The song Elton John said deserved to be a classic: “It’s an obscure track”
At this point, does Elton John really need more classics to put on his mantle shelf?
There are countless tunes that have become part of the cultural zeitgeist because of him, and even if not all of them were hits in the traditional sense, everything from ‘Tiny Dancer’ to ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ to ‘Can You Feel the Love Tonight’ have been so omnipresent that they’re practically modern standards. But while John could have easily retired years ago, he does still love the idea of songs that capture a certain sense of magic.
Compared to every other artist that seems to go on the mandated reunion tour to get their children through college, John was into it for the love of the sport half the time. His longtime friend Billy Joel had already decided to stop releasing new music all the way back in the 1990s after stalling out, but whether it was on his own or working with everyone from Leon Russell to Brandi Carlile, he was interested in seeing where his ear took him.
Although he has been preserved in pop culture thanks to his collaborations with everyone from Dua Lipa to Alice in Chains to Gorillaz, nothing will ever manage to top his insane run of albums in the 1970s. Most artists might have great periods of albums like this, but whereas The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, and The Rolling Stones had their runs in rock and R&B, John’s legend status was secure before Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was out for a year.
He had the ability to string together classic songs in no time, but when you look at the pre-Yellow Brick Road records, there are many tunes that get lost in the shuffle every so often. If you think about it, Madman Across the Water was far from the most profitable record when it was first released, but even after ‘Tiny Dancer’ caught on thanks to Almost Famous, pieces of the album tend to get overshadowed.
Not all of them are necessarily cut out to be singles, though. ‘Levon’ is a decent size for a hit, but ‘Tiny Dancer’ is far from user-friendly at six minutes, and the title track feels more like something that would come out of a dramatic theatre production than a rock and roll album. But as far as John was concerned, that was only a good thing. He wanted to make music that set a scene for Bernie Taupin’s lyrics, and ‘Indian Summer’ is one for the history books.
There are many times when John could make great character portraits, but seeing the carnage that afflicts an Indian reservation is harrowing to listen to. It’s bad enough to learn this from a random history class, but when the song comes to an abrupt stop at the end, when he mentions how a brave young warrior falls victim to a bullet feels like watching a period drama play out in real time.
Even years on from making the record, John felt that the song needed a lot more recognition than it ended up getting, saying, “I do ‘Indian Sunset’ with Ray Cooper. Nobody knows that song at all, it’s an obscure track from Madman Across the Water, and it gets a standing ovation every night. It’s a six-minute movie in a song.” But the beauty of the song comes with how versatile it is as well.
No one would have thought to sample something like this in a hip-hop song, but when Eminem got hold of the beat, hearing him twist it into a different shape for the posthumous Tupac song ‘Ghetto Gospel’, you would have thought that changing the line ‘Peace to this young warrior without the sound of guns’ was rewritten and sung solely for the track.
But for John, that’s the beauty of making classics like this. Most artists are into the idea of filling out their album by any means necessary, but the true musical craftsmen are those who have buried classics that most fans would have to go digging for if they want to hear what they’re really capable of.
