Sponsored today by : Kudzu Mountain Gypsy Cave FIND YOURSELF IN A BOTTLE TODAY! (tHIS IS HOW JEANIE GOT HER START, RIGHT?)If this isn't the Elton you know, you have MISSED OUT: till NOW!!!!
HAHAH love the title when he says it at the end. or go with this "tribute to Elton" montage, it is SO funny
I have a half a mind to follow "Amoreena" with this live, whether anyone knows those two songs or not, because they are just bad, bad, bad to the bone (Madman) and sweetest of the local honeys (Amoreena).
We've found Elton's early gospel/ rock years a fun fit for the Marc Kane and I with Integr8d Soul, and to celebrate My Hero's birthday, we're throwing a bash replete with one great Elton John song after another. Here's a few of the deeper cuts, starting with this bril live BBC number, backed wonderfully by : Madeline Bell (Blue Mink), Leslie Duncan (Who wrote "Love Song" off Tumbleweed) and Kay Garner.
He stands so strong on his own, a voice and instrument with the song he's crafted from Bernie's words. When it came time to design my live shows of my own, I realized Elton came onto the scene with raw musicianship nonpareil. He became a master of performance. I think it was just how much he seemed to really MEAN all those strange words, and the way he used the melody to interpret them. Listen to him approach the psychology of every single word of these performances with an understanding beyond his years...his melodic cues are born of his mind's relationship with the words. For about eight albums, he wrote, for my money, the most pleasing overall set of songs by anyone immediately following the departure of the Beatles...I can't name one other performer who put together eight albums quite like those...and granted you may find about a third of those songs of that count really stand outside their time in a way with which anyone can still connect...and a third are like gibberish...LOL...and that leaves a third of songs that to me stand up to their FM contemporaries. Being very general here: I hand picked say 21 of the most promising and am now looking for help delivering them. I know some people are all about Elton in the last twenty years, but one of my inspirations of arriving here in California was thinking about his trip here one August day in 1970 and his star turn at the Troubadour.
If you listen to 11/17/70, or 17/11/70 as it's called in its UK release, that's young Elton delivering the live goods, all right. Whether you like that one or not's a decent indicator whether or not you'd profit from digging through his early catalog. That's the way to throw a rock'n'roll show: with talent, and confidence, and good cheer.
1975 from the album that went gold an hour before its release, I heard LOL
Elton sorta meant to retire in 1976; he announced suddenly, "okay, well this is the last show!" on stage while supporting Blue Moves, which he thought of as his final LP. Elton just couldn't seem to live without writing new songs, sure, and it turns out, his performance hiatus didn't last long at all. But I'm fascinated to think what if he could've pulled off the early retirement? What if his artistic statements had ended with Blue Moves? Anyway, pretty much everybody who's seen him sense, I'm sure, is just as glad he didn't hand up the ivories.
Still, for my money, I hope our airwaves again fill one day with young people with talent like this. He's my favorite surviving artist of the 60's, arriving so in a style I'd understand, late, late as can be imagined to the party. But that meant at least four or even five albums of material I'd defend---successfully---against charges of commercialism, and that is a feat in itself: to even make THAT much art. I hope to Valhalla I have four or five good albums in ME, LOL at this rate I'll be as old as Glen Campbell still trying to get started. I just think Elton killed it, y'all, and while I find plenty to like in the rest of how his life eventually came 'round, something about Elton John always gave me hope,and in these early songs, I see songwriting of a magnitude, and live performance at a level, that makes me remember why this shy boy ever dreamed day and night of both, without the slightest example on hand as to how!
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