The Worst Albums of 1979

Elton John : Victim of Love

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Victim of Love, Elton John's disco album, is the runaway winner as the worst album of 1979. In year two of his retirement from performing and writing songs with Bernie Taupin, a coked-up Elton John let disco producer Peter Bellotte handle the songwriting and the sessions. Elton didn't even play any of the instrumentation. 

The reviews were harsh including this one in Rolling Stone.

In his very enjoyable memoir Me, which I'm currently reading , Elton concedes he made the album to fulfill an obligation to his American label:

Not everything on Victim of Love was terrible--if the title track had come on at Studio 54, I'd have danced to it--but making an album in bad faith like that is never a good idea. No matter how you do it, it somehow gets into the music: you can just tell it's not coming from an honest place.

OTHER MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENTS:

Beach Boys : Here Comes the Night

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The Beach Boys flirted with disco on L.A. (Light Album),  their first album for CBS Records. Rolling Stone critic Dave Marsh called it "worse than awful. It is irrelevant".  

Aretha Franklin :  Ladies Only

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In which the Queen of Soul gets blind-sided by the lights of the disco club. (Note the trend here?) Produced by Van McCoy, La Diva is the lowest charting and poorest selling album of Aretha's entire Atlantic Records catalogue.

Zon : Circus

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Alright here's an album that doesn't involve a well known band trying to make a disco record one year late. The Canadian rock group Zon was too busy trying to sounds like a mediocre version of Styx. So you can imagine...

Neil Diamond : I'm a Believer

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Tossed in this particular bin because of the reggae version of "I'm a Believer". Sacrilege! 

The Alan Parson Project : Damned If I Do

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I was a big fan of I Robot but Eve is horrible. Robert Christgau gave the album a grade of D writing: 

Musically, this is a step toward schlock that knows its name--a few smarmy melodies mixed in with the production values and synthesizer furbelows. Thematically, it's both sophomoric and disgusting--programmatic misogyny rooted in sexual rejections that were clearly deserved. Visually, it's sadistic--the three women on the Hipgnosis cover wear black veils that only partly conceal their scars, warts and blotches. What is it they stencil on street corners? Castrate art rockers?

More horrible disco albums:

Tina Turner's Love Explosion

Cher 's Take Me Home

And Various Artists Mickey Mouse Disco

40 Year Itch: A Star for Elton

Elton John : Grow Some Funk of Your Own

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   Timed to coincide with the release of Rock of the Westies, Elton John received his Walk of Fame star in front of so many screaming fans Hollywood Boulevard had to be shut down. From a distance Elton looked like a leprechaun, but up close as he approached the microphone, you could see his suit was decked out in stars with names like Joel McCrae. 

   "I now declare this supermarket open!" Elton said. He posed quickly with his star then dashed into a waiting car telling one journalist he was nervous because it was hard "to think of things to say to the fuckin' pavement."

  The $1250 star was paid for by Cashbox Magazine.

US Top 20 October 12, 1975

Neil Sedaka : Bad Blood

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   1975 was the year of the Sedaka. The chubby 35 year old had written three #1 songs that year: "Laughter in the Rain", Captain and Tennille's "Love Will Keep Us Together", and "Bad Blood", his duet with Rocket label owner Elton John which sold 1.4 million copies and was number one for three weeks beginning October 11th. Aside from Sweet's "Ballroom Blitz" nothing in the Top 20 actually rawks.

1 BAD BLOOD –•– Neil Sedaka (Rocket)-5 (1 week at #1)
2 CALYPSO / I’M SORRY –•– John Denver (RCA)-9
3 FAME –•– David Bowie (RCA)-16
4 MR. JAWS –•– Dickie Goodman (Cash)-6
5 MIRACLES –•– Jefferson Starship (Grunt)-8

6 BALLROOM BLITZ –•– Sweet (Capitol)-18
7 DANCE WITH ME –•– Orleans (Asylum)-13
8 AIN’T NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY –•– Helen Reddy (Capitol)-10
9 ROCKY –•– Austin Roberts (Private Shock)-13
10 LYIN’ EYES –•– The Eagles (Asylum)-5
11 FEELINGS –•– Morris Albert (RCA)-17

12 IT ONLY TAKES A MINUTE –•– Tavares (Capitol)-12
13 THEY JUST CAN’T STOP IT THE (Games People Play) –•– The Spinners (Atlantic)-10
14 WHO LOVES YOU –•– The Four Seasons (Warner Brothers)-8
15 RHINESTONE COWBOY –•– Glen Campbell (Capitol)-20
16 BRAZIL –•– The Ritchie Family (20th Century)-11

17 RUN JOEY RUN –•– David Geddes (Big Tree)-11
18 HEAT WAVE / LOVE IS A ROSE –•– Linda Ronstadt (Asylum)-6
19 SOMETHING BETTER TO DO –•– Olivia Newton-John (MCA)-4

20 WASTED DAYS AND WASTED NIGHTS –•– Freddy Fender (ABC / Dot)-17

40 Year Itch : Bob Marley And The Wailers Play NYC

   On June 21, 1975 Bob Marley and the Wailers brought their Natty Dread tour to The Manhattan Center in New York City. While the audio featured on YouTube leaves much to be desired, the video has been called the highest quality footage of a Marley performance in existence. 2500 people paid $6 to see The Wailers perform 17 songs including all of the tunes that would appear on the masterful Bob Marley and the Wailers Live album released later in the year. Three days earlier, 15-thousand people saw The Wailers perform at Central Park with Peter Frampton, The Bee Gees and Barry Manilow among others.

     Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Elton John performed before 80,000 fans at Wembley Stadium with The Beach Boys, The Eagles, Joe Walsh, Rufus and Stackridge.

40 Year Itch : Five Facts about Captain Fantastic

1. In May of 1975, it debuted at number 1 on the US Billboard 200 , the first album ever to do so, and stayed atop the charts for seven weeks



2. Bernie Taupin says it's a concept album about the early days of his songwriting career with Elton John, from their meeting in 1967 to the release of Empty Sky. John is "Captain Fantastic" and he is the "Brown Dirt Cowboy".




3. Elton John told Cameron Crowe in a 2006 interview "I've always thought that Captain Fantastic was probably my finest album because it wasn't commercial in any way.  Captain Fantastic was written from start to finish in running order, as a kind of story about coming to terms with failure—or trying desperately not to be one. We lived that story."

4. The cover was designed by Alan Aldridge who also did The Who's A Quick One and edited and did many illustrations for The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics.

5. Just prior to the album's release, Elton John surprised  guitarist Dee Murray (center) and drummer Nigel Olsson (right) by sacking them. They had been with John for the five most glorious years of his career. John later admitted it was a mistake, telling a BBC DJ " I can't really understand why I did it. In retrospect, it was part of me trying to change things musically. Maybe we had gone as far as we could."

40 Year Itch: Burning in my Brain

Elizabeth Ashley in Steven Spielberg's Rancho Deluxe ( 1975)

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"Kevin Ayers and Syd Barrett were the two most important people in British pop music. Everything that came after came from them."
-Nick Kent, NME

    When the quirky Canterbury hero Kevin Ayers joined forces with  manager John Reid ( Queen, Elton John)  and even got some guest piano work from John for 1975's Sweet Deceiver, critics were bemused. When they saw the "pretty boy" album cover they were incensed. So, just this once,  Ayers traded his prog rock credentials from something more conventional. I still like the title cut every time it pops up on shuffle.

Elton John plays piano on "Guru Banana".

40 Year Itch : US Top 10 January 4, 1975

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    Elton John had three #1 US hits in 1975, beginning with this Beatles cover, the second #1hit , after "Hey Jude",  to be inspired by Julian Lennon. The other two Elton John smashes were "Philadelphia Freedom" and "Island Girl". The B side of "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" was another Lennon composition, "One Day at a Time" ( which appeared on Lennon's Mind Games). 

1. Elton John : Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds
2. Barry White: You're The First, The Last, My Everything
3. Carl Douglas : Kung Fu Fighting



4. Paul McCartney and Wings : Junior's Farm/ Sally G
5. Neil Sedaka : Laughter in the Rain
6.  Helen Reddy : Angie Baby



7. Ringo : Only You
8. Stevie Wonder : Boogie on Reggae Woman
9. Carpenters : Please Mr Postman




10. Barry Manilow : Mandy

Also on the chart:




28. The Guess Who : Dancin' Fool

The Guess Who single "Dancin' Fool" would be their last US Top 40 single before Burton Cummings went solo. It's a bit of a re-write of "Running Back to Saskatoon", but I always liked that one too. Si what the hell.

Hot 100 Chart Debuts



83. Isley Brothers : Midnight Sky, Part 1
95. Phoebe Snow : Poetry Man
98. LaBelle : Lady Marmalade

40 Year Itch : Top 10 Albums December 14, 1974

1. Elton John Greatest Hits 

Elton John's Greatest Hits was the #1 album in the US for 10 weeks straight and sold more than 16 million copies. Meanwhile, in just four weeks since its release, The Ohio Players album, Fire, with its sensational title cut, had raced all the way to #10.

2. Rolling Stones It's Only Rock 'n'Roll

3. Bachman -Turner Overdrive Not Fragile

4. Jethro Tull War Child.

5. Neil Diamond Serenade

6. John Denver Back Home Again

7. Harry Chapin Verities and Balderdash

8. Jim Croce Photographs and Memories

9. David Bowie Live at the Tower in Philadelphia

10. Ohio Players Fire

40 Year Itch : Beatles On Stage

It was good fun, but I wouldn't like to do it for a living.

-John Lennon

  On November 28, 1974 a nervous  John Lennon joined Elton John onstage at Madison Square Garden to pay off a bet he lost. After they recorded "Whatever Gets You Through the Night" that Summer,  Elton bet Lennon it would be the former Beatle's first #1 hit. Lennon agreed to appear on stage with Elton should he lose. And lose, he did. The song hit #1 in November 1974.



    They performed "Whatever Gets You Through the Night" and Elton's ten day old single,  "Lucy on the Sky With Diamonds", which Lennon had helped Elton John record under the pseudonym Dr Winston O'Boogie. The final song was another Beatles cover, " I Saw Her Standing There", introduced in this way by Lennon:

    I'd like to thank Elton and the boys for having me on tonight. We tried to think of a number to finish off with so I can get out of here and be sick, and we thought we'd do a number of an old, estranged fiancé of mine, called Paul. This is one I never sang, it's an old Beatle number, and we just about know it.

    This was the last time Lennon ever appeared in a major concert.

    


  A day earlier Lennon's "estranged fiancé" and his wife Linda appeared onstage with Rod Stewart to sing "Mine For Me",  a song he'd written for Stewart's most recent album Smiler.

40 Year Itch: The Bitch Is Back

"I could fart and reach Number 1" -Elton John, 1974

   And now the backlash begins for hit maker Elton John whose follow-up to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Caribou --released on June 24, 1974-- is derided as a "startlingly empty experience" in a Rolling Stone review entitled "The Maestro of Mediocrity". 

     Naturally, it would sell double Platinum in the US, vault past Gordon Lightfoot's Sundown to #1 and feature to Top Five singles "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me" ( with backing vocals from Toni Tennille and Carl Wilson with help from The Captain)  and "The Bitch is Back" ( with John Lennon on tambourine and backing vocals from Dusty Springfield).

     A confessed rush job, knocked out the Caribou Ranch outside Denver,  Caribou still manages to offer a few deep cuts of interest.  "Ticking" is the stand-out, a haunting, melodramatic account of a teenager who goes on a shooting spree. It's sad to think how much more relevant this tune has become since it was recorded.

40 Year Itch : Say Goodbye to Norma Jean

On May 17, 1974 ABC aired a prime time Elton John special called "Say Goodbye To Norma Jean". As its narrator states: "the greatest sin in his book is to be boring...at age 26, he walks confidently on 5 inch heels where lesser angels fear to tread, sporting coats, hair and spectacles of many colors, sometimes as bright and unyielding as the diamonds he wears on his fingers, sometimes plunged deep in self critical gloom, a child with every toy in the shop and not a key to wind them with"



Elton John was such a big star, this month also marks the 40th anniversary of the day two concert promoters got busted for selling $11,000 worth of mail order tickets to "Elten John" shows  in Detroit and Chicago. Had they learned to spell better, they might have gotten away with the scam.

40 Year Itch: Sharon and Phyllis

   On May 5, 1974 , two years before he became Watford F.C. club chairman, Elton John put on a benefit concert for his favorite team and invited special guests Rod Stewart and Nazareth. Watford is known as the Hornets so Elton arrived on stage dressed as a hornet. By some accounts, this is the show in which Elton introduced his future single, a cover of The Beatles's "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds". 

  Elton and Rod have a chummy friendship. Elton calls Rod "Phyllis" and Rod calls Elton "Sharon". Together they performed "Country Comfort", "Angel" and "Sweet Little Rock 'n Roller".

40 Year Itch: They're Weird and They're Wonderful

Billboard Hot 100 Top 10 for April 13, 1974

1 Elton John Bennie and the Jets

With crowd noises nicked from an Elton John concert in London and Jimi Hendrix's performance at the Isle of Wight, as well as some off beat handclaps, "Bennie and the Jets" gave Elton John his second #1 in the US. He was prouder of the fact the song hit #15 in the R and B charts. One of those few tunes most people could name in one note.



2 Blue Swede Hooked on a Feeling
3 MFSB and the Three Degrees TSOP



4 Sister Janet Mead The Lord's Prayer
5 Redbone Come and Get Your Love
6 John Denver Sunshine On My Shoulders



7 Gladys Knight and the Pips Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me
8 Terry Jacks Seasons in the Sun
9 Ringo Starr Oh My My



10 Carly Simon and James Taylor Mockingbird

40 Year Itch: Checking in with the Pinner Pop Star

"I could fart and reach Number 1"
-Elton John

   At some point in 1974, probably when Elton's Greatest Hits, Caribou and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road were all riding high on the US charts, Elton John's records accounted for 2 percent of the world's record sales.
   He spent much of March touring Australia and New Zealand
   His concerts opened with "Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding" and closed with "Crocodile Rock" and "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting". Elton also introduced fans to a new song called "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me".
 


  Elton and his spectacular costumes ( like the black Lurex jumpsuit decked out in fluroscent balls) drew record crowds: 14,500 in Perth. 19,000 in Melbourne. 25,000 at Sydney's Randwich Racecourse . That's twice what David Cassidy drew.
  In April , after cancelling his British and European tours, Elton recorded "Pinball Wizard" for the Tommy soundtrack. In 1975 the single would peak at #7 in the UK .

40 Year Itch: Happy Xmas from the Pudgy Pop Star

    It has become one of the most legendary of the Peel Sessions. On December 18, 1973  Elton John, a serious artist reaching his peak of popularity, performs some rinky tinky pub style piano medleys surrounded by producers and managers drinking ales. He knocks out a Christmas medley first. Then a Dylan medley which is followed by one of classic pub tunes. Before the hour is up, Elton is impersonating the queen and launching boozy assaults on his own hits "Daniel" ( UK#4, 1973) and "Your Song" (UK#7,1971) while the small but clearly inebriated crowd sings along. 

If the whole thing seems rather out of the Christmas spirit well that may be because Peel didn't actually give a toss about Christmas, as he disclosed on his show in 1987:

 "I've been feeling sort of mildly fed up this evening, what with one thing and another. It's that kind of pre-Christmas 'triste'. Shopping was the main reason for it. I spent about five hours shopping this afternoon, achieved nothing, and you go round thinking, "Why am I doing this? Why am I feeling kind of social pressure to go round looking for stuff that people don't want, to give them on this particular day? Why not wait until they do want something and give it to them then?" Of course, quite clearly, this is not the way things go."

40 Year Itch : Slade Crushes Wizzard in the UK Xmas Charts

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   Every year Christmas brings joy to Slade front man Noddy Holder and bassist Jim Lea. 40 years after Slade's smash hit, "Merry Xmas Everybody", entered the charts at #1 ( selling 250,000 copies on December 7th, its first day of release), Holder and Lea will earn more than half a million pounds for the festive hit, making it the top Christmas earner for 2013. "Merry Xmas Everybody" re-charted every year from 1981-1994 and just entered the UK charts again last week at #57.

   The song is based on an 1967 psychedelic tune Noddy had written called " Buy Me a Rocking Chair". After a night out drinking, Noddy wrote the new lyrics in one draft:

We'd decided to write a Christmas song and I wanted to make it reflect a British family Christmas. Economically, the country was up the creek. The miners had been on strike, along with the grave-diggers, the bakers and almost everybody else. I think people wanted something to cheer them up – and so did I. That's why I came up with the line 'Look to the future now, it's only just begun'. Once I got the line, 'Does your Granny always tell you that the old ones are the best', I knew I'd got a right cracker on my hands.

Slade's Christmas smash famously beat Wizzard's classic  Glam rocker "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday" to th etop of the charts. The Roy Wood penned theme peaked at #4 in the UK Charts and held that position for four straight weeks. Over the years it's become a bit of a standard overseas. In a way it encapsulates the UK's tongue in cheek approach to Christmas in its first second: the sound effect of a cash register.


 

   Elton John had a head start on the competition when he dashed off "Step Into Christmas", written and recorded on the same Sunday at London's Trident Studios.

    Elton invites fans to "hop aboard the turntable". Most didn't bother. Due its crappy sound, an apparent homage to Phil Spector, the single only peaked at #24 in the UK and failed to enter the Billboard Hot 100. A poor showing for the star who'd had three Top 10 hits in the UK and a #1 hit with "Daniel" in the US




 

40 Year Itch : Hunting the Horny Back Toad

                                 So goodbye yellow brick road 
                                 Where the dogs of society howl

On October 5, 1973 Elton John released his magnum opus, the double disc'd Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, an album steeped in nostalgia, brimming with quirky ideas about sex... and chock full o' hit singles. After spending several days in January of '73 haplessly trying to record the album at the Byron Lee owned Dynamic Studios in Kingston, Jamaica where the Stones made Goats Head Soup, Elton and the boys moved back to the Chateau d'Herouville  in France. A documentary team was there the day the band recorded  "The Ballad of Danny Bailey 1909-1934).

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road --the second of seven consecutive US #1 albums, selling 31 million copies-- had four hit singles .The hardest rocking of the songs, "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" preceded the album and shot up to #12 in the US. The title track peaked at #2 in the US. Then came "Candle in the Wind", released in the UK. And "Bennie and the Jets" which hit #1 in the US in April of 1974 and scored high on the R and B charts as well. My fave cut,  "Grey Seal",  would have been the next single but Elton was ready to release a new album ( Caribou) and didn't want it overshadowed.

Not every critic loved the album , which begins with its ominous scene setting overture "Funeral For a Friend". Writing for Rolling Stone Stephen Davis called the epic album opener "an eight-minute instrumental prologue featuring grandiose and tasteless typhoon whooshings, booming ecclesiastic organ, some stinging guitar that would be monumental if properly backlit but seems out of context against a lot of bleating." He also shrugged off the album as "a big fruity pie that simply doesn't bake" . 

For Circus, Janis Schacht praised the album closer "Harmony" and called the album a " lush two record set  (that) moves from mood to mood with no apparent effort and a great sense of timing, class and style."   

There's plenty of nostalgia to be found in the Wizard of Oz imagery of the title cut, the Marilyn Monroe tribute "Candle in the Wind" and yet another Bernie Taupin foray into the Wild West with Danny Bailey. There's also a few strange quirky sexual themes to be found in the album. "All the Girls Love Alice" appears to be the story of a teen age lesbian. "Sweet Painted Lady" is about prostitutes (Getting paid for being laid /Guess that's the name of the game) and the regrettable "Jamaica Jerk-Off" is just a sophomoric pun .

This would have made a lovely, if slightly brittle, single LP. 

-Stephen Davis, Rolling Stone

OK Stephen. So I've asked The Flying Monkeys ( a Wizard of Oz reference) to help me condense Goodbye Yellow Brick Road into a single 45-minute disc. 

SIDE ONE

  1. "Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding" 11:09
  2. "Candle in the Wind" 3:50
  3. "Grey Seal" 4:00
  4. "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" 3:13

                                                                         SIDE TWO

1.  "Bennie and the Jets" 5:23
2. "Sweet Painted Lady" 3:54
3.  "All the Girls Love Alice" 5:09
4.   "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" 4:57
5.  "Harmony" 2:46

The only song it really pains me to lose is "I've Seen That Movie Too". What are your thoughts?

40 Year Itch: Crocodile Rock Hits #1

Carly Simon loses #1 to Elton John on the US charts for February 10, 1973 while Hurricane Smith peaks at #3 with "Oh Babe What Would You Say". The O'Jays and Roberta Flack ( at #11 with "Killing Me Softly" are charging up the charts with a bullet). This is Elton John's first #1.

1. Elton John: Crocodile Rock



2. Carly Simon: You're So Vain
3. Hurricane Smith: Oh Babe, What Would You Say

4. Stevie Wonder : Superstition

5. Loggins and Messina : Your Mama Don't Dance

6. The Spinners: Could It Be I'm Falling In Love

7. Timmy Thomas: Why Can't We Live Together

8. The O'Jays : Love Train
9. Steely Dan: Do It Again
10. War : The World is a Ghetto

40 Year Itch: A Star in the Face of the Sky

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Released on January 26, 1973 , Don't Shoot Me I'm Only The Piano Player --the #1 album that secured Elton John's rise to superstardom--also carries a whiff of mediocrity about it. Even Elton has dismissed it. "I really like some of the things on Don't Shoot Me but as far as continuous flow, it doesn't hold up. It's really a bubblegum album."

      Elton and the band knocked out the album just weeks after Honky Chateau came out. His contract called for two albums a year and the pressure was getting to Elton. "I made Don't Shoot Me I'm Only The Piano Player really on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I was so ill. I didn't know it, but I had glandular fever and was very slow."

   

The album contains two big singles. The first was the cheesy early 60's tribute "Crocodile Rock" that, in its "la la las" quotes Pat Boone's "Speedy Gonzales".



The better hit was the enigmatic but beautiful "Daniel". In its final verse Daniel is revealed to be a Vietnam vet trying to get back home to the life he led. But without that reveal, plenty of people guessed Elton was singing about a boyfriend he missed.



  Our favorite deep cut is "Elderberry Wine" which could have been an A-side single despite its rhyming "You aimed to please me/ Cooked black-eyed peas me." In all, 1973's Don't Shoot Me was just a slight hiccup. Elton's greatest album was ten months away.

 

40 Years Ago Today: Elton John's Madman Across the Water released

Though, commercially,  it was one of the least successful of Elton John's albums in the UK, Madman Across the Water ( released November 5, 1971) stayed in the US charts for nearly a year. That's despite having no major hit singles. Still, Madman remains , next to 1970's Tumbleweed Connection, 1001Songs's all time favorite Elton John album. One of five Elton recorded in an 18 month period, Madman is an album you can relax around. Most of the cuts top five minutes and eventually become good, solid friends.



It begins with one of Elton John's greatest songs, written about lyricist Bernie Taupin's first wife. To this day Taupin says Madman Across the Water reminds him of driving down LA freeways listening to the car radio. No, Elton isn't asking Tony Danza to hold him closer. In 1971, Danza was still an unknown college student  at The University of Dubuque.



Named after Band drummer Levon Helm, "Levon" hit #24 in the US charts. There are live cuts available on YouTube but you lose the orchestration which takes this song ( which seems to be about father/ son relationships) to an extraordinary level.



"Razor Face" is the third cut. Another character sketch, Razor Face sounds like a rough looking dude with a drinking problem and a good heart. Rick Wakeman plays keyboards on the album track.



The title cut is another classic song. Taupin has said this is his most misunderstood lyric. Many people suggested it was about the troubled President Richard Nixon. Taupin has refused to explain the lyrics further. Good for him. Madmen were big topics in the early 70's among John/Taupin contemporaries David Bowie, James Taylor and Alice Cooper. That's Chris Spedding with the repetitive electric guitar line. And Paul Buckmaster with the string arrangements. (Buckmaster orchestrated strings for The Bee Gees Odessa and Bowie's "Space Oddity")



"Indian Sunset" is sung from the point of view of a young Indian warrior who sees his race, culture and art facing extinction.



Elton's contribution to the rock'n'roll road song. He explains the track better than I could at the beginning of the video clip above.



A man who's seen hard time in prison works the peach orchards of South Carolina and Georgia. Another character study that reveals Taupin's tremendous gift.



Things get proggy on "All The Nasties" with the addition of the Cantores em Ecclesia Choir. Elton has said the song is a reaction to all the nasty critics out there. This might have given the critics some extra fuel.



Madman ends with the beautiful, sad and brief "Goodbye". As with "Levon", are we getting another reference to Jesus with the lyrics about wine flowing into the land to feed his lambs?