Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - the POLL

It's as excessive as anything, certainly a bit bloated - - - does anyone do White Album style single-disc scenarios for this?

I did. I tried to make it a single LP but it was tough. IIRC it was:

1. Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding
2. Candle In The Wind
3. Bennie & The Jets
4. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
5. Grey Seal
6. I’ve Seen That Movie Too
7. All The Girls Love Alice
8. Your Sister Can’t Twist (But She Can Rock ‘n Roll)
9. Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting
10. Harmony

That's probably 50 minutes so still on the long side.

(I guess I'm the only one who wants "Your Sister Can’t Twist (But She Can Rock ‘n Roll)" leading into "Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting." Or who feels "Candle" should remain since it's a hit.)

1. Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding
2. Candle In The Wind
3. Bennie & The Jets
4. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
5. Grey Seal
6. I’ve Seen That Movie Too
7. All The Girls Love Alice
8. Your Sister Can’t Twist (But She Can Rock ‘n Roll)
9. Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting
10. Harmony

pretty much my keepers but I won't be as perverse as to pare this album.

How I ranked the songs three years ago:

he Hague

Jamaican Jerk-Off

Meh

Candle in the Wind
This Song Has No Title
Sweet Painted Lady

Sound, Solid

Roy Rogers
All the Girls Love Alice
The Ballad of Danny Bailey (1909–34)
Dirty Little Girl
Your Sister Can’t Twist (But She Can Rock ‘n Roll)

Good to Great

Harmony
Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting
Bennie and the Jets
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding
I’ve Seen That Movie Too
Grey Seal
Social Disease

I like more songs on Blue Moves than I really enjoy on this, though I had to listen to the former a lot to get into it.

It doesn't help the case for Blue Moves that side one is the weakest, though.

wow

Funeral for a Friend into Love Lies Bleeding is perhaps one of the greatest openings to a rock n roll album in history.

Candle in the Wind's only good version is the live one from 88

Grey Seal rules

otm xpost

yeah Grey Seal is great.

Title track is the basic choice but I don’t care, I’m basic.

My mother has an unhealthy obsession with Princess Diana and I heard Candle in the Wind every day for a year straight after her death. It would be a good candidate song for torturing prisoners.

I guess this is widely considered his magnum opus but I’m more of a Honky Chateau kind of person.

Too much boring, decadent clutter in Madman and Yellow Brick Road for me

Sorry for the multi-messages, time to go listen to Mona Lisa and the Mad Hatters and go to sleep.

I guess this is widely considered his magnum opus but I’m more of a Honky Chateau kind of person.

Yeah, Honky Chateau is easily my favorite too. Excellent start-to-finish and very cohesive. Yellow Brick Road and Rock of the Westies are the only others I listen to. Outside of that, compilations feel like the best way to explore the rest.

No love for Tumbleweed Connection? Sure it's ersatz Americana but the songs are terrific (and none have been overplayed to the same extent as Bennie, Rocket Man or Candle.) Easily my top choice of EJ albums.

Bird, I'm generally onboard with your tastes but your ranking Rock of the Westies loses me.

And Moka, you've nailed it with Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters. His greatest song ever.

Christgau acolytes point to Westies, but "Island Girl" is easily his second worst #1 of the period, and "Street Kids" and "Hard Luck Stories" are the only album tracks worth a damn.

Caribou's where it's at.

You're *all* wrong - Captain Fantastic is the masterpiece! But there's like a three-way tie for second place, and stuff I love on all the 70-76 albums.

"Elderberry Wine"! "Have Mercy on the Criminal"!

"Island Girl" is easily his second worst #1 of the period

What's the worst?

"Lucy..."

Surprised/not surprised to learn that was a #1. It barely registers for me.

I'm not fond of "Crocodile Rock" either, but, yeesh, at the other two.

Caribou opens with my favorite Elton John track - it was so much fun to finally see him perform it live on the farewell tour. IIRC after it was over, he repeatedly slammed his piano lid over and over again.

Xgau was the reason I gave Rock of the Westies another chance - I never thought there were any real standouts on it and still don't, but played through in its entirety, it sounds pretty consistent and enjoyable to me. Also lightweight and much less ambitious, but it hangs together for me as a set of tuneful modest numbers. I think Elton might've said it was mostly an exercise in breaking in his new band. They're not as good as his old band, but they sound fine to me here.

The nonsense is less tuneful than usual, forcing me to listen to an unusually prolix and incoherent set of Bernie lyrics ("Yell Help," "Feed Me," etc.).

I think I really must be the only person on Earth, apart from the hordes who bought it at the time, that really digs Elton's Lucy. Can't argue with Island Girl as the worst of the #1s, though if we were just talking "worst single from his classic period," it'd be in competition with the obnoxious Pinball Wizard or the relentless and ever-unwelcome Step Into Christmas.

Dan Dare, Street Kids, and Robert Ford are all good to great. Grow Some Funk is such a great performance, but the lyric is a real cringe, and Island Girl doesn't even pass the first test. No matter how many times I listen to the album, the bulk of Side B refuses to stick in my brain. And yet I keep wanting to give it another try.

xxp aw, "Yell Help" is so bizarre it's funny - like what the hell is he going on about?

lol I've never actually paid attention to the lyrics before. what a train-wteck - the Taupin down-home affectation machine, missing its poetic imagery module, and crashing into a bunch of miscellaneous overheard-in-the-studio inanity. "i wish tonight wasn't Wednesday night" is the kind of thing Paul McCartney could MAYBE get away with, if it was an ad-lib in a silly voice during the fadeout...

"Grow Some Funk," "Robert Ford," and "Hard Luck Stories" are good to great.

The weird thing about "Hard Luck Story" is that it seems to be written for a female singer complaining about a man unloading his problems on her (it's credited to the pseudonyms that John and Taupin used for their "outside" writing); but Elton's singing it as a man, and instead of switching the genders, it seems like they reversed all the pronouns and he sings it as the man "explaining" to the woman that she is fed up with him. Surely it would make more sense to sing "All I hear is hard luck stories" rather than "All you hear are hard luck stories".

Anyway, the Westies/Blue Moves band really was great and served those songs well.

I think I really must be the only person on Earth, apart from the hordes who bought it at the time, that really digs Elton's Lucy.

For me the easy expansiveness of Elton's version makes it much better than the tweeness of the Beatles' original.