Mama Can't Buy You Love: The Official ILM Track-By-Track ELTON JOHN 1978-1988 Listening Thread

that's fine. "Tortured" sounds like a Fox outtake written for Barry Manilow.

There was one more B-side, a live recording of a cover of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine". It dates from 1977 though, so arguably outside scope for this project.

This may be it:
http://youtu.be/CnDx6e-qT-8

Don't think I know this recording but I remember fondly the 11 minute plus version he did at one of his Moscow gigs in 1979; included a couple of amazing extended piano solos.

thanks Jeff. i'd assumed that one was nowhere to be found on YT (it's weird all the B-sides are there but not the lead-off track of the album, which is fairly well-regarded by fans). It's okay---i'd rather have had an extended piano bit instead of the guitar solo

"Act of War!"

http://youtu.be/omEj8lzaqbE

http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/cLiLVv87Ggc/hqdefault.jpg

The mullet years.

the video is the most 1985 of anything 1985 things

if only EJ and Millie had dueted in 1975. or even 1995. This was an ill-starred collaboration. Was Elton trying to go for a Frankie Goes to Hollywood thing? Subtle Cold War metaphor lyric by Taupin a sign of things to come w/"Nikita"

I was hoping the video would end on some pun of "too low for 0".......

rather loud this one

it's tough when you hit the 3-minute mark and they haven't made it past "40" in the countdown. Still, at least soon afterward you get Millie dramatically ripping up a promo poster for Ice on Fire

wait till you hear tomorrow's

oh no. was hoping for a slow descent into the pit before we hit "Wrap it Up"

"This Town"

http://youtu.be/KOKlVulidqw

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/11/03/article-2227404-15D56307000005DC-339_468x335.jpg

Check out Elton's Emulators!

wow, overcrowded enough of a mix? Makes "Sussudio" sound drab. Cocaine + hordes of session musicians, including 4 different rhythm sections (EJ disbanded his core band again, keeping only Davey Johnstone) + a set of new synthesizers. Bizarre to think Gus Dudgeon produced this.

yeah it's a total "Sussudio" rip

between Breaking Hearts and Ice on Fire Elton discovered eighties production and Phil Collins 12"s.

"Cry to Heaven"

http://youtu.be/J2TL4885dJw

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_MHYPEePejb0/Sk3dH0W4_yI/AAAAAAAAAV0/eP-4HiIzvaU/s400/elton+john.jpg

the video, featuring Elton in clown makeup and w/ a beret-wearing toddler being pursued by a bulldozer, remains one of the finest WTF-seriously-WTF moments of the late 20th Century

it's like the Max Fischer Players trying to do an episode of Kieslowski's Dekalog. anyhow, it's a nice distraction from a song as lyrically gruesome as it's dreadfully arranged (love the doorbell chimes upon the title line's appearance)

And the video is the most literal realization of a song since "Tight Connection to My Heart."

i'd only wished they'd shown the sniper sleeping at night in the burned-out subway

finally gets going melodically, in a jacques brel kind of way, around the 3:15 mark ("no birthday songs/to sing again").

in the meantime i'm wondering if that beret he found on the street today was the kind you find in a secondhand store.

"Soul Glove"

http://youtu.be/4A9fF-R_UtE

http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/gallery/100601/GAL-10Jun01-4743/media/PHO-10Jun01-228646.jpg

you can see Bernie T. trying to do some kind of play on "hand in glove" & then the metaphor just balloons out of control

see I looked at the title and started singing "Soul Love."

"To shave in someone else's mirror
Is one desire I haven't dreamed of yet"

Hysterically arranged but not terrible.

late Cold War nostalgia moment

"Nikita"

http://youtu.be/CKmXRwjWYUM

http://hitriders.be/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Foto-Nikita.jpg

I like this -- another solid vocal performance. Lovely bass.

yes! the first elton hit i can remember really reacting to as a normal hit as opposed to some song by some guy my parents think is a big deal. similar to but not nearly as heavy handed as sting's 'russians', similar to alot of the pop culture of the time doing this tip-toe into rehumanizing the russians, whether this was due to gorbachev or just the tide breaking against the ott anti-russkie sentiment of reagan's first term i don't know. what's interesting to me is the extent to which the trend starts w/ english artists and that sense of doomed fatalism there - nikita (a masculine name despite the video) will 'never' know anything about elton's home or hugs, sting dreaming for at best nuclear annihilation being held off for a few more years, you don't really get any optimism until american artists start exhibiting the thaw w/ stallone's 'if i can change and you can change, everybody can change' that same winter. six years later the soviet union was gone.

yeah, this is v. much part of that fatalistic 1984-85 period, just before Gorbachev, whose common theme was "at some point we're going to nuke each other, and it's a shame as we're all the same deep down." As you said, Sting's "Russians" being a far more pompous version of this than E's "Nikita." There was also the Western idea of the USSR being an old prison whose citizens just want to run away and go shopping and bowling and watch cable TV (see Elton's video); that the USSR was trapped in history and no longer made sense to its citizens, even its rulers.

The song's better than I recall---there's a feel of the Cars' "Drive" in its verses, i think, and the fretless bass/rhythm guitar helps shuffle it along nicely. EJ predicts "the Final Countdown" in the synth solo (as he had with that B-side whose title I forget).

Western idea of the USSR being an old prison whose citizens just want to run away and go shopping and bowling and watch cable TV - haha yes, 'they love blue jeans! but cannot get them because communism!', ninotchka filtered thru kmart was a definite theme of the time.

bizarrely, the actress who played Nikita in the vid. cut an answer song of sorts a year later:

http://youtu.be/uLxpHFHGDdg

two years later billy joel in moscow, the year after that paul mccartney's choba b cccp, as pop enacted its own form of perestroika.

Can't underestimate the relief expended by libs -- hell, everyone -- when Gorby came along.

-there's a feel of the Cars' "Drive" in its verses

Yes! It's the synth and rhythm.

Also, in 1984, his reelection secured, Reagan revised a campaign script, much to the consternation of his furious aides, to add the following:

The common interests have to do with the things of everyday life for people everywhere. Just suppose with me for a moment that an Ivan and an Anya could find themselves, oh, say, in a waiting room, or sharing a shelter from the rain or a storm with a Jim and Sally, and there was no language barrier to keep them from getting acquainted. Would they then debate the differences between their respective governments? Or would they find themselves comparing notes about their children and what each other did for a living?

Before they parted company, they would probably have touched on ambitions and hobbies and what they wanted for their children and problems of making ends meet. And as they went their separate ways, maybe Anya would be saying to Ivan, ``Wasn't she nice? She also teaches music.'' Or Jim would be telling Sally what Ivan did or didn't like about his boss. They might even have decided they were all going to get together for dinner some evening soon. Above all, they would have proven that people don't make wars.

People want to raise their children in a world without fear and without war. They want to have some of the good things over and above bare subsistence that make life worth living. They want to work at some craft, trade, or profession that gives them satisfaction and a sense of worth. Their common interests cross all borders.

"Too Young"

http://youtu.be/m7dQbYxmb-M

http://www.waynesleep.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Freddie_Elton.jpg

with Roger Taylor and John Deacon!

sorta scandalous May/December romance from Elton, but one so plodding & creaky you wonder if it's about an 80 yr old courting a 60-yr old. Roger Taylor does what he can: military snare tattoos, what sounds like tympani at one point. But enduring all 5+ minutes of this is like being stuck at a train crossing

I don't know what they do, honestly. And EJ's intensity does not relent.

you ready for this?

"Wrap Her Up"

http://youtu.be/_RaMkpJGOz8

http://burningthegrounddjpault.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/a-front7.jpg

where do I begin?

nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

"Writers: Elton John, Bernie Taupin, Charlie Morgan, Paul Westwood, Davey Johnstone, Fred Mandel"

6 co-composers for this?

Everyone in the room!

blow for everyone!

Man this song sucks. Sad that with 6 writers not one of them was able to see that. Maybe it's a diffusion of responsibility thing.

Two men flapping their wings and clucking trying to convince themselves, the six writers, engineer, producer, wives, girlfriends that they're straight. What a spectacle.