Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Written by: Moti Kupfer
Release date - 05.10.1973
"Music has healing power. It has the ability to take people out of thinking about themselves."
"We live in an age with so much negativity, so much violence in the world, so much unrest and people at war, that I wanted to spread the word love, and the color red symbolizes love."
David Bowie and Marc Bolan of "T. Rex" are often credited with propelling glam rock forward, and rightly so. But Elton John completed that trio, with "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" playing no small part in his claim to the spotlight.
The story of the yellow brick road begins a few years earlier, when the record company decides to send Bernie Taupin and Elton John to the United States for a tour. The two writers, Taupin supplying the words and Elton the music, are only beginning to find success in Britain and feel the trip may be premature. Just before leaving, however, Elton John decides to refresh his wardrobe. When he steps onto an American stage, audiences expecting the figure pictured on his early album sleeves are in for a surprise.
Their expectations of a tormented singer-songwriter performing quiet, melancholy songs are swept aside. America gets a restless, newly energized Elton John, channeling the spirit of Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis.
Elton John completes his transformation from the chubby, introverted Reginald Kenneth Dwight, who grew up under the strict rules of his military father, into a colorful, flamboyant performer, as daring in his delivery as in his clothes. He will later formally adopt the name Elton Hercules John.
Within days, the American performances turn Taupin and Elton John into a success story. Musicians and industry insiders shower them with praise. Leon Russell is among those who come to see Elton at the "Troubadour" in Los Angeles in August 1970. Bob Dylan and "The Band" are also important inspirations for the duo, with "Music from Big Pink" helping to shape "Tumbleweed Connection". At parties, the compliments keep coming from every direction. Elton John is living the dream. Sometimes it really does feel like a dream. Can this be the life of the quiet singer whom almost nobody had heard of just three years earlier? Apparently, it can!
The record contract demands a dizzying pace of two albums a year, but neither Elton nor Bernie Taupin seems troubled by it. Their output leading up to "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" is nothing short of astonishing. Six studio albums, a soundtrack and a live album precede this record, which celebrates 53 years since its release on October 5, 1973.
Still, a small question mark hangs over the idyll. Elton John's increasingly extravagant appearance puts a little strain on his relationship with Bernie Taupin, who worries that Elton is devoting too much attention to the trappings of stardom. Sooner or later, he fears, the spectacle might come at the expense of what matters most: the music.
The double album comes together at a remarkable pace. Some songs are already written in Jamaica, while the main recording sessions take roughly two weeks in May 1973 at the Château d'Hérouville in France, where Elton recorded his two previous albums. Although there is no continuous narrative making this a concept album, it is filled with vivid, fascinating characters, some drawn from show business. It explores enormous success and fame, but also darker territory, including gangsters who emerge as a kind of hero. Running through it all is a nostalgia for childhood and the culture of an earlier time.
Elton John is coming to new understandings about his life. He finds the confidence to change his appearance and the self-belief that had eluded him earlier. He is becoming a singer who can inhabit a whole cast of characters within a single album, far beyond the image of a pianist simply recording songs.
Work begins in Jamaica in January 1973, but progress is slow and difficult. Problems with the sound system and studio equipment are compounded by the logistical chaos surrounding the George Foreman and Joe Frazier boxing match in Kingston. Meanwhile, political and economic tensions fuel protests. The attempt to record there is abandoned, and in May the team returns to the château in France, this time with recording engineer David Hentschel. Joining Elton are Davey Johnstone on guitar, Dee Murray on bass and Nigel Olsson on drums, with Gus Dudgeon producing.
The two-part opening track, "Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding", begins with music Elton John wrote while imagining what he would want played at his own funeral. From there, it moves into an angry account of a failing relationship. Written separately, the two pieces are joined into a single work, with Hentschel's dramatic synthesizer introduction heightening the transition into the full band.
Bernie Taupin described "Love Lies Bleeding" as a statement about what touring and rock and roll do to family life.
The second track, "Candle in the Wind", was originally written about Marilyn Monroe. For Taupin, she embodied the celebrity elevated to near-mythical status after a tragic early death. He has spoken in interviews about his enduring fascination with the blind worship of celebrities. The title came from a remark by Clive Davis, who likened Janis Joplin's life to a candle in the wind.
On August 31, 1997, Princess Diana was killed in a car accident. Elton John asked Bernie Taupin to revise the lyrics in her memory. At her funeral on September 6, Elton performed the new version in an especially moving moment.
"Bennie and the Jets" was written as a tribute to glam rock. Bennie is a female character whom Taupin described as a science-fiction rock goddess, fronting an imaginary futuristic band. Producer Gus Dudgeon added applause and whistles to the recording, turning a studio track into an imagined live performance.
The title track, "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road", is about escaping the glamour of fame and returning to a simpler country life. Taupin was keeping his distance from the spotlight even as he wrote it. With Elton John increasingly immersed in his new persona, his clothes and the glittering world around him, the song also carries a fear of what success might cost, and of losing touch with one's roots.
"Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting", first attempted in Jamaica but recorded again in France, is one of Bernie Taupin's most striking efforts to write rock and roll from an English perspective. Setting aside his fascination with American culture, he returns to memories of his youth, the pubs and the violence of Saturday nights.
One of the album's standout tracks, and one of its less celebrated treasures, is undoubtedly "The Ballad of Danny Bailey (1909-1934)". It tells the story of a young fictional gangster's life and death, presenting him as something of a folk hero. During the 1930s, many criminals became celebrities and were seen as popular heroes. The song surprises anyone accustomed to Elton John's more innocent material, illustrating just how far Taupin has expanded his gallery of characters.
The album elevated Bernie Taupin and Elton John's cultural standing and became Elton's best-selling studio album. It spent eight weeks at the top of the American album chart and also reached number one in Britain, Canada and Australia. The yellow brick road may symbolize a longing to escape the glamour in the song, but for Elton and Taupin it also led to one of the greatest peaks of their partnership.
For Listening: Spotify, Apple Music
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