The one album that made Elton John want to retire: “You want to fall down”
Measuring any album next to anything Elton John simply isn’t fair for any rock and roll songwriter.
As much as John was honest about when he thought he made an outright clunker, the kind of magic that he weaved with Bernie Taupin is still one of the most sophisticated catalogues in pop history. But for all of the great music that John has made over the years, the only reason why he kept going was because he had a specific target in mind every time he walked into the studio.
Then again, any album isn’t officially done even when it’s released. The idea for any flowing record is normally decided in the artist’s head, and it’s up to them and the best musicians that they know to try and make it a reality. That mindset might have worked when John was working with session musicians on his first few albums, but even when looking at his masterpieces, there was never a set plan to have every single record be spotless from top to bottom.
Even when looking at Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, John thought the idea of making a double album of material would have been way too ridiculous. He was a great showman and could churn out anything at this point, but even when he had enough good material to make up a double record, it was up to the fans to make sense of what the whole thing was about. The characters in songs like ‘Sweet Painted Lady’ and ‘Bennie and the Jets’ weren’t tied together, but they all seemed to fit into this neat little world.
In fact, the same thing could be applied to The Beatles when they were making their first trips down the studio rabbithole. John was big enough to be friends with many of the former Fabs, but when looking at what they did back in the 1960s on Sgt Pepper, the songs compliment each other perfectly despite John Lennon saying that they have absolutely nothing to do with each other. It isn’t cohesive, but it’s hard to think of ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite’ turning up on anyone else’s record.
But as close to perfection as Pepper was, John was looking for something different. He was much more interested in the musicality of the records he listened to, and while ‘A Day in the Life’ has earned its spot among the best songs in the entire rock canon, it wasn’t until Abbey Road that he felt they nailed true perfection. Everything from the sonic quality to the symphonic ending was a perfect swan song to their career, and John felt that he would forever be chasing that kind of record.
He may have managed to equal The Beatles’ success elsewhere in his career, but John said he would happily quit if he made any song that could fit on Abbey Road, saying, “If we could ever record an album as good as Abbey Road, I’d want to retire. Even though it’s not my favourite Beatles album, you hear ‘Something’ and ‘Here Comes the Sun’ and you want to fall down. Usually somebody has one good song on an album, but the Beatles had five or six mindblowers.”
And while this is meant as no disrespect to one of the greatest pianists of all time, John still seems to have his work cut out for him. No, none of his songs don’t seem to match up to what George Harrison was doing on a track like ‘Here Comes the Sun’, but you can probably count on one hand the amount of songs that are able to nail that feeling down so perfectly, or have the vocal performance of ‘Oh Darling’ or the finality of ‘The End’.
There are definitely some songs that stand out as true works of art in John’s catalogue, but even with the help of George Martin on his remake of ‘Candle in the Wind’, the fact that he never matched Abbey Road is more of a compliment to The Beatles than anything else. This was pure perfection in musical form, and while it’s easy to pick between Sgt Pepper and Revolver as the best Beatles albums, no band has ever capped off their career this perfectly, even if Let It Be came out after the fact.
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