Elton John Album: “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”

By 1973, Elton John & Bernie Taupin had already logged enough hits to become a part of rock history, but even as their fanbase continued to grow, they hadn't yet reached their peak. When HONKY CHATEAU became Elton's first #1 album in 1972, it proved that he was not just someone FM radio played all the time, even AM listeners (and the biggest single-buyers) had taken notice as well. Continuing with the breakneck pace of his early `70s days, Elton turned up DON'T SHOOT ME I'M ONLY THE PIANO PLAYER early in '73 & won his first #1 single with "Crocodile Rock". Whether or not, Elton & Bernie had a sudden burst of creativity or wanted to give their fans more bang for their buck, they decided to make the next LP a double, which as rock history has dictated many times before, is almost a no-win situation. Rarely has a double album been great with every single song & needless to say, Elton & Bernie's certainly wasn't. But even their lesser songs were still darn good, making GOODBYE YELLOW BRICK ROAD not only their crowning achievement, but a good example of how a double album should be made.

Right from the grandiose opener, Elton & Bernie certainly did their homework on the ways of a double album. "Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding" shows the influence of progressive rock on music of the time with its spacey synthesizer intro (not done by Elton) before leading into the piano-pounding rocker that details the end of a love affair in musical terms. Naturally, this had to have made one hell of an opener in Elton's concerts of this period & even when you just listen to it now, you can almost hear the possibilities for a stage performance of this song.

After that opening, ROAD takes the listener on many twists & turns through just about every conceivable genre of music that inspired Elton & Bernie throughout their careers up until that point. They namecheck reggae on "Jamaica Jerk-Off" (which sure is catchy, but not one you listen to a lot), R&B on the #1 hit "Bennie & The Jets" (it was also a hit on R&B stations, as well), Stones-based rock & misogyny on "Dirty Little Girl", more prog rock on the Yes-inspired "Grey Seal" & 1950s rock on "Your Sister Can't Twist [But She Can Rock & Roll]" (best when played as a segue to "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting"). Occasionally, some songs sound better musically than lyrically, but you'd be a fool not to enjoy yourself either way.

But through all the genre experiments, there are still the perfect melodies & intelligent lyrics that have always been Elton & Bernie's fortes & ROAD still has plenty of those to spare. These include the #2 hit title track, the Marilyn Monroe tribute "Candle In The Wind" (a song that sounds good in both versions, believe it or not!), the heartbreaking closer "Harmony" (which has just that, beautiful harmonies equal to the Beach Boys) & cinematic epics like "I've Seen That Movie Too", "Ballad Of Danny Bailey [1909-34]" & "Roy Rogers".

Even with the hectic schedule Elton & Bernie put themselves on back in the 1970s, maybe a panoramic statement like GOODBYE YELLOW BRICK ROAD didn't seem all that impossible. But the fact it was Elton's second album of the year made it all the more astounding. With 3 major hit singles (the title track, "Bennie & The Jets" & "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting") & considerable airplay for about all the other songs on here, ROAD's runaway success was more than justified. While the follow-up would indicate maybe the duo had written themselves out, GOODBYE YELLOW BRICK ROAD still showed Elton John & Bernie Taupin at the top of their respective games & even today, it's something they should still be enormously proud of.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road has to be the most quintessential Elton John album. It's the one mentioned and talked about the most. It should be. It is the best double album. Although, in today's world, this 17 song collection probably wouldn't be considered a double album. It starts off with one of the greatest album openers ever, "Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding". A classic all the way. This album has a number of Elton's most recognized hits - "Bennie And The Jets", The great "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road", "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting", and the original, and still best, version of "Candle In The Wind". There are more great tracks here that are just as good. You get "Sweet Painted Lady", which is about prostitutes. Then you have the storysong "The Ballad Of Danny Bailey", which you wish Elton would play in concert. You get a number of great rockers like "Dirty Little Girl", "All The Young Girls Love Alice", and "Your Sister Can't Twist(But She Can Rock And Roll)", among others. But, the crowning jewel, is the highly underrated and horribly overlooked gem, "Harmony". It's the closing track and, without a doubt, the greatest Elton John song that was never a single. That's a crime if ever there was one. It's a great piece of music. The album also includes the rousing up tempo number "Grey Seal". The silliest track is a song called "Jamaica Jerk Off". It's fun and catchy, but silly. There you have it. The perfect Elton John album. The perfect rock album. This is Elton's Sgt. Pepper. A classic in every sense of the word.

This is a celebration for music fans. The best CD by Elton John, even better. One of the best albums of all times and among my Top 20 favorite albums of all time. The album hit #1 in the Billboard Pop List in 1973. This is the Deluxe edition on SACD Surround Sound. The remaster of the audio is outstanding and will blow you away! This edition comes with a DVD (The Making of GYBR) that lasts about 50 minutes. This is the film that was previously published on DVD in the collection Classic Albums. If you already have this DVD, you can buy the CD SACD separately for $29,00. If you don't, I strongly recommend you to get the "whole package." The film tells the inside story of the making of this classic album with archive footage and interviews from Elton John, Bernie Taupin, Davey Johnstone, Nigel Olsson, Gus Dudgeon (producer of the original album), etc. The documentary has many terrific moments. To me, the best one is when Elton John is singing Candle in the Wind in honor of the Princess Diana. GYBR was released as a double album. CD1 contains the first 8 songs of LP1. CD2 contains the other 9, plus 4 bonus tracks, one of them Candle in the Wind acoustic, previously unreleased. The packaging is gorgeous with a booklet that contains a presentation by John Tobler, the original art work with lyrics, and some drafts of some lyrics. I had the original album on CD already, but went ahead and bought this edition and I am completely and absolutely satisfied. No regrets! The only problem is that this is expensive. But honestly, I am a collector and I appreciate the record company for releasing this so beautifully. If we don't buy this gems, record companies will stop doing this and then we'll go back to the complaints that the music industry sucks today. This is how CD's should be. Great music, great lyrics, great art work, packaging and sound! This is a MUST for any collector. 5 Stars, 10 over 10!

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I bought this album when I was 10 years old, the day it was released. I have listened to it thousands of times since then and never get sick of it. This is Elton at his creative apex, and Bernie's lyrics are magical. There are many underrated gems on this album: "All the Young Girls Love Alice" (this rocks!), "Danny Bailey" (great piano work here) and "Your Sister Can't Rock but she can Rock and Roll."

For everyone born between 1960-1965, this was *the* album of our generation and it's held up beautifully. Elton never was as good as this again and this was his shining, brilliant moment.

One of the most famous records in rock history, Elton John's 1973 album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road represents the pinnacle of Elton and lyricist Bernie Taupin's ascent of the ladder of "success". It was a record that saw Elton's 6-year solo career peak commercially (the album was a #1 hit almost everywhere simultaneously in late 1973) but also critically - people were genuinely excited, moved and inspired by the songs on this collection then as now, and rock critics at the time praised Goodbye... as the ultimate Elton John collection. Although its 17 songs cover a diverse range of styles and subjects, there is a general sense of the album being part of the entertainment industry "dream machine" -that is , the songs are somewhat idealised, even romanticised snapshots of life as seen through the eyes of Elton and Bernie (two unabashed fans of modern, chiefly American, popular culture). Here, references to TV, film and pop culture abound - from the album's cover, which shows a satin-clad Elton stepping through a cartoon bill poster into a fantasyland depicting the fabled Yellow Brick Road from the beloved L. Frank Baum Tales of Oz stories. This sets the mood of the album.

The 17 songs include some of his greatest ones. I'll start with the terrific opening track : Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding. This is an inspired piece of music. What a surprise it must have been to have been an avid Elton fan in 1973, and to have spun this track for the first time - it is an 11-minute merger of an elegiac synth-keyboard instrumental with a rousing, rocking tale of the vagaries of the rock n' roll lifestyle, interspersed with driving guitar ,exciting choruses and a truly memorable coda. Everybody knows the song Candle In The Wind - it is a sensitive ballad about the tragic celebrity Marilyn Monroe. Despite its well-knownness, this song never fails to move me. Then we have Bennie And The Jets, a fun, escapist sort of song backed with "live" crowd noise dubbed in the studio. This was apt - it is a track that works very well live in concert (better than as the studio version) and gives Elton free rein to display his extravagant piano-playing talents and showmanship. It's about a space-age female glam rock band!! Track 4 is the album's title tune - another great standard that features high harmony vocals, classic choruses and wonderful strings arranged by Del Newman (successor to original Elton album arranger Paul Buckmaster). At this point, we've only listened to one side of the 4 original vinyl LP sides and it's 4 classics in a row!!

This Song Has No Title is OK. Grey Seal is an interesting inclusion as you can hear the difference between the original 1970 version of this lyrically-intriguing song (which was an early B-side) and this fast, rocking version. The biggest difference between the two is Elton's vocal persona - here he is much more extroverted and flamboyant than he was in 1970, and he kicks this song into overdrive on the fadeout. The choice of the Caribbean to record the album (when things got tricky there, the players all decamped back to the Honky Chateau to finish the job) may have influenced the jaunty reggae rhythms of the lighthearted Jamaica Jerk-Off. The quiet, orchestrated ballad I've Seen That Movie Too was about betrayal, and closed the first half of the record on a sombre but impressive note.

Sweet Painted Lady is frankly about prostitutes in a seaside port, and is a languid tune. All The Young Girls Love Alice is also about one particular lonely "naughty girl" whose search for happiness ends in a sordid subway demise. This track really works well -it has a rocking intro, tempo changes, and a dramatic coda, with overlaid sound effects of sirens , noises etc. representing the protagonist's sad exit. Dirty Little Girl threatens to turn this side 3 into a catalogue of misogyny as it deals with an unclean "lower socio-economic" lady. Social Disease is sort of down at this stratum of society too - the character in the song is a lazy alcoholic good-for-nothing!! Bernie was obviously in an ornery frame of mind when he penned the lyrics for this part of the album!!

Whimsical nostalgia is represented by the slow country-styled tune Roy Rogers. I'm too young to have grown up with Cowboys and Indians on TV and Westerns and the Lone Ranger etc, but clearly these TV shows had a profound impact on people of Elton and Bernie's generation growing up in the 50's, so this would have meant a lot to 1973's record buyers. A real treasure here is the beautiful song Harmony. It did not become a hit, but as Elton says himself on the Classic Albums DVD that celebrated the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album in 2002, it was one of the best things on the album. It has, appropriately, wonderful harmonies and the classic Elton John chorus sound created by overdubbing backing vocals performed by the Elton John Band (Dee Murray, Nigel Olsson and Davey Johnstone).

The teenage pandemonium caused by Rocking Elton on his previous LP Don't Shoot Me I'm Only The Piano Player was represented here by the showbizzy little rocker Your Sister Can't Twist (But She Can Rock And Roll), which sounds like a sequel to Crocodile Rock. It then leads into Elton's best-ever rock vocal performance on the tremendous Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting). This was one of those rock 'n roll songs where the players threw everything into the performance, holding nothing back. Elton's vocal sounds raw and he yells out the choruses in a way that he never would have tried doing earlier in his recording career while some of his early bashfulness remained. It is really exciting, and works well as a concert staple, often closing sets (particularly on a Saturday!)

The remastered CD has no bonus tracks owing to lack of space on the CD - the album out-takes /B-sides ended up on Don't Shoot Me... remastered edition instead.

A 5-star Classic Album if ever there was one!!