CD Odyssey Disc 526: Elton John

Happy Canada Day!  I’ve just returned with drinks with a friend.  Downtown is slowly filling with inebriated (or soon to be inebriated) people wearing red and white.  Despite my considerable love for my country, I decided to come home and write this review.  I’m sure I’ll get to hear them all go by on their walk home later on.

Disc 526 is…. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Artist: Elton John

Year of Release: 1973

What’s up with the Cover?  A gigantic Elton John steps into a painting of the Yellow Brick Road.  I think this is a reference to Elton John being so huge at this stage of his career that his life had taken on an unreal quality, and in the process he has lost some of his own humanity.  He has stepped wholly into fantasy.  However, if he’s going to walk any distance on that road he might want to consider more comfortable shoes.

How I Came To Know It:  Sheila is the Elton John fan, and we own quite a few of his early albums.  This one is hers as well, and we’ve probably had it the longest.  Along the way she has won me over to his genius.

How It Stacks Up:  We now have five of Elton John’s studio albums, all from his early career.  We’re still missing “Honky Chateau” and “Caribou” both of which I suspect are better than this one.  However, I must stack it up against current competition and on that basis I’ll put it third.  I originally put “Madman Across the Water” (reviewed back at Disc 232) at that spot, but having now had a chance to consider them both, I prefer ‘Madman.”

Rating:  3 stars

My last review of Nick Cave’s “Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus” shows that not every double album is excessive.  Most are however, and despite all the fame surrounding “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” and all of Elton John’s self-evident genius, in the end this was a bloated and overwrought record.

The hype is considerable for this record.  It was number one in multiple countries, including Canada.  It went multi-platinum and had four hits, two of which (“Bennie and the Jets” and “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”) made it to number one.  So clearly there was something good about this record, right?  Well, no – commercial success doesn’t guarantee good music (remember Nickelback) – but in this case there are plenty of positives.

“Candle in the Wind” wasn’t a huge hit until it was remade in tribute to Lady Diana, but the original song approaches perfection.  A treatise on fame and the terrible price it extracts on the soul, this was a topic Elton John was grappling with himself at this time.  I’ve never been a Marilyn Monroe fan.  In fact every time I see “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” it’s Jane Russell that I can’t take my eyes off; Monroe is an afterthought at best.  Still, when I listen to this song I not only feel sad for Marilyn, I think about all those that get lost in the maelstrom of excessive public attention.

Similarly themed is the excellent title track, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”  A song about rejecting fame’s empty trappings, written even as Elton John was being drawn deeper into them, this song is equal parts anthem and dirge.

These are the album’s two standouts.  There are other solid tracks, but – if you’ll pardon the expression – none hold a candle to these two.

What they all share in common is some brilliant piano playing and songs constructed by someone who truly understands how to manipulate chord progressions into well crafted songs.  The mix of piano and guitar in equal measure keep the record solidly half way between pop and rock, which is right where Elton wants it.

So the genius that this album is always labeled with is present, but I think the case has been severely overstated over the years.

For one thing, this album is simply too long.  It is a double album, but at seventeen songs I could easily cut a good third of them and double how good it is in the process.  Reggae rip-offs like “Jamaican Jerk Off” are just silly and made me pine for the day when I was reviewing great contemporary reggae music like that found on “The Harder They Come” (reviewed at Disc 371) which was released the same year.

Similarly, the album’s harder rock moments also feel like they are trying too hard.  “Bennie and the Jets” and “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting” are OK songs, but I think they get way more street cred than they deserve.  They both seem very dated and again, compare poorly against other rock and roll being release at the same time.

The worst offender is the opening track, “Funeral For a Friend (Love Lies Bleeding).”  This would be a good five and half minute song – one of my favourites on the album in fact – except that it is eleven minutes long with an extra five and half added on as a musical intro that has very little to do with the song it eventually turns into.  This song never fails to enrage me, and since it starts the album off, it has me in a bad mood from the moment I begin.

I expect that Elton John was so huge at this point in his career he was able to tell his production people to get stuffed when they tried to rein him in.  Or maybe he was just surrounded by sycophants and toadies that catered to his every whim.  Either way, someone needed to say no, and to get this record under control.

The lyrics on the album have an edginess to them that I like.  “Dirty Little Girl” is a good example, as Elton John (through his muse, lyricist Bernie Taupin) calls for someone to “grab that bitch by the ears/Rub her down scrub her back/And turn her inside out” or on “All The Girls Love Alice” which is a song about a local lesbian girl that seduces all the neighbourhood housewives when their husbands are away and is later found dead in the Subway, perhaps the victim of their inevitable jealousy.

Overall though, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” is just a bit too overblown for its own good.  It is a record desperately in need of an editor, and history has chosen to whitewash its problems to service Elton John’s legend, rather than admit that this is merely a good record, with a great public relations machine promoting it.

Is it worth a listen?  Absolutely, but you’re much better off getting “Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only the Piano Player” (also from 1973) for a fix of Elton John in his glory days.

Best tracks:  Candle in the Wind, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, This Song Has No Title, Sweet Painted Lady, Dirty Little Girl, Social Disease