest in peace, Paul Buckmaster.)