Yeah, I know; you’re digging the outrageous outfit Captain Fantastic is sporting on the cover of 1974’s Caribou just as much as I am. I mean, Jesus. The man is not just the genius who bequeathed us the likes of “Tiny Dancer” and “Bennie and the Jets”; he’s a genuine sartorial marvel. Just check out that jacket; you’ll have to look hard—I’d start with your female rappers—to find anything that even comes close. And the glasses! I loved this guy when I was a kid; small wonder I turned out an effete and impudent fashion plate.
I still love Elton John, think he’s the shit, and if you disagree the completely over-the-top “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” should change your mind, Sugar Bear. The guy’s a god, and without him 1970s MOR would have been a far less fascinating and flamboyant place. Fuck Lou Reed—he tried to go glitter, but on Caribou and 1973’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road John put Transformer Lou in his place without even trying. And while he was at it he called himself a bitch and a stinker and proud of it, another thing self-loathing Lou lacked the balls to do.
I’m not going to lie to you; hit-wise, Caribou isn’t the best of John’s 1970s oeuvre. In fact it’s not even close. Which raises the question; can an album with only two indispensible songs on it be called great? I say yes, and I say Caribou is the proof. It’s a curious LP, stylistically all over the place, and even includes a song where John happily sings pure gibberish. But its rewards extend beyond its two indisputable masterpieces. You’ve probably never heard most of Caribou’s songs, because they never got played on the radio, mostly because they were too weird. They’re pop, mind you, but still weird. Lyricist Bernie Taupin made sure of that. He didn’t write your normal love songs or Top 40 fare; even the hits (how tiny exactly is that tiny dancer?) were outliers on the AOR continuum.
Caribou opens with “The Bitch Is Back,” one of my all-time faves and a rocker in the truest sense of the word. Davey Johnstone delivers on guitar while Elton gleefully throws himself into the lyrics, which involve him spitting in your eye and sniffing pots of glue. The chorus, in which he snottily declares he’s a bitch and better than all of us, is totally addictive, while the Tower of Power horn section adds texture, with Lenny Pickett in particular contributing a great tenor sax solo. As for the song’s ending, what can I say except that the sound gets bigger and bigger while John repeats “The bitch is back,” and this one is proof positive that John was so much more than the balladeer who gave us “Candle in the Wind.” Meanwhile “Pinky” is, despite what I said above about Taupin, a love song, and it’s dreamy. John’s great piano playing is front and center, while Ray Cooper plays some funky percussion behind him. The band throws in some lush backing vocals of the sort Richard Carpenter specialized in on the chorus, and Johnstone plays some wonderful acoustic guitar, and as a Brit might say “Pinky” is, push come to shove, luvverly.
“Grimsby,” is a rocker that features some huge power chords by Johnstone, lots of tambourine by Ray Cooper, and more great backing vocals by the boys in the band. A love song to an English seaside town, it’s the perfect antithesis to Morrissey’s “Every Day Is Like Sunday.” “Take me back to your rustic town,” sings John, “I miss your magic charm/Just to smell your candy floss/Or drink in the Skinners Arm.” It may not be one John’s best works, but like “The Bitch Is Back” it demonstrates his love for good old rock’n’roll. Meanwhile, “Dixie Lily” reflects Taupin’s ongoing fascination with American mythology, and is about a riverboat of the same name. The horns give the song a Dixieland tilt, and the melody is catchy, but the song is a trifle, albeit better than the Doobie Brothers’ “Black Water” when it comes to the fascinating subgenre of riverboat songs. “Solar Prestige a Gammon” is also a trifle, but one of the strangest trifles you’ll ever hear. Its lyrics are gibberish, and John sings them in a musical hall voice except on the choruses, which are great. It opens with some piano, and then John comes in, delivering up such verses as, “Oh ma cameo molesting/Kee pa a poorer for tea/Solar prestige a gammon/Lantern or turbert paw kwee.” Personally I love it for its sheer lunacy—what other major artist would agree to commit such complete nonsense to vinyl?—and its fetching chorus. And Ray Cooper’s percussion and Chester Thompson’s organ don’t hurt either.
The fast-paced “You’re So Static” boasts lots of horns, millions of horns, and is about them New York prostitutes who will take your watch, small town boy, and leave you crying. I’m a big fan of the chorus, which goes, “City living woman/You’re so static/Matching your men with a hook and eye/If you’re gonna spend the summer in New York City/Those women oh oh oh are gonna slice your pie,” but I’ve never loved the song as a whole, probably because those Tower of Power horns drown everything else out. I love John’s piano and Johnstone’s guitar, and they’re missing in action on this one, at least until the end when John comes in with one frenetic run on the old 88s. As for “I’ve Seen the Saucers” it’s a strange mid-tempo tune, with a vaguely lounge piano feel about it. It comes complete with odd sound effects, John and drummer Nigel Olsson pounding their instruments in unison, and John singing, “Tune in, wouldn’t it be something/Rumors spreading into panic/I’ve seen movement in the clearing/Someone sent you something satanic.” It’s a good song but a bit sedate for my tastes, even given its fetching chorus that once again includes the voices of the boys in the band.
Now “Stinker,” it’s a great one. It opens with a big bass groove by Dee Murray, who is soon joined Johnstone, John, those big horns, and Thompson’s organ. As for John—who I don’t think has ever gotten due props for his singing voice—he belts out the lyrics like a blues shouter, boasting, “Watch me get as hot as a heat wave, honey/Tell me what your hound dogs think.” Johnstone plays a brief solo that should have been longer, Cooper beats the tar out a tambourine, and then Johnstone plays two more solos, and I love them. Johnstone’s guitar tone is awe-inspiring, the horns and piano are in perfect synch, and John’s piano solo—during which he shouts “Stinker!” twice, takes the song out. This is one of John’s unacknowledged masterpieces—along with the likes of “Harmony” and “Grey Seal,” to name just two—and is followed by what I consider John’s greatest song, “Don’ Let the Sun Go Down on Me.” It opens with a beautiful piano riff, then John comes in quietly singing about how time stands still before him. Meanwhile he continues to play some wonderful piano, and is joined by Thompson’s organ, to say nothing of Beach Boys’ Bruce Johnston and Carl Wilson, who provide some lush and perfect backing vocals. Johnstone’s guitar is happening, and I love the way John sings, “Don’t dizgard me” before going into one of my favorite choruses of all time. Meanwhile the horns are blaring, and Elton’s vocals are growing more intense, and the song ends in a fanfare of horns and John’s plea to not let the sun go down on him. This is as close to Top 40 perfection as I’m likely to ever come, and I have left strict instructions to be buried with the single clutched in my cold, dead hands.
Album closer “Ticking” is a long and disquieting but lovely song about “an extremely quiet child” who goes on a killing spree, written when such sprees became commonplace. Elton John has always been a prankster, more prone to hilarity than high drama—he once leaped on stage during an Iggy Pop gig in a gorilla suit—but on this one he’s in deadly earnest. It’s mostly John, singing at his best, and his piano, with some backing vocals thrown in for flavoring. “They had you holed up in a downtown bar,” sings John, “Screaming for a priest.” The boy promises to hurt no one but by the end 14 people are dead, and it’s too late to recall his mother’s words, “Don’t ride on the devil’s knee” because that “ticking ticking” in the boy’s head was a time bomb that had already gone off. In the end he’s shot leaving the bar to surrender, and that’s that; you’re left with nothing but Thompson’s protracted organ note. The song is a masterpiece of sorts, between John’s arrangement of Taupin’s lyrics, and while I have often mocked Taupin as a twit, both for his part in the execrable “We Built This City on Rock’n’Roll” and those lines from “Rocket Man” about Mars being “no place to raise a kid,” and “there’d be no one there to raise them if you did,” I believe I owe him an apology.
Elton John was a self-deprecating superstar and flamboyant figure during a particularly vacuous period in rock, and speaking just for myself, my adolescence would have been a far bleaker time without him. I stopped listening to him after 1976’s lugubrious Blue Moves, but I will always love him for the dozens of great songs that made living in a very dull time and place bearable. “Bennie and the Jets” saved my life, or at least my sanity, and the same goes for “The Bitch Is Back” and “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me.” He was my go-to man for years, and for that I’m eternally grateful. He took MOR rock to places it wasn’t designed to go, and he did it with high humor, a talent for outrage, and a great piano. David Bowie may have been the better glam man, but John was glamtastic as well. The proof is in the jacket. Yeah, the proof is in the jacket.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
