Music Video Of the Week - May 23, 2025

"Someone Saved My Life Tonight" by Elton John  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - January 17, 2025

"Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me" by Elton John  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Videos Of the Week - November 29, 2024

"Whatever Gets You Thru the Night" by John Lennon and Elton John (studio and live versions)  (Go to the upper-right-hand corner.)

Christmas Music Video Of the Week - December 22, 2023

"Step Into Christmas" by Elton John  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1973)

(This is a special record review, in recognition of the fiftieth anniversary of this album's release this month.)

With all due respect to the Rolling Stones and Exile on Main St., Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is the signature double album of the seventies.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road presents everything that was good and even a few things that were embarrassing in the decade that Elton John defined with his music.  You get the flash, the glitter, the professionalism, and even a bit of the cheesiness of some of 1970s pop's more regrettable moments.  It also brings together all of the various forms of pop of the time; art rock, heavy rock, singer-songwriter pop, glam, and soul.  The music is immaculately played by Elton himself and his band of guitarist Davey Johnstone, bassist Dee Murray and drummer Nigel Olsson, given the right amount of tinsel and polish by producer Gus Dudgeon. 

Lyricist Bernie Taupin describes Goodbye Yellow Brick Road as a cinematic album, and he and Elton constructed it in a sweeping, epic manner.  The LP kicks off with the astonishing eleven-minute suite "Funeral For a Friend / Love Lies Bleeding," which begins with the sound of wind and funeral bells and a morose organ, settling into a somber piano piece before slowly building up energy and explosively segueing into a rocking song.  Other songs throughout the album are presented as scenes from a movie, from the glam-rock concert vibes of "Bennie and the Jets" (released as a single in America when it started getting airplay on soul stations)  to the gangster lore of "The Ballad of Danny Bailey (1909-34)." There are also moments of  nostalgia like the Marilyn Monroe tribute "Candle in the Wind" (not one of my favorite Elton John songs, but as a power ballad, it works in the context of the rest of the album) and the ballad ""Roy Rogers," a song with a corny big-time Nashville "countrypolitan" about a bored father and husband who escapes watching reruns of Roy Rogers' old TV show.    

There are plenty of memorable rockers on Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, made even more so by Johnstone's spirited, forceful guitar solos and Olsson's punchy drums, along with Murray's solid but subtle bass lines.  Elton is still the star of the show; he works up a frenzied vocal line on "Your Sister Can't Twist" (but She Can Rock 'n' Roll)" carried to a ridiculous tempo by a swirling organ, and his piano on "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" is just as heavy as Johnstone's crunchy riffs.  He's just as able to deliver some of Bernie's more seamy lyrics, such as a tender ballad about a prostitute ("Sweet Painted Lady") and a jokey reggae sex romp "(Jamaica Jerk-Off")  And Elton really gets it on with "All the Girls Love Alice," a tale of a lesbian who "pleasures" bored housewives set to a nasty and dirty rock beat.

The title song is a perfect centerpiece for the album, with its poignant yearning to return to one's roots even after living the high life, and despite Elton's sympathetic delivery, you know a part of this songwriting team is ready to escape to the fantasy world of the denizens of Oz.  (The LP's cover, depicting Elton walking into the imagined world of L. Frank Baum's stories, underscores the irony.)  "Harmony," an uplifting ballad of reconciliation, closes the album with a great deal of satisfaction for the 76-minute journey, a positive vibe you don't get from other great double albums, and that includes the Beatles' White Album ("Good Night" is too melancholy) or Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde ("Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" is just so darn long!).  If you want to know what Elton John is all about - and what the 1970s were all about - this is the album for you.

Music Video Of the Week - October 6, 2023

"Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" by Elton John (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.) 

Music Video Of the Week - January 27, 2023

"Crocodile Rock" by Elton John (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Boxes

I have some sound advice for anyone who wants to build up their record collection (provided they own records and don't use streaming or the Cloud) . . . never get a box set.

I have four box sets in my record collection, and despite the good cuts between them, I wish I hadn't gotten them.  Well, except for Bob Dylan's 1991 inaugural Bootleg Series three-CD set, if only because it's comprised entirely of previously unreleased songs.  But the other three are mainly greatest-hits compilations on steroids, filled out here and there by a couple of unreleased songs and alternate mixes.  I really don't listen to them that much.  In fact, there are two that I don't listen to at all - because they're both on cassette.

Let me explain.  The first two box sets I ever got were Bob Dylan's Biograph from 1985 and Elton John's To Be Continued . . . from 1990, both retrospectives of their careers with a couple of alternate mixes and unreleased tracks thrown in for good measure.  Both of my copies are on cassette, because that was the only format I could play at the time.  I got my first compact disc player for Christmas in 1990; the following year, I got as a Christmas gift the Crosby, Stills and Nash box set on CD.  All of these box sets are entertaining enough, though I was always left with a pang of rue over the Crosby, Stills and Nash box set - mainly because, while many of the songs included were among the trio's best, most of them were in fact from their solo and duo projects, because as a group,  Crosby, Stills and Nash didn't put out many albums because they spent more time arguing than recording together.

Well, I don't have a working cassette player any more, the second one I've had since 2019 having broken like the one before it.  So I can't play the Dylan and Elton collections.  And the 1991 CSN box set?  That set led me to seek out Crosby and Nash's mid-seventies releases and the first album from Stephen Stills' group Manassas, as well as some of Stills' and Graham Nash's solo albums.  The box set seems less essential now.   

As for the cassette box sets . . . yeah, well, one of the four cassettes from Elton John's To Be Continued . . . is homemade, recorded off other sources, because the original one broke.

I'm thinking of just selling the CSN box set to a local record store, and I don't know what to do with the Dylan and Elton sets, because who's going to buy any cassette recording these days anyway?  Besides, in 1992, after the release of To Be Continued . . ., Polydor, which acquired the rights to Elton John's pre-1976 recordings, put out the two-CD Rare Masters, a more concise and compact collection of rare Elton John singles and B-sides, plus his and Bernie Taupin's contributions to the soundtrack for the movie Friends, and that is the essential big-time Elton retrospective.

One other thing.  I kept my box sets in a plastic crate in my bedroom, but both the box sets and the crate got so dusty that I put the box sets I put in the living room credenza with all of my old vinyl records (which I can't play because I have no working turntable) and condemned the crate to the basement.  I really don't think it's worth keeping them, especially when they all may be out of print anyway and no one likely cares about them anymore.  I remember that David Bowie threw Dylan a launch party at the Whitney Museum in New York when Biograph was issued in 1985; the party was probably more enjoyable than the box set.  (And, truth be told, some critics found Biograph to be too conservative in offering too many familiar tracks and not enough unreleased material from the vaults.)  

Box sets, in a word, are ridiculous.  They're nicely packaged but rarely offer anything essential.  Most of the essentials are in the packaging - the rare photos, the interview with the artiste, and the like.  But life is too short to get them just to hear an alternate mix of  CSN's "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" or an awful dance mix of Elton's "I Don't Want To Go On With You Like That" from house/dance pop producer Shep Pettibone (best known for his work with Madonna!).   Who needs any of that, really?  I did once say that box sets are worth it because it's always fascinating to hear alternate takes and unreleased songs, as it leads to a lot of second-guessing as to whether an artiste made the right call in rejecting them, but the novelty of such tracks - and box sets in general - has since worn off for me.

So yes, I was once into box sets, but my enthusiasm for them has long since waned.  I don't know what I'll ultimately do about the box sets I have mentioned here, but I will keep my set of the Beatles' Anthology, because that is essential.  Yeah, yeah, the three Anthology albums were released separately over a year and change, but to me they're really a box set, only without the box.       

Music Video Of the Week - May 20, 2022

"Honky Cat" by Elton John  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - November 19, 2021

"Tiny Dancer" by Elton John  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - March 5, 2021

"Friends" by Elton John  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - January 8, 2021

"Country Comfort" by Elton John (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Elton John's Fall 1970 U.S. Tour

Elton John's career, as we have already seen, was expected to end as 1970 dawned, as he and his songwriting partner Bernie Taupin had gotten nowhere.  But by the fall, Elton's long rock and roll odyssey was already beginning.

After a few concert dates in the U.S. in September 1970, he returned to England, and as the Beatles were going through a slow-motion split - it would not be until literally the end of 1970, December 31, when Paul McCartney sued to dissolve the band's legal partnership to dissociate himself from Apple manager Allen Klein - America moved on to Elton.  The Black Album continued to sell in appreciable quantities, eventually peaking at number four on the Billboard album chart.  That October, Elton released this third studio LP, Tumbleweed Connection, in England.  It would not be released in the U.S. until January 1971, and Elton's activities in the States that November, when he would resume U.S. concert dates, would certainly be a catalyst for continued chart success.  (Tumbleweed Connection would peak at number five on the Billboard album chart.)

He returned to America to begin another tour, playing a few gigs in Boston in the final three days of October at the Boston Tea Party, one of several small venues he would perform at in the coming weeks.  (Arenas and stadiums would come later.)  Meanwhile, "Your Song" was released as a single a few days before his autumn American tour began, eventually peaking at number eight in the U.S.  From Boston, he would go to play the Electric Factory in Philadelphia, the Painters Wall Music Fair in Baltimore, the Fillmore West in San Francisco, and after a performance at Santa Monica's Civic Auditorium, he'd arrive in the city where, if he could make it there, he could make it anywhere.

Of course, by the time Elton arrived in New York City, he'd already made it everywhere in America; his Fillmore East gig would simply close the sale in the States.  He spent a week in the Big Apple, performing a radio concert there on Tuesday, November 17, for WABC-FM (later WPLJ-FM), which must have seemed rather novel to radio listeners.  (Live radio performances were much more common in Britain in 1970, with American radio stations mostly opting for records.)  Elton wowed his audience with performances of songs from the Black Album and a cover of the Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Women" as well as songs from Tumbleweed Connection.  After performing "Burn Down the Mission," he went into into a medley of Elvis Presley's "My Baby Left Me" and the Beatles' "Get Back," an obvious indication of the standard Elton had chosen for himself.  Elton performed under a handicap; he'd cut his hand before going on, and by the time he was done, the keys of the piano he used were all bloodied.

Bootlegs of the radio concert soon circulated, and a 48-minute excerpt of the 80-minute concert would later be released as the album 17-11-70.  In the United States, where it was issued as 11-17-70, it reached number eleven on the Billboard album chart.  Critical opinion was divided, with some reviewers dismissing it as hammy and others finding it to be a fine document of Elton's live-performance abilities.  You can read my opinion of it here.  (A special 2017 two-record reissue of 11-17-70 would feature the full concert.)   

The following Friday and Saturday, November 20 and 21, Elton played the Fillmore East, which had already been witness to another historic pair of shows that year - Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs and Englishmen shows of Easter weekend.  A celebrity attendee of one of the Cocker concerts now showed up backstage after one of Elton's Fillmore East shows.  Bernie Taupin actually failed to recognize the hawk-nosed, bearded guest at first, but the visitor made it clear that he loved Elton's music and Bernie's lyrics.

The following week, the British music magazine Melody Maker ran the following headline: DYLAN DIGS ELTON! 

(Bob Dylan in 1970.)

"When I met Bob Dylan at the Fillmore East," Elton recalled in 2011, "he was standing on the staircase and he tells Bernie, 'Oh, I really like the lyrics to "Ballad of a Well-Known Gun,"' and Bernie [faked a heart attack]. There’s nothing like when your heroes rubber-stamp what you’re doing." 

(And Dylan wasn't the only hero of Elton's that approved of him.  It was also in 1970 that Neil Young came to Elton's apartment and played the entire song list of his then-current LP After the Gold Rush on Elton's piano until three in the morning. "How are you ever going to forget that?" Elton later said.)

On Elton went, playing at colleges in Bridgeport, Connecticut and Glassboro, New Jersey before heading toward the heartland.  He made his mark with performances in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Minneapolis before making an appearance at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, where another Englishman, Winston Churchill, had made his famous Iron Curtain speech.  One could argue that Elton's concert there on December 1 was as equally important as Churchill's appearance, since it demonstrated his appeal in the real America in a state known for being Northern, Southern, and Midwestern all at once.

From there Elton performed three California dates in Anaheim, San Bernardino and, where it all started, Los Angeles - this time in the Royce Hall on the UCLA campus.  With his peers singing his praises (Al Kooper called the Black Album "the ultimate album") and his records skyrocketing to the Top Ten and setting him up for a fantastic period of chart dominance that would price a string of hit singles and seven consecutive albums at number one, it was becoming quite clear what was going on.  The sixties were over, the seventies had arrived, and Elton John was the new hero for the new decade.  Let's all repeat what the late radio personality Bill Drake once said: "As Elvis was to the fifties, and as the Beatles were to the sixties, Elton John was to the seventies."  

I need mention one other thing. The exact U.K. release date of Elton John's self-titled second album was April 10, 1970 - the day after Paul McCartney announced to the world that he was leaving the Beatles. (As noted in an earlier blog post, the Black Album was released in the U.S. in July 1970 - specifically, July 22.) Even though no one could have known it at the time, the Beatles were passing the torch to Elton. As John Lennon would later recall, "I remember hearing Elton John's 'Your Song', heard it in America - it was one of Elton's first big hits -and remember thinking, 'Great, that's the first new thing that's happened since we (The Beatles) happened.' It was a step forward. There was something about his vocal that was an improvement on all of the English vocals until then. I was pleased with it."

And so was everyone else. 😊

Robert Hilburn's Review of Elton John at the Troubadour

Time capsule moment, boys and girls!  Here is the full review of  of Elton John's first American concert at the Troubadour Club in Los Angeles, written by music critic Robert Hilburn of the Los Angles Times and published fifty years ago today, Wednesday, August 26, 1970.

*

Rejoice. Rock music, which has been going through a rather uneventful period lately, has a new star. He’s Elton John, a 23-year-old Englishman whose United States debut Tuesday night at the Troubadour was, in almost every way, magnificent.

Because his new Uni album has been aired extensively on local FM radio and several of his songs have been recorded by other artists (from Rod Stewart to Three Dog Night), there was a large, enthusiastic audience on hand for the opening.

John, whose music is published by the same man (Dick James) who publishes the Beatles’ songs, proved to be a multidirectional talent of the highest order.

His music is so staggeringly original that it is obvious he is not merely operating within a given musical field (such as country or blues or rock) but, like Randy Newman and Laura Nyro among others, creating his own field.

He has, to be sure, borrowed from country, rock, blues, folk and other influences, but he has mixed them in his own way. The resulting songs are so varied in texture that his work defies classification.

In his opening set Tuesday, John did songs from his first album, from his still-to-be-released second album and from his planned third album.

While his voice most often resembles Jose Feliciano, there are also at times touches of Leon Russell and Mick Jagger.

Since he was backed Tuesday only by his own piano, Nigel Olsson on drums and Dee Murray on bass, his sound was much earthier in general than the sweet, heavily orchestrated music of the first album.

John’s songs are co-written by lyricist Bernie Taupin, whose lyrics often capture the same timeless, objective spirit of the Band’s Robbie Robertson.

In fact, John’s intense vocals, coupled with Taupin’s biting lyrics, on “Burn Down the Mission,” would be right at home alongside Levon Helm on stage with the Band.

Beyond his vocals, melodies and arrangements, there is a certain sense of the absurd about John as a performer that is reminiscent of the American rock stars of the mid-1950s.

Only someone with that wild, uninhibited view of his music would dare ask the audience to sing along — something that is almost never done anymore — or drop to his knees, like Jerry Lee Lewis used to do, in a rousing piano finale on “Burn Down the Mission.” It worked wonderfully well.

The audience, which included one of the largest local gatherings of rock writers in months, roared its approval, bringing John back for an encore.

By the end of the evening, there was no question about John’s talent and potential. Tuesday night at the Troubadour was just the beginnning. He’s going to be one of rock’s biggest and most important stars. He’ll be at the Troubadour with Elektra’s David Ackles through Sunday.

*

A star was born. :-)

Elton John At the Troubadour - Fifty Years On

It was fifty years ago today, Tuesday, August 25, 1970, that Elton John played his first American concert - the first show of a six-night engagement at the Troubadour Club in Los Angeles.  UNI Records president Russ Regan, eager to promote his newest discovery from England, was able to get the club packed for Elton's debut.  Among the celebrities who attended Elton's show that first night were Quincy Jones and his wife Peggy Lipton, Linda Ronstadt, Brian Wilson and Mike Love of the Beach Boys, Van Dyke Parks, Randy Newman, David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, as well as a then-unknown drummer/singer named Don Henley.  (As fate would have it, Elton had already attended a show by the Dillards at the Troubadour shortly before his own, and the opening act was Longbranch Pennywhistle, a duo comprised of Glenn Frey and J.D. Souther.)   But Regan outdid himself by getting Neil Diamond, then the biggest singer-songwriter in America and another UNI artist, to introduce Elton at the beginning of the show.  Part of the reason the club, which had a maximum seating capacity of 300 people, was so packed that night, was because people were under the mistaken impression that Diamond was going to perform there that night. 

Elton, backed by guitaist Caleb Quaye, bassist Dee Murray and drummer Nigel Olsson, didn't exactly get people up on their feet the way the Beatles had in their American debut on Ed Sullivan's variety show six years earlier.  He opened the show with "Your Song," and the response was more polite and respectful than raving.  After a couple of songs on the piano, the guests started talking to each other over drinks, and Elton suddenly found himself reliving the many times he played at local pubs in England, where the clientele would converse over a pint or two and pay little attention to the music.  Frustrated that he wasn't breaking through, Elton kicked his piano stool out from under him, declaring, "Right!  If you won't listen to that, you'll bloody well listen to this!"  Then he started banging on the piano keys like Jerry Lee Lewis.  The fire in him had been lit, and Reginald Dwight became Elton John at that moment.

The crowd responded ecstatically.  Applause and cheers replaced the low din.  With a set that included "Bad Side of the Moon," "Sixty Years On, "Country Comfort" (which would be released in America in January 1971 on Tumbleweed Connection), the explosive "Take Me to the Pilot," and a cover of the Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Women" (already performed live by Joe Cocker on his own tour from earlier in the year), Elton had the audience eating out of his hand.  (Sadly, singer-songwriter David Ackles, with whom Elton shared the bill in his six-night residency at the Troubadour, didn't get similar attention.  Ackles, a favorite of Elton's, was destined for obscurity despite his cult status in Britain.) In a review of the show in the Los Angeles Times the following day, music critic Robert Hilburn declared, "Rejoice. Rock music, which has been going through a rather uneventful period lately, has a new star. He’s Elton John, a 23-year-old Englishman whose United States debut Tuesday night at the Troubadour was, in almost every way, magnificent . . ..  His music is so staggeringly original that it is obvious he is not merely operating within a given musical field (such as country or blues or rock) but, like Randy Newman and Laura Nyro among others, creating his own field."

Over the next five nights, other celebrities attended Elton's Troubadour shows, including teen model Kathy Davis and singer-songwriter Leon Russell.  Russell (below), a revered LA session musician who had recently begun his career as a solo artist and who had already amassed a wealth of production, session, and songwriting credits in such a short period that he was called the Master of Space and Time, was at his peak in the rock music world in the early seventies.  When Elton saw Russell in the audience, he almost froze, because he, like everyone else then, was heavily into Russell's music.  But Russell looked back at him from the audience, using eye language to assure him that he was doing fine and to keep going. The two met backstage afterwards, beginning a friendship that would last until Russell's death in 2016.

The Troubadour engagement was just the beginning.  A six-night residency at the Troubadour North in San Francisco immediately followed in early September, and that engagement was followed up by shows in clubs in New York and Philadelphia.  In late October, Elton would return to the States for more shows on a full-fledged tour, which turned him into a bona fide star.  I'll talk about that later.

It should be noted, though, that Elton's Troubadour debut showed how much had changed in pop at the beginning of the seventies.   Pop stars were no longer made in America by a New York-based variety TV show like "The Ed Sullivan Show," which in 1970 was less than a year away from its final airing.  Now they were made by the tastemakers and the movers and shakers in Los Angeles.  In America, as well as in Britain, rock was becoming not only a cultural force but also big business, and Elton John would become a big star . . . ready to give his fans the business.         

Elton John Has Arrived

Fifty years ago, in the summer of 1970, Elton John made his successful American debut with a six-night residency at the Troubadour in Los Angeles to promote his self-tilted second album, which was his first U.S. release.  He was quickly recognized as the obvious successor to the Beatles, who had broken up in April 1970, for the enthusiastic response he generated from record buyers and audiences.  It was quite a turnaround from where Elton and his songwriting partner, lyricist Bernie Taupin (below, right, with Elton) had been at the start of the year.

Elton signed a record contract with Beatles song publisher Dick James' record company in 1968, and James was convinced that the young Reginald Dwight, as our hero was then known, was going to go places.  But Elton went nowhere fast.  After three failed singles and the underwhelming reaction from the press and the public to his debut album, 1969's Empty Sky, Elton found himself in January 1970 recording faked versions of original hit songs of the time for a compilation record.  You may remember such records - in both Britain and America, anonymous performers would copy the instruments and the vocals of hit songs and then the recordings would be compiled into an album called "Greatest Hits of 1970" or something like that, and sold in either five-and-dime stores or on TV.  The performances would be credited to a studio group, but the credit would appear in small print; it was a deceptive way to get people to buy compilations of hit songs that they thought were recordings from the original artists.  Elton's contributions to such a ripoff record included covers of Robin Gibb's U.K. solo hit "Saved By the Bell" and Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Up Around the Bend," among other tracks, in which he tried to sound exactly, or at least virtually, like the original artists.  Elton John pretending to be John Fogerty?  It happened.  Elton needed the money, and so pretending to be someone else was a way to pay the bills while a career at being himself was foundering. Ironically, his efforts at mimicking others revealed what ultimately made him so successful - his ability to play any kind of song in any pop genre.

Soon after, James put Elton on notice.  He told him that the record company couldn't afford to fund Elton's recording career unless his records started selling.  Therefore, his second album had to be a commercial success, otherwise his contract would be terminated, because James couldn't afford to keep spending money on him if it wasn't yielding results.  Steve Brown, whose job at Dick James Music involved working as a coordinator for Elton, decided to throw everything he could at having Elton making a top-notch, high-quality pop record; if this was to be Elton's last chance, he was going to make the most of it.

Not only did Brown enlist a crack session band, he sought out the best producer and the best arranger possible. He approached Beatles producer George Martin to produce the LP, but Martin wanted to arrange the songs as well as produce the recording sessions, and Brown wanted to keep those duties separate.  He eventually settled on Gus Dudgeon to produce the record.  Dudgeon had been a sound engineer for the Zombies and for John Mayall and co-produced Ten Years After's debut album.  He also produced David Bowie's "Space Oddity," which was arranged by conductor Paul Buckmaster; it was likely that record that got Buckmaster the job for arranging Elton's second album.  With that team in place, Elton went to work on what became his second album - self-titled but known as the Black Album for its black backdrop, which I reviewed in May 2016.

The Black Album did get on the British charts when it was released in the U.K. in the early spring of 1970 and "Border Song," one of its cuts - and one of the few songs Elton ever wrote a lyric for (the third verse) - got airplay on the BBC.  But it was a very qualified success at best, and it only gave Elton and Bernie a temporary reprieve.  They were still living very much on the knife's edge, and James was ready to drop Elton if the record didn't start showing real dividends.  And the best hope for that was to introduce Elton in America, which had been turning more toward homegrown talent at the time.

It took Russ Regan (above), the president of UNI Records in Los Angeles, to get pop-music fans on both sides of the Atlantic to turn Elton John into the star Dick James knew Elton could become. As Regan recalled, Lenny Hodes, a representative from from Dick James Music, came to his office one day and told him he had an LP and a couple of singles from this new artist who had already been rejected by five American labels. As soon as Regan, who loved music as much as the pop fans who bought records, had the chance to hear them, he thought, "This guy is really good. I wonder what the problem is?" When he telephoned Hodes, Hodes told Regan he could have Elton for no money.

In stories like this, the hotshot offered a deal for no money usually turns down the offer - because there must be something wrong with it if it's for free - and realizes too late after that he threw away a golden opportunity.  Regan did nothing of the sort; he jumped at the chance to sign this Elton John kid to UNI and accepted Hodes' offer.

The Black Album was released in the U.S. in July 1970. Now all Regan and UNI publicist Norm Winter had to do was get Elton to come over and promote it.  Elton was quickly booked for the Troubadour club in Los Angeles to play a six-night engagement, beginning on Tuesday, August 25, 1970.  He and Bernie Taupin set out for LA a few days in advance with two of the three musicians that would form the Elton John Band - bassist Dee Murray and drummer Nigel Olsson.  Session guitarist Caleb Quaye joined them for the trip; Davey Johnstone hadn't come into the picture yet.

The first sight that greeted Elton and Bernie (at left in the picture above) on American soil was not an auspicious one.  A bunch of British double-decker buses were waiting for them and their entourage at Los Angeles International Airport with placards plastered on both sides of the buses.  The placards, using typeface borrowed from the artwork on the Black Album, bore the legend "Elton John has arrived."  To UNI, this was a clever way of promoting its new British discovery; to Elton, it was a humiliation, having to ride the same double-decker buses he'd ridden when he was a struggling musician without a penny to his name.  But he did take to Los Angeles, taking in the sights before the Troubadour shows and buying records at the local record stores. For Elton, getting one of the first copies of Neil Young's After the Gold Rush was as big a highlight as his own Troubadour gig.

But this was a business trip, not a leisure trip. Elton had a lot riding on the Troubadour gig.  As Caleb Quaye later said, "Sending him over there was actually the last desperate attempt by Dick James Music to get him across to the public."

To be continued . . .

Music Video Of the Week - July 24, 2020

"Your Song" by Elton John  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Christmas Music Video Of the Week - December 13, 2019

"Step Into Christmas" by Elton John  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Twilight Of the Gods

You knew it was going to happen eventually.

Elton John, Paul Simon, and Neil Diamond, three of the biggest pop stars of the seventies,  are getting ready to leave the stage now that they're in their own seventies.  Elton John, who turns 71 this month, and Paul Simon, 75, have announced that their current tours will likely be their last.  Neil Diamond, 77, has announced he has Parkinson's disease, and so he's not going to be performing any more either.

Diverse though they seem to be on the surface, they all have one thing in common.  They're rooted in the singer-songwriter pop tradition, first developed by Neil Sedaka and his songwriting partner Howard Greenfield in the early sixties and expanded upon through the acoustic-based sound typified by Carole King (who started out writing songs for others with her husband Gerry Goffin), Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Jim Croce, Randy Newman, and of course, Crosby, Stills, and Nash.  Some singer-songwriter music rocked, and some of it was mellow, but all of it took songwriting to a more intimate and personal level, allowing its practitioners to tell stories, share their feelings, and even come up with some brilliant satire (Croce was especially adept at this, as is Newman).

Elton John, Paul Simon and Neil Diamond have all demonstrated the versatility of the singer-songwriter movement.  Elton and his lyrics-writing partner Bernie Taupin leaned toward pop-rock and made rock and roll more eclectic and more fun.  Simon, a folk singer who helped create folk-rock in the mid-sixties while working with Art Garfunkel, melded the personal with the socially conscious in his solo work and expanded farther beyond his coffeehouse roots, incorporating reggae, gospel, Andean folk, salsa, South African mbaqanga, and Brazilian sounds into his music.  Diamond was unapologetically in the vein of Tin Pan Alley, though even Cole Porter wouldn't have come up with something as sly as "Cracklin' Rosie" or as moody as "Song Sung Blue."  They helped make the 1970s a diverse decade musically.

I note all this about the singer-songwriters of the past because, if you've had the misfortune of hearing hit radio lately, you know you're not going to find the same variety and quality in today's singer-songwriters . . . largely because there aren't that many around to begin with.  Most songs today are written by two or three hacks and given to the top stars to record, and the songs have carefully calculated hooks and standardized words so that they sound familiar . . that is, like the most recent song to hit number one.  And what few pop singer-songwriters are around aren't exactly inspiring. Taylor Swift, despite being known for her personal style of songwriting, still relies a lot of outside hack material herself, and on the other side of the Atlantic, we have Ed Sheeran, who can't think of much better to sing about than the shape of his girlfriend's body.  True, there are younger singer-songwriters worth mentioning, like Nicole Atkins, Brandi Carlile, Jason Isbell, and Josh Ritter, but unless you live in a metropolitan area with a college-indie radio station on the low end of the FM dial, you're not likely to hear them on the radio much.

The music business hasn't been interested in developing another Elton, Simon, or Neil - Diamond or Young - because it wants to economize in this changing music environment where entertainment companies are bigger and return on investment in new music acts is smaller. Cultivating lightweight, cookie-cutter pop stars offers a guaranteed profit.  So, while people talk about the diversity of today's performers - meaning, a lot fewer white men like the septuagenarians I've just been talking about - there's no diversity of musical style or content.  In fact, today's pop has little of either.

So, no, we're never going to see or hear the likes of Elton John, Paul Simon, or Neil Diamond ever again, but we still have the records, and - as long as 70s on 7 still keeps broadcasting on Sirius XM - the radio play.   

Christmas Music Video Of the Week - December 1, 2017

"Step Into Christmas" by Elton John  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)