Here’s an album that was in my parents’ record collection and I have fond memories of it growing up, not least the fun little illustrations on the inner sleeve for each song. I looked up images for it, and I remember them being smaller than they apparently are. The other thing I remember is that one side of the album was so badly scratched that I didn’t hear all if it until I got it on CD many years later (my parents could be distressingly rubbish at caring for vinyl). However, I don’t know which side it was. Three, I think. Three always feels like the problem child for double albums in my head.
Anyway, here’s Elton (and Bernie) at the height of their powers, with three big classics (Candle In The Wind, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, and Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting), with arguably Benny And The Jets as another well-known track that doesn’t quite get the same airplay.
There’s a loose collection of themes that overlap, whether intentionally or if they were just things on Taupin’s mind at the time. Cinematic nostalgia is one – the tribute to Marylin Monroe that is Candle, as well as Roy Rogers, and I’ve Seen That Movie Too, while The Ballad of Danny Bailey, about a glamorous young bootlegger in the 1920s, evokes Bonnie and Clyde. Fame and the music industry is another – Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Benny And The Jets, and entertainments available to the everyday people – Your Sister Can’t Dance But She Can Rock And Roll, Saturday Nights Alright For Fighting.
That’s not the extent of it, and there’s not an exact theme. Roy Rogers for example, although written as a kind of cowboy waltz, is more about escapism from a dull life than it is about Rogers himself. I’ve Seen That Movie Too, a superior example of one of Elton’s slow and emotive numbers, is about wariness in relationships – I’m not falling for that again. Like Roy Rogers, it draws comparisons between life as depicted in films versus real life.
There are some surprisingly forthright tracks about sex as well. Sweet Painted Ladies is a love song from sailors on shore leave to the prostitutes that they will visit, given a Parisian café vibe thanks to the inclusion of an accordion. All The Young Girls Love Alice is a tragic tale of a young lesbian who throws herself under a train – it’s not entirely clear from the track if it’s because she’s being used by the “middle-aged dykies” who are the only ones to mourn her, but it seems more that society has programmed her to be ashamed of who she is – given Elton’s own sexuality I suspect the latter more sympathetic version – it’s a good track.
As I mentioned with his last album, Elton does a good chorus, and he loves the high notes so that the chorus or pre-chorus soars over the verses. The famous tracks on here are where that really clicks. He tries a few other genres as well. Your Sister Can’t Dance is basically a rock and roll track, with a fun little breakout into Entry of the Gladiators on the Farfisa organ. Social Disease is a bit of a country hoe-down. Jamaica Jerkoff is a reggae piece that doesn’t entirely work, to my mind, feeling a little too inauthentic, especially having not long listened to Bob Marley.
Most of the heavy-lifting in the songs comes from Elton on keyboards and vocals, as you might expect, with the rest of the band providing solid back-up. Occasionally, however, Davey Johnstone on guitar is allowed to let loose; on the surprisingly grungy track Dirty Little Girl, and getting funky on Grey Seal.
It’s odd with some of these albums that I haven’t heard for decades, because quite often songs that I remember as being lengthy and epic, really aren’t as big as I recall. The album closer Harmony for example. It works really well as an album closer, a big soaring finish. But it’s actually quite a short song. I still have the same sense with this album of liking it while feeling that I really shouldn’t like it. Perhaps, like Alice, I’m allowing external forces to dictate too much what I ought to think.
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