Much of Elton John’s music, because of its compositional depth and piano-based complexity, is well-suited to symphonic and choral arrangements and it has likewise inspired such treatments over the years. His 1970 eponymous album is a particular benchmark in this context, as several of its songs (“Take Me to the Pilot,” “Sixty Years On,” “Border Song,” “The Greatest Discovery,” “The King Must Die”) have been performed by the likes of the Royal Academy of Music, the Julliard School of Music, and, most notably, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra during John’s historic 1986 tour of Australia (which was documented on a hit live album the following year, spawning a Top 10 single of “Candle in the Wind”).
Such orchestral resonances surface throughout John’s current album, The Diving Board, particularly in songs like “The New Fever Waltz” and “Home Again.” John recently performed the latter along with students from USC’s Thornton School of Music and Croatian virtuosos 2Cellos.
Check out the just-released video of this rare performance:
In the latter half of his storied career Elton John has made some of the best music of his life. While John hasn’t churned out radio hits of late at the same velocity as in his ‘70s heyday, he nevertheless has demonstrated a sort of creative rejuvenation which has inspired him to compose a consistent run of great albums, including 2006’s The Captain & The Kid and his 2010 collaboration with Leon Russell, The Union, which was produced by T-Bone Burnett. The catalyst for this rejuvenation, peculiar though it may seem, was when John stopped starring in his own music videos.
Such is most recently illustrated by “Home Again,” the moving, mournful first single from John’s forthcoming album, The Diving Board (Capitol/Universal Records), which was also produced by Burnett. John’s absence from the song’s recently released video, along with the visual narrative’s dual yet opaque storyline, lend cinematic gravitas and scope to his vocal performance. The effect, ultimately, is more like he’s scoring a film rather than promoting an album.
When you’re as legendary as Elton John, of course, you don’t need to star in your own music videos lest viewers not recognize who’s singing the tune. In fact he decided as much right around the time of his 2001 LP, Songs From The West Coast. The one-take short film accompanying that album’s lead single, “I Want Love,” which starred Robert Downey, Jr., not only added gripping context to an already compelling song but also set the precedent for Elton John’s future in the post-MTV video era. And in the 12 years since Songs From the West Coast that John has maintained his celluloid celibacy, he has focused on making the best music that he can rather than making music just because he can. “Home Again,” in sound and vision, is a fine example.
The Diving Board will be released September 24.
On June 30, 1990 in Hertfordshire, England, on the stomping grounds of some of rock’s most historic, landmark events—the site of Led Zeppelin’s last stand on British soil, in ’79; where Freddie Mercury fronted Queen for the final time, in ’86—approximately 120,000 people descended upon Knebworth Park for a massive all-star concert benefiting the Nordof-Robbins Music Charity Centre and the Brit School for Performing Arts.
Long out of print in audio form (a DVD version was released in 2002), Live at Knebworth has at last been reissued, sounding just as dynamic as it did 20 years ago. Boasting a motherload of British music royalty, the double-disc set highlights extended performances by the likes of Paul McCartney, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Genesis, and Pink Floyd.
Given the random song selection, one could split hairs over which tracks made the cut—do you really need another live version of “Comfortably Numb”?—but on the whole it makes for a most enjoyable live album.
The “do-you-really-need-another” scrutiny could just as easily apply to the inclusion of other tracks like “Sunshine of Your Love” (Clapton), “Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting)” (Elton) or “Hey Jude” (McCartney). In the case of McCartney, though, it’s worth noting that he’d only begun playing a generous amount of Beatles songs in concert during the world tour he was on at this time, his first such road trip in 13 years. And on the heels of a momentous homecoming concert in Liverpool just two days before—where he poignantly paid tribute to John Lennon with a medley of “Strawberry Fields Forever," “Help,” and “Give Peace A Chance”—McCartney hit Knebworth in particularly high spirits, as his other featured track, a rambunctious take on “Coming Up,” revealed even further.
A more contemporary band didn’t stand much of a chance among all the legendary rockers on the bill, yet with “Badman’s Song,” Tears For Fears delivered one of the best (if not the best) performance of the entire show. In a fiery exchange, lead singer Roland Orzabal and the band’s best-kept secret, Oleta Adams — remember her anguished vocal on “Woman In Chains”? — summoned a menacing, 11-minute tour de force.
And so while one’s preferences will determine which selections they enjoy better than others, there really isn’t a bad track in the bunch. As an overview of Knebworth ‘90, it’s solid.
Unlike a lot of superstars, Elton John recognizes the contradictions between his admittedly insular, extravagant lifestyle and the comparatively average ones most others lead. So when in 1995 he allowed his partner, David Furnish, to record his day-to-day activities for a documentary, he likely knew that such unrestricted access would cast him in a vulnerable — and perhaps unflattering — light. That the depiction would be so compelling, however, he may not have altogether foreseen.
Originally released in 1997 and now officially available on DVD, Tantrums & Tiaras holds up quite well in rendering the conflicting realities of one of music’s enduring legends. In addition to the feature film, this new edition includes several previously deleted clips, up-to-date commentary by Elton John and David Furnish, as well as relative supplemental footage.
Filmed around the time when Elton John released his album, Made In England, the film finds the musician in flurry of promotional appearances, interviews, publicity shoots, and live performances. All of this — barring a few memorable instances, like his tirade on the set of the “Believe” video — he handles with equal amounts composure and confidence.
It’s what occupies his time between these endeavors — more practical concerns, like the tacit obligations of his relationship to Furnish — that invariably cause John some measure of frustration and, by extension, yield the film’s most affecting content. Seeking a balance between one’s career and one’s personal life is no easy task for many individuals and, as he readily acknowledges here, such is a perpetual challenge for Elton John as well.
A particularly telling scene occurs — captured while the couple is on holiday in the South of France — when the contradictions of John’s life unwittingly converge. Furnish suggests some outdoor recreations that he would enjoy sharing with his partner, that the two could enjoy together. With a pained yet unwavering expression, John rejects each one out of hand — either because his celebrity would draw unwanted attention or from sheer disinterest — before ultimately conceding to “consider” taking a walk with Furnish on a remote part of the beach. It becomes evident (to viewers, but heartbreakingly so to Furnish as well) that, at least at this point, Elton John feels far more comfortable in his role as a famous musician than in that of an intimate relationship.
Rather than inflating the DVD with irrelevant filler, the bonus material included here further serves the function and overall quality of the film. Candor humorously extends to camp, as in one clip when John flashes just enough skin during a photo session to make Madonna blush; in another, he preens before a mirror, dressed in drag, all but oblivious to a lasciviously clad Kylie Minogue playfully wiggling her tuckus in the same room.
Among such revelry, though, lay one profoundly bittersweet segment. In a video taped the same year as the documentary, the late Gianni Versace reflects on his close friendship with Elton John. It’s jolting to watch — as the iconic fashion designer, looking vibrant, speaks with eloquent regard toward his pal — against the context of his assassination less than two years later.
Clichéd though it may sound, it doesn’t make it any less accurate: For Elton John, it all does come back to the music and at the heart of Tantrums & Tiaras lay his exceptional talent. The film wisely yields little in the way of sensationalizing his career — his success is sensational on its own — but instead offers a refreshingly unfiltered and intriguing glimpse of the opposing forces that define his life.
Sixty years on in age, nearly forty years into his illustrious career, Elton John personifies one of music’s most dynamic and colossal success stories. While selling over 200 million albums worldwide, John has scored seven successive number one albums, charted a top-forty single for twenty-six consecutive years, and holds the record for the highest-selling single in history. Those highlights, among others, are featured in a new documentary, entitled, Elton John: Someone Like Me.
While the story of how an introverted English boy named Reginald Dwight transformed himself into a flamboyant Rock and Roll superstar named Elton John is nothing short of extraordinary, the manner in which the story is told through this documentary leaves the viewer ultimately dissatisfied. Because Elton John’s career is so extensive and prolific, this 98-minute biography only skims over the highlights (and the lowlights) without offering much context to or analysis of any details.
In addition to the documentary’s narration, a small assortment of journalists and biographers add commentary and a modicum of insight. As well, sparing clips of Elton John, most of them outdated and superfluous, are scattered throughout the film.
The narrative begins by chronicling the childhood of Reginald Dwight, a young boy living with his quarreling parents, who took to playing the piano by age four. Able to play by ear yet unable to read sheet music, he won a junior scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music by age eleven. While he learned to play and appreciate classical music, he was most inspired by Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Fats Domino, musicians who effectively turned the piano into a Rock and Roll instrument.
Scanning over the intervening years, the film mentions Reginald Dwight’s first band, Bluesology, which released the single, “Come Back Baby,” only to see it promptly obliterated in the charts by the Rolling Stones “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Bluesology subsequently dissolved without making any discernible dent on the British music scene.
After assuming a pseudonym and, ostensibly, a whole other identity, the newly named Elton John answered a magazine advertisement that called for songwriters. His compositional skills were paired up with the lyrical talent of Bernie Taupin and, together, their professional partnership took root.
At this point in the documentary, notable occurrences like album releases and hit singles flash by in rapid succession. Granted, this was an era that, for Elton John at least, yielded a torrent of output and creativity. Unfortunately, though, this film fails to adequately examine the significance of those occurrences. Rather, it merely presents them in a cursory overview, a timeline stretching from John’s 1969 solo debut, Empty Sky, right on through to 2006’s The Captain And The Kid.
In a nutshell, Elton John: Someone Like Me fails to measure up to its intent of presenting an authoritative biography of this music legend. The life story of Elton John, with all its splendor and despair, is certainly one worth exploring in depth. It’s unfortunate that this documentary does not approach it as such.
Since The Beatles disbanded, Ringo Starr has sustained a respectable solo career, one that’s allowed the iconic drummer to call the shots and make music by his own accord. Much of the finest music he’s made comes together on the newly released retrospective, Photograph: The Very Best of Ringo Starr.
This solid compilation features twenty tracks, many of them bona fide hits, most of them instantly familiar. What this disc underscores, besides the songs themselves, is the quality of musicians that Starr worked with in making them, from his three former bandmates to the likes of Elton John, Billy Preston, and Eric Clapton.
Of all the artists that contributed to this music, none resonate as often or as profound as George Harrison. “Photograph” and “It Don’t Come Easy” rank as two of Starr’s most recognizable recordings, not least because of Harrison’s involvement in their creation, having co-written and produced the former while producing the latter. He also contributed the loose and bouncy track, “Wrack My Brain,” and produced the weird and wonderful smash, “Back Off Boogaloo”. Starr wrote the poignant song, “Never Without You,” which features Eric Clapton on guitar, in tribute to his departed friend.
During his “Lost Weekend,” John Lennon offered Starr two songs, “Goodnight Vienna” and the tongue-in-cheek humor of “I’m The Greatest,” which illustrates that Lennon was, perhaps, not quite as “lost” during this time as he’d claimed.
While Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr have collaborated on various projects ranging from McCartney’s Tug of War and Flaming Pie to Starr’s Vertical Man, his only appearance on this compilation comes on “You’re Sixteen (You’re Beautiful and You’re Mine)”.
Other highlights of this disc include the rollicking groove of “Oh, My My,” featuring Billy Preston on piano, and “Snookeroo,” an Elton John/Bernie Taupin composition on which the Rocket Man participated in recording.
Given his stature, it’s not surprising that Ringo Starr recruited such renowned artists with whom to make music. What’s impressive, though, is how well these songs have held up, and, moreover, how much fun it is to listen to them now.
In the liner notes, Starr offers commentary on what he remembers most about each track. While nothing jumps out as exclusive news or insight, what does come through is his lasting enjoyment of the music he’s created and covered, often with a little help from his friends.
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