After many fumbles and a great many more near-misses, Elton John is back and stronger than he's been on record in many a blue moon. This lush two record set moves from mood to mood with no apparent effort and a great sense of timing, class and style.

I've never been one of the people who found "Rocket Man" (a "Space Oddity" rip-off no matter what anybody says) or "Daniel" as fulfilling as "Your Song," "I Need You To Turn To" or "Border Song." So, as the years passed and the man became more and more flamboyant, I kept thinking his music was really suffering from all this adulation. But Elton finally has met his original potential and whether he's singing the delicate and beautiful "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" or rocking out to "Your Sister Can't Twist (But She can Rock n' Roll)" he always hits the mark rather than scoring a near miss. Bernie Taupin is pursuing the many facets of a dying Hollywood, much in the style Ray Davies did on the Kink's Everybody's In Showbiz epic, and in many songs, especially "Roy Rogers," he's sentimental and sensitive without ever slipping into that dangerous songwriter's trap of banality. "You draw to the curtains/And one thing's for certain/You're cozy in your little room/The carpet's all paid for/God bless the T.V./Let's go shoot a hole in the moon," Elton sings. When you are not forced to look at Mr. John's ridiculous get-ups it's easy to believe in him once more.

Further reading on Super Seventies RockSite!: Album Review: Elton John Album Review: Tumbleweed Connection Album Review: Madman Across The Water Album Review: Honky Chateau Album Review: Don't Shoot Me I'm Only The Piano Player Album Review: Greatest Hits Album Review: Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy Album Review: Rock of the Westies Single Review: "Crocodile Rock" Single Review: "Bennie And The Jets" Single Review: "Philadelphia Freedom" Single Review: "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" "Performance: Elton At The Hollywood Bowl, 9/7/73" Elton John: In His Own Words

"Harmony" is a change of pace number. Haunting and subtle it has great mid-sixties three-part harmony (natch) with backup vocals compliments of Davey Johnstone and Nigel Olsson. The song sounds as if it might have been recorded for the first or second Bee Gee's LP, way back when they were a great band. "Harmony" may never be a single but it's a star track and a perfect end for a near perfect album.

- Janis Schacht, Circus, 1/74.

Bonus Reviews!

A superb set from the British artist who has not missed yet. As always, Elton John's keyboard playing is superb, and his vocals range from the raucous rock he has often been associated with to extremely pretty ballad material. LP seems fuller in many ways than some previous efforts, with strong guitar work from Davey Johnstone and excellent background vocals from the entire group. John seems able to sing almost any type of material, from rock to county to Jamaican-flavored tunes, and this double set exposes this even more. As usual, fine words from Bernie Taupin. Best cuts: "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," "Grey Seal," "I've Seen That Movie Too," "The Ballad Of Danny Bailey (1909-34)," "Dirty Little Girl."

- Billboard, 1973.

Elton John bridges the gap between rock bands and solo acts. He could have gone in either direction but instead chose to go in both at the same time, throwing his version of contemporary vaudeville in for good measure. He has already out-distanced his most pretentious pretender to the throne, David Bowie, as the best of Britain's self-conscious pop stars. He often makes up in breadth what he lacks in depth, touching on many things with sophistication, but rarely getting to the bottom of any one of them. His voice is too limited to do justice to the variety of his material and he often unintentionally levels the differences between songs when he means to explore them. Nonetheless, taken a side at a time, the four-sided Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is thoroughly enjoyable, the rockers moving out with more gusto than those of many bands that work exclusively in that genre, the ballads exploring his and lyricist Bernie Taupin's romanticism without apology. The production (by Gus Dudgeon) and arrangement (by Del Newman) touches are almost always interesting and often engagingly excessive. In fact, no matter how far afield he wanders, I always know Elton John is a rocker because he's so damn brazen.

- John Landau, Rolling Stone, 6/6/74.

Two LPs ago, Bernie Taupin passed on his way from obscure banality to clean, well-lighted banality to write a batch of imaginative lyrics, and set to those lyrics John's music sounded eclectic but not confused. Too often now it seems to chatter on anonymously. The title cut is good, "Bennie and The Jets" is great, side four is good-to-great, and a few other songs here would probably benefit from more exclusive company, but this is one more double album that would make a nifty single. B

- Robert Christgau, Christgau's Record Guide, 1981.

The first flush of EJ's stage flamboyance coincided with his indisputably greatest recording: the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road double album. Only minutes longer than can be accomodated on a single CD, Yellow Brick Road suffers the penalty of the added cost of the double CD format.

While other rock stars cut rambling incoherent album tracks out of self-indulgence, Elton opened this 1973 stunner with the classic 11-minute "Funeral for a Friend" in which he musters and commands every last musical talent and trick. By the time the John/Taupin second track testament to Marilyn Monroe "Candle in the Wind" the listener is already punch drunk. It is these rock ballads that haunt the memory, leaving the rock'n'roll singles hits from this album, "Bennie and the Jets" and "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting," in the shade.

The Strawberry Studios (France) recording was well ahead of its time and has come up revealed in new light on Compact Disc. Some bass boom is apparent while tracks like "Sweet Painted Lady," already larger than life, have real rip-it-up impact. The pseudo-reggae track "Jamaica Jerk-Off" swings and pounds.

Certain tracks from this album have appeared in remixed form (by producer Gus Dudgeon) on the Superior Sound of... Though individual instrumental lines may be clearer, the overall balance on the remixes favours the beat of bass at the expense of vocals and air.

- David Prakel, Rock 'n' Roll on Compact Disc, 1987.

Edited down to once disc, this would easily be John's recorded pinnacle. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road somehow managed to blend Taupin's lyrical fantasy and Elton's grandiose musical melanges into something greater than the sum of their parts -- the romantic spirit of Seventies pop captured in all its excessive, multicolored glory. The title song, the opening instrumental, "Funeral for a Friend," followed by the vocal "Love Lies Bleeding," and "Candle in the Wind" are the highlights, with the remainder made up of some strong material, as well as some pretty forgettable exercises. The sound of the MCA 2-CD set is a great enhancement over the LP, clear, detailed and dynamic with spatial quality, albeit with a slight tendency to overbrightness. A-

- Bill Shapiro, Rock & Roll Review: A Guide to Good Rock on CD, 1991.

Almost certainly Elton John's biggest seller, save his first greatest hits collection. The hits on this sprawling double-disc set include "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting," the title track, and "Bennie and the Jets," and the album tracks include "Love Lies Bleeding" and "Candle in the Wind" (which became a hit 15 years later in a live version). * * * *

- William Ruhlmann, The All-Music Guide to Rock, 1995.

The true marvel of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is that despite a plethora of hits (the title track, "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting," "Candle in the Wind"), it still functions as an ambitious and coherent double-length album. * * * *

- Simon Glickman, Musichound Rock: The Essential Album Guide, 1996.

In the wake of similarly lengthy excursions by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, it was deemed necessary for the serious early 70s' artist to produce a double album. Elton John began recording Goodbye Yellow Brick Road in the Chateau d'Hierouville, and attempted to finish it in Jamaica. Too frightened to leave his hotel room (things were volatile...) and holed up in his hotel room with a batch of Bernie Taupin's lyrics, Elton wrote twenty-one songs in three days. Eventually returning to the Chateau (via an equally unsatisfactory spell in New York), he surged through the recordings. No central theme held the songs together, the extraordinary "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" (about Bernie Taupin's raucous teenage days) contrasted neatly with "Funeral For a Friend," with its Wagnerian instrumentation. The bouncy "Bennie And The Jets" was a cartoon-like tale of a female sci-fi rock band, while the title track, rather obviously, plundered the magical theme of The Wizard of Oz. Again in sharp contrast, "All The Girls Love Alice" proved to be a ballad of a teenage lesbian. The album's finest moment, "Candle In The Wind," took its title from a newspaper cutting that was about the death of Janis Joplin, but the sentiment was for Marilyn Monroe. Twenty-four years later, of course, it would be rewritten for another tragic blonde.

- Collins Gem Classic Albums, 1999.

Epic is the word to describe this flamboyant tour de force that demostrates the ease with which John and Taupin could write not only the hit singles, but the outstanding album tracks. Originally a double disc (we listened till the grooves wore down -- remember vinyl?), the stunning song cycle with no filler feels like a mini-movie. It's Elton's "White Album," his commercial and creative apex, and it sure showed what a piano could do to rock music. * * * * *

- Zagat Survey Music Guide - 1,000 Top Albums of All Time, 2003.

When Elton John compared himself to the Beatles, it wasn't just a delusion of grandeur. "Revolver lifted them onto a higher plane, and Honky Chateau did the same for us," he said in 1973. "Then they did the White Album, and now we'll have a double, too." Everything about Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is supersonically huge, from the Wagnerian-opera-like combo of "Funeral for a Friend" and "Love Lies Bleeding" to the electric boots and mohair suits of "Bennie and the Jets." On the title track, John and his songwriting partner, Bernie Taupin, harnessed the fantastical imagery of glam to a Gershwin-sweet melody.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was chosen as the 91st greatest album of all time by the editors of Rolling Stone magazine in Dec. 2003.

- Rolling Stone, 12/11/03.

Back in the vinyl era, when careers were long and LPs were short, a double album such as 1973's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road signified a Big Statment. The resonance of Elton John's four-sider was less thematic -- it was hardly a concept album -- than visceral, as the flamboyant pianoman and his ace Road crew fashioned John's melodies into a jampacked parade of snazzy hooks and riffs.

On a new, SACD-hybrid reissue, the album's myriad delights -- from the electrifying "Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding" to the blistering boys'-night-out "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" -- come across with spine-tingling immediacy. The seventeen tracks are spread between two discs, with B sides and an acoustic "reduction" of "Candle in the Wind" tagging the second. While the value of the bonus tracks is minimal, the original LP seems even more monumental thirty years on. * * * * *

- Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 1/22/04.

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