Elton John is one of those musicians where you kind of know what you’re going to get. Despite having such a prodigious output over the years, through many decades, there’s still an underlying Elton-ness to his songs; the piano fills are very distinctive, and it has to be says he does a good chorus. Arguably it’s Bernie Taupin who provides the variety, with lyrics about all manner of topics.
I thought that this album might have been inspired by a USA tour, with Elton being the “Madman”, and looking at the track titles reinforced this for a bit – Tiny Dancer, with it’s mention of “L.A. lady, Blue-jean Mary” suggestive of an American woman, or Holiday Inn being about the kind of accommodation you’d become familiar with while touring. But while not being directly inspired by experiences in the USA, there is a certain Americana feel to some of the song subjects.
Levon, for example, is a ballad about the eponymous every-day American man and his hopes for his son, while Indian Sunset is a multi-part piece about the plight of the Native Americans – well-intentioned and sympathetic even though perhaps some of the language and sentiments these days are somewhat dated. Rotten Peaches suggests to me Floridian retirees, once I’d got into the Americana theme. The Madman Across The Water is broadly about US politics but was not, according to Taupin, directly about Nixon. Still applicable today.
There’s always a theatricality to Elton’s
songs, and these especially feel like variously tracks from a musical, or at
least operatic in scope; a feeling pulled along by the orchestral backing to
some of the tracks, also featuring Rick Wakeman on Hammond organ, and a nice bit
of mandolin on Holiday Inn from Davey Johnstone.
It’s another one of those albums on here where there’s only one track that’s The Famous One – in this case Tiny Dancer – and given Elton’s output you’d think there’d be an alternative album with more hits on it that could go in the 1001 Albums list. Again, though, I think often a criterion for including these albums is if they hang together as *an album*, which this one does.
(NB As with Ringo Starr, I’m breaking by
general rule for referring to artists by their surnames with Elton John. Partly
because he’s almost mononymous anyway, and because saying “John” sounds even
stranger).
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