JOHN RETURNS TO THE ‘ROAD’
His 1973 album reissued
Say hello again to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, the album that put Elton John on a fast track to superstardom. The expanded reissue, available in multiple formats, will arrive Tuesday, on John’s 67th birthday. The singer/pianist was 26 when the pivotal double album was released in 1973.
With its sterling songwriting, radiant showmanship and sparkling examples of rock, R&B, gospel and balladry, Goodbye encapsulated the powers that made John a ’ 70s demigod. The album spent eight weeks at No. 1 and sold more than 7 million copies, 31 million worldwide.
“We were a band reaching our zenith at that point,” John says. “Things were escalating, and the momentum was exciting. This is before I started drugs and drinking. This was pure Elton.”
He considers Goodbye, which spawned such classics as Bennie and the Jets and Candle in the Wind, among his finest works, along with 1975’s Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, 1976’s Blue Moves and last year’s The Diving Board.
Goodbye, the eighth studio album that John and lyricist Bernie Taupin released in three years, jelled during a prolific and fertile phase, but it had a rough start.
“We thought, ‘Let’s try something different,’ so we went to Jamaica to record at the same studio (where) the Rolling Stones did Goats Head Soup and Cat Stevens did Foreigner,” John recalls. “But the studio went on strike. The equipment wasn’t up to scratch. We had a hasty meeting and decided to get out.”
The band left Kingston for the studio at 18th-century Chateau d’Herouville near Paris, where John had recorded earlier. Goodbye was wrapped up in 17 days.
“We made up for lost time,” John says. “At breakfast, Bernie would be sitting at the typewriter, and I’d be writing at the electric piano. When the band came down, they’d pick up their instruments. We did three or four tracks a day.
“It was an outpouring of everything that was inside me at that time. We were on a roll, and we had adrenaline on our side. It was the beginning of our ascent to the top. It was magic.”
Goodbye will be reissued on CD, vinyl, limited-edition yellow vinyl and in a lavish box set that also includes the Live at Hammersmith 1973 CD, a DVD of Bryan Forbes’ 1973 film Elton John and Bernie Taupin Say Goodbye to Norma Jean and Other Things, and a hardbound book.
The two-CD deluxe edition ($33) and box set ($98) also feature a set of nine new Goodbye covers produced by Peter Asher and sung by Ed Sheeran, Emeli Sandé, Fall Out Boy, Hunter Hayes, Imelda May, John Grant, Miguel featuring Wale, the Band Perry and Zac Brown Band.
John is flattered by the interpretations. His original Goodbye also moved him when he heard it for the first time in years three months ago.
“I was so impressed by the quality of the singing, the instrumentation, the sound of everything,” he says. “I’m not one for looking back, but it made me realize how fortunate I was.
“It did make me very teary, but in a beautiful, happy way.”