Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is fifty-one years old today. I love blues, R&B, jazz, soul, and of course rock but I’m still a sucker for a great pop song like Brandy, Dancing in the Moonlight, Brown Eyed Girl or Shambala.
Yellow Brick Road is, in my opinion, the best pop album outside of The Beatles. Think about this: in 1973 Elton released Saturday Night’s Alright For Fightin’, Love Lies Bleeding, Crocodile Rock, Candle in the Wind, Bennie and the Jets, Daniel, All the Girls Love Alice, Harmony, Grey Seal, and the title track. Yes, he looked like a cartoon character, but for that one year he and Bernie were in the rarified air of the Lennon-McCartney zone.
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road opens with a combo that might be the pinnacle of Sir Elton’s long and distinguished career. (No one will ever again have at least one hit on the Billboard Top 40 in each of 30 consecutive years.) The epic Wagnerian strains and melodic, somber, neoclassical Funeral For a Friend melding into one of the most underrated hard rock classics of all time, Love Lies Bleeding, with Elton pounding the s#$! out of the piano while Davey Johnston wails on guitar.
It’s obvious that Bernie and Elton were obsessed with American culture including American cinema. So, no surprise that their masterpiece unfolds like a sprawling movie cut to vinyl. And, more than any other non-classical piece of work, it has everything the cinema can offer: the big dramatic opening with Funeral and Love Lies Bleeding; the passionate highs of Saturday Night and Alice; the inevitable downfall and tragedy of Danny Bailey and the title song; the longing for love of Candle in the Wind (even more stunning if you can find the acoustic guitar mix) and I’ve Seen That Movie; the comedy of Social Disease and Painted Lady (talk about a song that is politically incorrect); and, of course, the big, happy ending of Harmony.
Like so many other artists (Floyd, Zep, Stevie, Stones, The Who, Dylan, Fleetwood Mac, Clapton, Hendrix, Yes), Elton’s double album marked the end of his peak artistic years. Nonetheless, nothing else has ever been produced by a pop or rock or blues or jazz musician to cover this much dramatic territory at one time. I loved it in 1973 and have loved it continuously since.