'Your Song' and 'Daniel' established him as an artist with huge star power, but bigger things yet were on the horizon for Elton John in 1973.
With the release of his seventh studio album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, the exuberant pianoman was set for mega-stardom.
The energised charge of sci-fi, psychedelic pop saga ‘Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding’ perfectly builds anticipation as the album's opener. You don’t even notice its 11-minute run time. It’s a fittingly epic track that sets the scene for an equally epic double album.
With Davey Johnstone’s blistering glam rock riff, Dee Murray swooping in on bass and Nigel Olsson serving up some cracking hot beats, ‘Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting)’ showed that it wasn’t just Elton that was on fire.
The band made short work of songs like 'Bennie and The Jets', ‘All The Girls Love Alice’, ‘Grey Seal’ and the perennial ‘Candle In The Wind’, showing not just how locked in they were as a band, but also the beautifully sympathetic blend of their voices, especially evident on the latter song's backing vocals.
Stories of Bernie Taupin having hashed out the lyrics in a handful of weeks, of Elton John composing the majority of the melodies for the songs over a few days and the vibrant atmosphere at the 18th Century Chateau that served as their creative headquarters continue to add fuel to our continued fascination with this magnum opus over half a century on.
