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

I've got a toot waiting, so go for it.

"Shine On Through"

http://youtu.be/pmeec8smGQ8

http://static.musictoday.com/store/bands/93/product_large/MUDD183.JPG

Backstory in a sentence: Elton wanted to do his own Philly Soul album, so he hires Thom Bell in 1977 to produce one for him. They clash a bit record a bunch of songs, including the first version of "Shine on Through," which has a big gospel outro:

http://youtu.be/MNpkFbO7_ck

but Elton thinks the tracks are "too saccharine" and scraps most of the songs. Then he remakes "Shine on Through" for A Single Man.

I hear hints of "The One" and The Lion King in the melody: big featureless balladry.

these lyrics, ugh. please come back bernie. all is forgiven. noel gallagher might be able to turn a phrase as banal as "shine on through" into a catchy hook. elton, here, seems to be saying why even bother?

he thought the Thom Bell sessions were too saccharine?

speaking off discarded partners named bernie, comparisons between taupin and leadon should be encouraged wherever possible herein.

which Reagan daughter did Taupin date

You get the sense all of these guys spent the '70s trying to make their own "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and never quite getting there ("shine on through" maybe from P. Simon's own blechhy "shine on, silver girl"). This one's dull and ponderous, straight from the opening chords. This was the lead-off track?

& yeah, scrapping the Bell version seems an odd decision. "No, I'm going to do my own version, thank you: with more modest shlock accompaniment." why not go whole hog, Elton?

On this cd reissue of Electric Warrior, there's a bonus radio interview where Bolan says he and Taupin are writing a sci-fi book together.... The mind boggles

I really like this version from the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special:

http://youtu.be/g-ql5oM_hLA

I think Alfred's busy listening to Beyonce this morning, so let's see, where are we:

"Return to Paradise"

http://youtu.be/eHu_IAACVQs

http://images.45cat.com/elton-john-return-to-paradise-the-rocket-record-company-2.jpg

Ha – was just about to post.

you get the next few

kind of a cross-Caribbean "paradise" here: "island" marimba, Mexican horns. Surprised Carnival Cruises never used it (or did they?)

Those mariachi horns are sad; it's like he wants to evoke the genre experiments of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

I never understood why he was always lumped in with Billy Joel. Sure, there's obvious parallels (playing melodic pop on the piano), but Elton just seemed so far beyond Joel's abilities in all areas. But here, jeez, it sounds like he's trying to do a Joel impression. "If Billy had a hit with stuff like this, then so can I!"

this is the worst EJ vocal performance i have ever heard. what the hell?

A couple behind

I really like A Single Man, the lyrics whatever but his vocals are really beautiful on that track

this Return to Paradise though. What the effing hell. He sounds AWFUL.

we got a lot of awful coming up

I'm ready

...

i think

"I Don't Care"

http://youtu.be/2P_ZPPuezlk

http://img2.timeinc.net/people/i/2007/archive/covers/78/1_16_78_205x273.jpg

hey, this is more like it. Lyrically inane (Gary Osborne, the temporary Bernie T. replacement, can't even get his poor man's lament schtick straight: "more heat than I can use?" not really something to complain about?) and it's crying out for a single edit like no one's business, but it's got a good rhythmic interplay with Elton's piano playing, the strings (Paul Buckmaster in the vein of Thom Bell) and the chorus vocals.

from the People cover above: "He's given up touring and those nutty glasses---but not lasses!" Whew! Got scared for a moment. Ironic headline juxtaposition: "Cocaine in Hollywood"

ugh I can't get with this. It's a simulacrum of joy. "I don't care" indeed.

'juxtaposition'
I wonder what the story was with the lumberjack get-up?

one of his lasses suggested it

for the first five or six seconds, this song makes me nostalgic for the days of "elderberry wine," which was five years ago at this point. then he starts singing and i get wistful for "shine on through," which was five minutes ago. at least he still had his voice when this album started. did he record the lead track and then go on a 30-day coke binge before continuing? were the nutty glasses the secret source of his vocal prowess? have the lasses sapped him of his strength?

these last couple of songs coud also lead you to believe bernie taupin was secretly writing the melodies all along.

It does remind me a bit of, well, faster piano rockers of yore.

fuck I already missed yesterday. We'll post two today. The first:

http://youtu.be/7lyI_OUKSzU

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dNPh2-2ZB44/TxJBr8pcF1I/AAAAAAAAcSE/Ib0dHof8JHc/s1600/Elton+John+and+Andy+Warhol+at+the+Xenon+disco+in+New+York+City%252C+1978..jpg

"Big Dipper"

THIS is more like it: genre exercise that could've fit on Side Three of GYBR or the second half of Caribou but still rather hysterically over-arranged.

yeah, this is pretty fun. the music's a clunky pastiche of Little Feat, Leon Redbone and factory-setting "New Orleans jazz," and the lyric is the sort of double entendre that an 11-year-old would write, but at least this kinda swings. Chorus sunk by too many amateur voices colliding (acc. to Elton's biographer, singers include the staff of Rocket Records and members of the Watford Football Club)

It Ain't Gonna Be Easy

http://youtu.be/4f74wD6hltg

http://bernardmitchell.co.uk/images/stories/blog_images/elton_john_ron_rollitt.jpg

Eight minutes! I feared the worst but:

-- The guitar fills sting

-- Paul Buckmaster's strings, while unnecessary, hugs Elton's vocal without smothering it.

This sounds like another Thom Bell session remake, but don't think it was. Agree that the guitar and Buckmaster are the stars here (and their interplay in the coda is great), but Elton's back in fine voice here too. It really builds for once.

so far this is one weird record. Big brooding Philly Soul numbers cheek-by-jowl with garish, charmless novelties

I listened to it again. I'll take a risk and say this is a Good Song and Performance -- the sort of lost gem for which I hoped this and the Eagles thread were created.

genre exercise that could've fit on Side Three of GYBR or the second half of Caribou but still rather hysterically over-arranged

kind of a poor man's caribou though. the whole thing's a bit too on the nose, and it doesn't quite rock in the way that even the ballads and genre exercises on caribou do.

but his singing voice has thankfully returned!

and the voice is still there for "it ain't gonna be easy," which is poor man's madman across the water, sort of.

or rich man's Madman Across the Water.

ha!

time for the album's "hit"

Part-Time Love

http://youtu.be/xbUAglsS_8o

http://www.importsounds.com/images/ELTON-JOHN_PART-TIME-LOVE_061512.JPG

His first lead single to miss the US top twenty in years. Forgotten too. I like the Philly swing of the backing vocals.

I don't recall this (it hit #21 or something) which is odd because, due to personal circumstances in '78-'80 (being shuttled for an hour each day to school by someone who listened to Roanoke's only top 40 station), even the more obscure singles from that era are stuck deep in the memory well.

It's okay, but it sounds kind of sickly, half-cooked pop--you can hear EJ willing the song forward in the latter half of the verses: "I'm Elton John, damn it, I'm going to make this thing work!" Guitar hook sounds like the theme song of an afternoon news show. Some fun over-the-top Buckmaster scoring, esp. in the bridges

This was probably the first Elton John song I knew, because as a young kid I'd frequently hear my older brother sing the chorus hook which he evidently couldn't get out of his head. You! Me! Ev-er-y-body!! He'd sing the "you", tried to get me to sing the "me", and we'd both sing the "everybody" before he finished the rest of the line. This is how we passed the time on long drives in the back of the station wagon. I learned several songs this way, since I didn't have a radio or a record player back then. I didn't learn until decades later what song this was or who sang it.

The original RS review by Stephen Holden.

A Single Man demonstrates just how thin the line really is between disposable radio pop and elevator music, and suggests that for all of Elton John's public whining about not being taken seriously, the only thing that's ever mattered to him is that the hits keep coming. May they not.

"Georgia"

http://youtu.be/yBCPZktTBsU

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XHW-IERrCAE/TxJDT4gOSlI/AAAAAAAAcTk/AMM0trm2Gaw/s1600/Studio+54+Elton+John+at+Studio+54+Rocket+Party%252C+July%252C+1978.jpg

Another not unpleasant retread, this time of his early habit (or Taupin's) of constructing a bauble around a geographic or thematic abstraction ("Slave," "Hercules").

"Good Old Boys" without the irony; "Tumbleweed Connection" without the (Taupin-led) attempts at "naturalism"--like Alfred said, it's a song about a postcard image. Ode to Jimmy Carter? Who knows.

sounds like something a british lyricist would write having heard the word "georgia" but otherwise having no idea.

boz scaggs' "georgia," from a couple years earlier, is a dead ringer for elton and is a much better song.

^^^ otm