Let’s Say Hello to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Let’s Say Hello to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road



While I was growing up in Sandy, Utah, I was proud to be part of the metal scene.  Because I started going to concerts with my Dad at age 11 I had a lot of way cool rock t-shirts and for the most part I always looked and acted the part of the passionate rocker when I was in middle and high school.  However, to this day I have discovered that when someone discovers that I am into heavy metal, they automatically assume that metal is the only musical form that I listen to, which has never been the case throughout my musical journey.  On my iPod when I put it on random it can literally go from The Beach Boys to Motorhead, Billy Joel to Alice in Chains, Tori Amos to Steely Dan, and Depeche Mode to Rush.  Variety is truly the spice of life and music is not an exception. 

One of my favorite singer/songwriters ever is Elton John.   My parents’ were able to catch him live a couple of times in the 70’s and are fans of his music.  My brothers and I starting building our individual music collections at a very young age and we would borrow from each other’s collections very regularly and often without asking permission.  When I was 9 years old my older brother Alan had the cassettes of Elton John’s Greatest Hits and Greatest Hits Volume 2.  I would borrow these quite a bit from him.  However, Alan was pretty addicted to these tapes as well and I was not the best at asking for permission or returning them in a timely manner.  One day Alan was at the end of his rope and asked for the tapes back immediately.  The next day I snuck into his room and took the actual cassettes of Elton John’s Greatest Hits and Greatest Hits Volume 2, but I left the cassette cases in his room.  Several weeks went by before Alan even noticed they were gone.  However, the inevitable day came when Alan was in the mood for some Elton John and opened up the cassette cases to discover to his dismay that the cassettes were not present.  He was pretty furious and I once again returned the tapes to him.  This game of cat and mouse would continue for years.

When I was 11 years old I landed my first job as a paper route delivery boy and I was making an amazing $80.00 a month, which was excellent money especially at my age, and the rapid expansion of my cassette collection began.  One early morning while I was doing my paper route the Elton John song “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” came on the radio.  I had never heard this song before and I was completely amazed by what I had heard.  However, because the length of the song is over eleven minutes hearing it again on the radio was a narrow possibility.  But I just could not get “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” out of my head.

A few weeks later I was at the record store with my Dad thumbing through the cassettes and I came across a copy of ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ by Elton John.  Where I was a little intimidated is the cassette was over an hour long and I only knew 5 of the 17 songs.  It was a lot more of a time commitment than I was used to.  But I decided to buy it.

The next day when I did my paper route I listened to side one of the cassette and I was completely blown away by it.  Not only was it awesome to hear all of the hits songs, but the songs that were not released as singles were just as good and “Grey Seal” and “This Song Has No Title” very quickly became favorites.  All in all side one of ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ was way cool.

The following morning I listened to side two of ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’.  I thought that “Sweet Painted Lady” and “The Ballad of Danny Bailey (1909 – 1934)” were both pretty good; however, the second side has a very different feel and personality.  Side one was the commercial/radio friendly side, where side two, many of the songs had a darker theme to them and was very much a big step away from side one.  I didn’t hate that side of the cassette, but at least at age 12, other than “Saturday Nights Alright for Fighting”, I just couldn’t really get into the second half of ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’.  It was just so different the Elton John I was used to.

A couple of years later when I was 14 I was running some errands with my mother and suddenly to my surprise the Elton John song “All the Young Girls Love Alice” came on the radio (to this day the one and only time I have ever heard this song on the radio).  This song did not do much for me two years earlier, but now I thought the song was way cool.  I gave the second side of ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ another listen on my paper route the next morning and this time I caught the vision and “All the Young Girls Love Alice”, “Dirty Little Girl”, and “Harmony” quickly became favorites.  In the two years since I had last listened to side two of ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ my musical tastes had grown and devolved further. 

What I think makes this album so special to Elton John fans is the range of musical styles and genres Elton show cases on this album.  ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ stays true the style of the hit songs that made Elton famous with “Candle in the Wind”, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”, and “Bennie and the Jets”, dabbles with country music on “Roy Rogers” and “Social Disease”, explores Elton’s dark side with “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding”, “All the Young Girls Love Alice”, and “Dirty Little Girl”, and straight up rock and roll with “Saturday Nights Alright for Fighting”.  There simply is not a weak song on this album.  What amazes me the most is once Bernie Taupin presented Elton John with the lyrics, Elton John composed the music for ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ in three days.  Elton John had successfully caught lightning yet again.  In addition, the album fully show cases the musical talents of Elton John’s guitarist Davey Johnstone.  In my opinion Davey Johnstone is one of the most underrated guitarists in history.  Elton John’s music throughout his career has explored many genres and styles and Davey Johnstone can play all of them flawlessly.  On ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ Davey’s guitar work perfectly complements and enhances every song on the record and really gives an edge to ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’.  To me it’s a real shame that Davey Johnstone has not received the credit he deserves for being such a great guitarist.

Every time I listen to ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ I am reminded of one of the most intense evenings of my life.  When I was 17 years old in 1994 my mother’s lower right leg was starting to swell up and was causing her a lot of pain, a condition called Cellulitis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulitis).  One particular evening the Cellulitis was causing her an intense amount of pain and she wanted to go see an urgent care doctor.  My father most of life worked night shift and asked me to take my mother to the doctor because he was getting ready to go to work for the evening.  I grabbed my cassette of ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ (when driving around with my mother I always make sure that I am listening to something she enjoys), put it in the cars tape player, and my little brother and I drove her to the urgent care Doctors’ Office.  My mother was in a lot of pain and I was driving like a mad man on the freeway to get my mom to the doctor.  It was very intense as Scott and I waited in the waiting room hoping that the doctor would be able to help out my Mom.  Later, the doctor entered the waiting room with my Mother in a wheel chair and instructed us to take her to the hospital immediately.  At this point it’s close to 10:00pm.  We once again helped my mother into the car and I drove like an Indy 500 driver on the freeway to get my mother to the hospital.  When we arrived at the hospital there was a nurse waiting for us with a wheel chair for my mother and she was very quickly whisked into the hospital.  The doctor and nurse would not allow Scott and me to follow her up to her hospital room and asked me to go to the Emergency Room and help them check my mom into the hospital.  The first question the woman at the desk was if I was over 18 and I told her I was not.  She then told me that by law I could not legally check my mother into the hospital and that they would not allow me to go up her hospital room (ultimately because in my opinion the doctors did not want me in the way while they were taking care of my mother once she was admitted to the hospital).  This made me pretty mad and I became very insistent that I be allowed to go see my mom, or minimum get the phone number of the room they were putting her in.  My brother Scott, thankfully being much calmer than I was in this situation whispered to me “settle down or they’re going to call security”.  I begrudgingly accepted defeat and exited the emergency room lobby with my little brother.

After such an intense ordeal I decided that we would take the long way home, just so I could at least calm down.  As Scott and I cruised State Street back into Sandy, UT, we listened to the last five songs on ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ (“You’re Sister Can’t Dance (But She Can Rock N’ Roll)”, “Saturday Nights Alright for Fighting”, “Roy Rogers”, “Social Disease”, and “Harmony”) and it helped cut down the tension and frustration I was feeling as well as Scott immediately started telling jokes and using his great sense of humor to ease the situation.  When we arrived home Scott and I said a prayer for our mother.  The hardest part for me was my father worked night shift at the main United States Post Office in Salt Lake City and we were not allowed to call him at work unless it was an emergency, so I had to stay up and wait for my Dad to call home during his break.  Scott went to bed and I listened to ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ quietly on the living room stereo.  My Dad called home a little after midnight and I filled him in on what went down that evening.  I’ve never been happier to just go to bed in my entire life. 

Throughout my life it never ceases to amaze me how music has such a calming and soothing effect regardless of the intensity of any situation, which has been the case with ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’.  It’s the perfect combination of melodic pop, straight up rock, and experimentation with a wide variety of musical forms.  Currently, this is Elton John’s largest selling studio album at 7 million copies and is #91 on Rolling Stone Magazine’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list.  ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ has successfully passed the test of time and I still consider it to be some of the finest music from Elton John’s very extensive and successful career.