Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road Looks Back...and Ahead

In 1967, Liberty Records placed an article in New Musical Express looking for songwriters. Bernie Taupin, 17, and Elton John, 20, both reached out; both failed their auditions. John confessed that he wasn’t much of a lyricist, and the Liberty Records employee he’d been speaking to handed him an envelope of Taupin’s poems.

Great art is hard work, of course, and talent, and often genius, but it’s hard to overlook the role serendipity can play at times. Elton John was (and is) the showman, the piano player, the sequins and spotlight; but his most successful songs usually feature Bernie Taupin’s words. Their good luck paid off, again and again.

By 1973, John and Taupin were on their sixth and seventh studio albums, Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. 

Don’t Shoot Me… had been a success, vaulting to the top of the charts in the US and UK and featuring instant classics “Crocodile Rock” and “Daniel.” 

Initial work on the album was done in Jamaica: Taupin took two and a half weeks to write lyrics, which John put to music in about three days,¹ but logistical issues sent them to the Château d’Hérouville outside Paris, where Don’t Shoot Me… and Honky Chateau had been recorded. 

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was a double album, with graphics and themes playing off the idea of a day at the movies. Don’t Shoot… had featured a marquee as its key graphic, but Goodbye has John stepping right into the world of the movies, onto that Yellow Brick Road everyone’s heard so much about. Not all the songs riff on the cinema, but theme carries into the liner notes, including an image illustrating “I’ve Seen that Movie Too” that later inspired those familiar robots sitting in front of a movie screen on Mystery Science Theater 3000.²

Taupin later said:

It’s been said many times, but Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is a cinematic album. The lyrics to the title track do say that I want to leave Oz and get back to the farm. I think that’s still my M.O. these days. I don’t mind getting out there and doing what everybody else was doing, but I always had to have an escape hatch.

The album even kicks off with a song that lent its title to a movie (and a lesbian noir at that).

“Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” combines a death-flavored breakup song with an instrumental John was toying with when he was thinking of what should be played at his funeral (John had already attempted suicide in 1968, and would again two years later; I’m not clear if suicide was on his mind at the time, but the thought probably wasn’t that far away). “Funeral” is a little bit psychedelic, a little bit church music, a lot Elton John. It’s not much of a dirge, and the transition to the fast-paced rock of “Love Lies Bleeding” brighten the tone up further. The lyrics to “Love Lies Bleeding” are still plenty dark in spots, though:

And love lies bleedin’ in my hands
Oh, it kills me to think of you with another man.

Another song about death follows it up: “Candle in the Wind,” a song that has been a bit folded, spindled and mutilated over the years, probably fitting for a song about the struggles of Marilyn Monroe. “Candle” was famously re-recorded with new lyrics after the death of Princess Diana, another pop culture icon who was a figure of tabloid headlines and public debate.³ The original lyrics to “Candle” emphasize Marilyn’s fragility and isolation, and it’s a lovely, understated song about someone that John and Taupin would and could never know.⁴ John can be an incredibly warm performer, and his vocal here is a hand reaching out into the darkness, searching for a stranger.

“Bennie and the Jets” is the third song on the album,⁵ a dreamy, electric-tinged paean to what Taupin described as “a sort of proto-sci-fi punk band, fronted by an androgynous woman, who looks like something out of a Helmut Newton photograph.” Recorded in-studio with “live” sound effects added, it puts you in the stands with a “weird and wonderful” band. Celebrity might kill, but it can be a lot of fun too. Like the previous song, it’s from the point of view of an observer, this time in the stands of a stadium rather than sitting in a row of a movie theater. Benny and the Jets also features one of the more famous mondegreens in pop culture. (There was a video here; it got copyright struck between the time of writing and the time of posting. To add insult to injury, the “Every Wayne’s World Ever” playlists on the official SNL site don’t have the skit. It’s from 9/30/89 if you want to go digging.)

This time, John’s vocals are dreamy, especially that crooning falsetto.

Now we’ll flip the record over to my favorite song on the album: “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” the title track. The Wizard of Oz had been a queer touchstone since long before John was at the piano; Judy Garland’s death in 1969 has sometimes been (erroneously) credited as a kickoff to the Stonewall riots⁶. 

But this song is not about embracing a new community. It’s about saying goodbye to a dream: the singer turns away from luxury, deciding the price of exploitation is too much to bear. Given the choice between being “a present for your friends to open” and plowing, the farm is calling. There are a lot of “the glitzy life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be” songs⁷, but ones where the narrator chooses to turn away are rarer, especially in pop. Of course, the narrator doesn’t seem to have been anywhere near the top, but instead a rich person’s toy. “I’m not a present for your friends to open” is a hell of a line. The orchestration gives the sense of returning, of a big, expansive field. A humble farm where you can run off to the woods is a bigger, better home than being trapped in the ritziest penthouse.⁸

Once you’ve become a big enough star, you can get away with calling your songs things like “This Song Has No Title.” This song isn’t quite a repudiation to the track that precedes it, but it longs for adventure and experience. Both of the songs have hunger for freedom, though, and John’s keyboards (every instrument on the track is a keyboard) reflect a zeal for something more. He’s so busy diving into life, he can’t be bothered to title the song.

“Grey Seal” is more introspective, at least lyrically. Musically, it’s fast-moving and catchy.

It’s even got a little hint of Paul McCartney-style Tin Pan Alley in it. Not the most essential track, but it’s fun.

Goodbye was originally supposed to be recorded in Jamaica, and “Jamaica Jerk-Off” is a goofy little tune that borrows from reggae and uses synths and steel drum to give the tune that island feel. The novelty is fun, but it’s the most disposable song on the album.

“I’ve Seen That Movie Too” starts with an old-fashioned piano intro, and shows off the more thoughtful, sadder side of John’s vocals. It’s a break-up song, somewhat cynical, mostly just weary. There may be love there, but we all know how this is going to go.

On to disc two, and “Sweet Painted Lady,” another song that seems like it was written just to be recorded in Jamaica, right down to the ocean sounds that come in on the back half of the track. With an old-fashioned swing in its step, it’s another echo of the past, as much “Love for Sale” as a song from the seventies.

“The Ballad of Danny Bailey (1909-1934)” is half historical ballad, half yet another trip to the movies. It’s a bit more dramatic in its orchestration, as fitting a gangster story. This is another fun one, where Taupin and John are explicitly telling a story, rather than inhabiting a story; they’re friends catching you up on the movie you missed last night. The violins and piano lend a nice sense of urgency as the song ends, though the fadeout undercuts it a little.

“Dirty Little Girl” wears its Rolling Stones influence on its sleeve (though I think only John and Taupin would decide to make “dirty” literal in the final verse, rather than the other way around). The lyrics aren’t as clever as the songwriters think they are, but it’s got a nice groove to it, and it’s a great lead-in to the more overtly sexual “All the Girls Love Alice.”

One of the Genius annotations for “All the Girls Love Alice” tells you helpfully that “d*ke” is “now a homophobic slur for a lesbian.” Now, Genius?

Anyway, dubious crowdsourcing aside, this is, in fact, a song about a rich girl turned teenage prostitute. Blue-eyed soul singer Kiki Dee sings backup on this one (you’ll remember her from “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” in 1976, if nothing else). Poor Alice dies in the subway of indeterminate causes, but she sure made some ladies happy along the way. The piano pulses during the verses, with the chorus breaking the tension just long enough to build it again, diving back into a cacophony of sound, letting the song build and break like the waves in “Sweet Painted Lady.”

On to Side Four, which kicks off with  “Your Sister Can’t Twist (but She Can Rock ‘n Roll).” This one starts off with an incredible organ riff that echoes back to some of the earliest rock n’ roll hits, with a dynamic John vocal and doo-wop-flavored backing vocals to match. The tempo’s similar to those early Little Richard hits when he was trying to outrock Pat Boone’s covers. Good stuff, and a great lead-in to the next song.

“Saturday Night’s All Right for Fighting” was the album’s leadoff single, a barn-burner that wears its influences brightly on its sleeve; you can certainly hear the Rolling Stones in this one, especially that central guitar riff by Davey Johnstone. (Its retro vibes work beautifully in John’s biopic Rocketman, in the scene depicting John’s transformation from precocious child to talented young man.) 

The Who covered “Saturday Night” some years ago for the compilation album Two Rooms, noting that John had stolen “Pinball Wizard” and they needed to steal something back.

For “Roy Rogers,” we’re staying in, watching an old cowboy movie on television. It’s got a Western twang, and the song overall is as comforting as a warm blanket and a bowl of popcorn. It’s a nice cooldown after the propulsive energy of “Your Sister” and “Saturday.” We even hear Roy (or Dale’s) boots walking off at the end of the track.

There’s more sex work in “Social Disease,” a honky-tonk story of an alcoholic who, in between getting bombed and falling apart, pays his rent with whatever’s at hand: alcohol, money, or sex. The banjo and piano give the song a nice bounce, and if you don’t pay much attention to the lyrics there’s a lot of fun to be had. (Hell, even when you do, it’s kind of fun; there’s a certain joy in taking the path down to self-destruction, and if anyone has seen it, it’s probably Elton John.)

“Harmony,” the B-side to “Benny and the Jets,” was almost released as a standalone single, but the potential release date was too close to John’s next album, Caribou.⁹ It still got some play even as a B-side, and was released as a single with “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters” to accompany The Very Best of Elton John in 1980. 

It makes a lovely closing song, especially in conversation with “I’ve Seen That Movie Too.” It’s a reunion song though it’s not clear if the “harmony” is literally about a person or more about a metaphorical state. John wants to “live in Harmony,” but he can’t escape his doubts:

Is this the only place you thought to go
Am I the only man you ever had,
Or am I just the last surviving friend
That you know?

But Harmony is pretty good company, and the narrator decides it’s worth a shot; luck, after all, has been kind to Elton John. The minor key suggests this particular romance may not last, but maybe it’s all worth it anyway. The album certainly is.

1. Their early “two rooms” style of writing music together has been documented elsewhere; Rocketman’s scene of John cutting and pasting Taupin’s lyrics as he comes up with a tune is actually pretty accurate. ↩︎
2. Yes, really! ↩︎
3. I’m not particularly fond of “Candle in the Wind (1997)” but it’s a song written for a lost friend almost immediately after her death, so, you know, fair enough. ↩︎
4. Bernie Taupin, born Bernard Taupin, wrote “Goodbye, Norma Jean” for Elton John, born Reginald Kenneth Dwight, to sing about Marilyn Monroe.  ↩︎
5. Three certified bangers, a hell of a way to start a double album. ↩︎
6. John made a big queer statement with the cover and title of his album, but the queer sexuality found in the tracks doesn’t reflect his own life, at least not directly. ↩︎
7. “Welcome to the Jungle” and “Don’t Mean Nothin’” come to mind, or even “It Never Rains in Southern California.” “Hotel California” even says that you can never leave! Though John’s friend John Lennon would be working on “Watching the Wheels” by the end of the decade. ↩︎
8. Yes, this song was written by two city boys. Also, what the actual fuck is the way John pronounces “Horny-backed toad?” How much cocaine did it take for that to happen? ↩︎
9. Generally considered to be a weaker album than Goodbye and Don’t Shoot Me, it still had two stone-cold classics (“Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” and “The Bitch Is Back”) and did well commercially. ↩︎