You’ve got to hand it to Elton John, the unlikely-looking Brit superstar renowned for sporting splashy spectacles; he hardly looks the part of a gun slinger, but he put out a far better concept album about America’s violent past than the Eagles ever did.
The Eagles may have looked more like outlaws in their denim and cowboy boots, but their 1972 LP Desperado was a commercial disappointment that boasted exactly two good songs—the title track and “Tequila Sunrise”—while Sir Elton Hercules John’s 1970 LP Tumbleweed Connection included a slew of good tunes, most of which remain unknown not only to the casual Elton John fan, but also to such sycophantic Captain Fantastic fanatics such as yours truly.
Tumbleweed Connection was John’s third LP, and the first to work the vein of Americana that John and “lyricist/ball and chain” Bernie Taupin were to mine over the next several LPs. Its predecessors (1969’s Empty Sky and 1970’s Elton John) were thoroughly English affairs, and followed John’s long rock & roll apprenticeship, which took him from pub pianist (at the ripe old age of 15) at the Northwood Hills Hotel to a brief stint with a band called the Corvettes to a group he formed with his friends, Bluesology, which ultimately became the backing band of legendary blues singer Long (he was 6’ 7” tall) John Baldry. After failing auditions with Gentle Giant and King Crimson, John (who was still going by his birth name, Reginald Dwight) met Taupin through an advertisement in the New Musical Express, and a partnership was born that, despite its ups and downs, continues to this very day.
What led Taupin to turn to America’s blood-soaked past for subject matter? Personal fascination? Perhaps. But it seems more likely that Taupin, like so many other English musicians, went gaga over the radically pastoral sounds coming from the United States; in the wake of albums like The Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo, Bob Dylan’s John Wesley Harding, and especially The Band’s first two LPs (1968’s Music from Big Pink and 1969’s The Band) it seemed like every English group this side of The Nice was suddenly eager to abandon psychedelia and virtuosity for virtuosity’s sake in favor of the rustic aw-shucks “authenticity” that Music from Big Pink especially seemed to radiate. But while many British musicians were heavily influenced solely by the down-home sound of the rough-hewn Americana that was emanating from the U.S., John and Taupin went the whole hog, and attempted to combine their return to the basics with lyrics that dealt with the history of that wild, sprawling, murderous, and legend-haunted land across the Atlantic.
Opener “Ballad of a Well-Known Gun” could almost pass for a Band song, and opens with John’s piano accompanied by some rough-and-tumble guitar riffs by Caleb Quaye that remind me of Ron Wood’s work with the Faces. The big chorus is great—thanks to the backing vocals of the extraordinarily talented Madeline Bell and Dusty Springfield—as is the Quaye guitar solo that follows it. I hear a distinct echo of The Band’s “The Weight” (and The Basement Tapes in general) in the lines, “The Pinkertons pulled out my bags/And asked me for my name/I stuttered out my answer/And hung my head in shame,” and I love the way the Bell and Springfield take the song out by repeating, “There goes the well-known gun” while John sings “Now they’ve found me.” I’m not so enamored of track 2, the ballad “Come Down in Time.” Like “County Comfort” it’s an oddity in so far as it’s not a tin-type period piece, and I can’t say it knocks me dead, both because it’s slow as molasses and a bit too gussied up with strings (thanks for nothing, Paul Buckmaster) for my tastes.
Fortunately John follows it with the great “Country Comfort,” which Rod Stewart was soon to make hay with. That said the original is as good as Stewart’s cover, what with John’s powerhouse piano, Gordon Huntley’s brief but great steel guitar solo, and its wonderful choruses. Taupin’s lyrics are also above average, which is by far not always the case; Bernie may be worth bazillions thanks to his words, but he’s penned an extraordinary number of clunkers, and the truest sign of Elton John’s genius may be his almost alchemical ability at turning Taupin’s dross into gold records.
As for “Son of Your Father,” it’s an upbeat rocker that can’t even be bothered to pretend to be an Americana tune, Ian Duck’s ubiquitous harmonica notwithstanding. But the lyrics—Bernie Taupin comes through again!—tell a great tale of an altercation between a farmer with a hook for a hand and a man who owes him money, which ends with the lines, “Well there’s two men lying dead as nails/On an East Virginia farm/For charity’s an argument/That only leads to harm.” Why, those final lines are almost as cryptic as Dylan, and are certainly better than anything on the monumentally shitty Self Portrait, which Dylan issued to such outrage (“What is this shit?” asked Greil Marcus in Rolling Stone) the same year Tumbleweed Connection was released.
“My Father’s Gun” is a long tune featuring a guitar intro that most definitely (and unfortunately) brings to mind Stephen Stills, and concerns the Civil War and a son who vows to fight for the South to avenge his father’s death at Yankee hands. Lyrical miscues (good to have you back, Bernie!) such as, “As soon as this is over/We’ll go home/To plant the seeds of justice in our bones” don’t do John any favors, but the song includes a riverboat and as everybody knows there’s no such thing as a bad song about a riverboat, or a ferry for that matter. It takes a while, but the song slowly builds and builds, with Buckmaster’s horn and string arrangements pushing the song towards it climax, which includes lots of great piano by John (I’ve always been a big admirer of his abilities on the instrument, and don’t think he’s ever gotten the recognition he deserves) and scads of fantastic female backing vocals.
As for “Where To Now St. Peter” it’s a quiet and quite lovely piano-based piece with a catchy melody, some odd wah-wah guitar work by Quaye, probably about 100 acoustic guitars, and some nice backing vocals. I’ve never been wild about the way John opens it by singing, “I took myself a baaa-looo canoe,” but it beats hell out of the CSN&Y hush that characterizes “Love Song.” The tune includes some background noise of children playing, and John does a bit of scat singing, but this one has never done anything for me, unlike follow-up “Amoreena,” a funky love song with a spectacular chorus, one great organ, and some excellent rhythm work by Nigel Olsson (drums) and Dee Murray (bass), both of whom would soon become card-holding members (along with guitarist Davey Johnstone and percussionist Ray Cooper) of the band that accompanied John through his glory days in the seventies. On the verses Olsson and Murray drive the song forward while John keeps things interesting, but it’s the choruses that really make the song, especially towards the end, when John really throws his vocals—which I also happen to think are underrated—atcha.
“Talking Old Soldiers” is a slow, too slow, far too slow, song about a couple of elderly warriors talking in a bar. John and piano do all the heavy lifting, but the song’s melody is hardly mesmerizing, and not even Sir Elton’s thespian-like handling of the conversational tone and some nice lines by Taupin (“Well I may be mad at that I’ve seen enough/To make a man go out his brains/Well do they know what it’s like/To have a graveyard as a friend”) can save the song from being, how do I say this as politely as possible, boring as Hell.
Fortunately, John closes the LP with the brilliant “Burn Down the Mission,” one of his best songs, and not just on this LP, but period. The story of a man driven by starvation to join in an attempt to seize the mission where there’s food enough for plenty, it includes both a nice set of lyrics by Taupin and a bravura performance by John, to say nothing of one of my favorite choruses of all time. It starts quietly, with some plaintive piano work and vocals by John, but takes a turn towards the apocalyptic when John sings “Behind four walls of stone the rich man sleeps/It’s time we put the flame torch to their keep.” This is followed immediately by the great chorus (“Burn down the mission if we’re gonna stay alive/Watch the black smoke fly to Heaven see the red flame light the sky/Burn down the mission burn it down to stay alive/It’s our only chance of livin’/Talk all you need to live inside”) and then by a lightning quick section highlighting John’s frenetic and distinctive piano skills backed by a nice arrangement for horns and strings by Buckmaster.
The song then quiets again, and John sounds a resigned note, having failed in seizing the mission (“My wife cried when they came to take me away/But what more could I do just to keep her warm/Then burn burn burn burn down the mission walls?”). He then repeats the whole formula, but this time it’s pumped up, cathartic, and much, much bigger, and he plays one whale of a piano solo that slowly increases in tempo as the strings sweep in and out and some totally radical percussion keeps the whole thing bubbling until the fade-out. It may lack the hyperactive immediacy John brings to it on the great 11/17/70, a live radio broadcast on New York City’s WABC-FM (later to become WPLJ) that was subsequently released as a (must-own) LP, but thematically and musically I think “Burn Down the Mission” stands alongside some of The Band’s better slices of Americana, even if the singer happens to possess an English accent, and I would have loved to hear The Band take a stab at it. (And the same goes for the odd but very countrified “No Shoe Strings on Louise” off Elton John, which I think Levon Helm and Richard Manuel singing together could have totally nailed.)
Tumbleweed Connection may never have moved me the way, say, 1972’s Honky Chateau and 1974’s Caribou moved me, but then it lacked such over-the-top fare as the former’s “Honky Cat,” “Rocket Man,” and “I Think I’m Gonna Kill Myself,” and the latter’s “The Bitch Is Back” and “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me.” That said I think it’s every bit as good an LP, and perhaps even better, as it lacks some of the real stinkers that filled out the other LPs, particularly the rush job that was Caribou.
But I think the real reason I leaned towards his post-Tumbleweed Connection LPs is because of their flamboyance. John transformed himself from sensitive singer-songwriter to glittering apparition of outrageous glamdom with gleeful aplomb, and given the choice of the shadowy enigma who graces the cover of 1970’s Elton John and the grinning glam spectacle in tiger-striped jacket and platform shoes of Caribou there was no contest—I didn’t even have a choice. I immediately gravitated towards the latter.
Glam rock did not exist where I grew up—I don’t think I ever even heard the term until I was in my mid-teens, at earliest—but I knew intuitively that here was a performer who could take me places I didn’t even know existed. And he did. He led me to David Bowie and Roxy Music and Mott the Hoople, and for that I will always love him, just as I will always love him forever for pulling off a self-transformation every bit as radical as David Bowie’s transmogrification to Ziggy Stardust. Only better than Bowie even, because if a pudgy four-eyed Brit who was beginning to go bald could turn himself into, well, whatever it is he was, then so could I. And for that I could, and if I ever am lucky enough to get the opportunity will, kiss him.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B+
