Elton John - Caribou

My first recollection of Caribou is from a drunken night with an Episcopal priest in my hometown. He was a young priest, mid-30s, while I was barely out of high school. He made classic drinks and his humidor was filled with exotic tobaccos and a pack of Camel no filters.

His record collection was not as impressive, as it contained an excessive amount of classical music and very little pop titles. The titles that a young man would recognize were leftovers from his days before seminary school, relics before he took a vow.

The alcohol made him a bit looser, to the point where he put down his glass of whiskey and bitters on the rocks and pulled out a record.

“You’ve got to hear this song by Elton John,” he advised, pulling out a copy of the superstar’s Caribou album.

For most, Caribou is remembered by the hit “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me,” later referred to as “Don’t Let Your Son Go Down On Me” when Reg finally came out.

The record also kicks off with another hit, “The Bitch Is Back,” a staple of Top 40 radio stations during the 70’s as they explored flexing their community standards with a song that sounded so naughty on the surface.

But the Priest wasn’t about to play me those simpleton hits from Caribou. Instead, he dug deep to the last track, “Ticking,” a character study of a man who snaps and kills a bunch of people hostage in some diner.

It’s pedestrian by Bernie Taupin standards, filled with all sorts of clichés and phony dynamics, making the song seem deeper than it actually is. Elton plays the song bare with plenty of tinkling ivories. Aside from a few vocal overdubs and an occasional synthesizer, the song clearly intends to end Caribou on a deep and reflective note, which is strange, as the rest of the album is the sound of Elton getting comfortable with his superstar status.

The Priest attempts to get comfortable with his former life, singing into his drink a showy reading of the lyrics-the alcohol only playing havoc with his timing at points, particularly during dramatic pause of the chorus, “ticking….ticking”

It was clear that the Priest thought the world of Caribou, as I’m sure it represented a moment in his life where the entire world was ahead of him. There are many records in my own collection where their appeal is more towards nostalgic fondness than actual worthiness.  To that point, I would certainly try to give an honest appraisal of a record’s ranking, and at the risk of the holy wrath that may come from admitting this, Elton John’s Caribou is the beginning of many disappointments from the artist.

Ironically, Caribou finds itself in between two of Elton’s greatest triumphs-Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. Like its predecessor, Caribou was built entirely around time constraints and outside pressures. The biggest difference is that G.Y.B.R. revels in the diversity of its brief creative spurt while Caribou shows how bad things could get when you press for too much too soon.

Because, apart from the widely fluctuating appeal of the record’s two hits and the eerily contemporary curio of “Ticking,” Caribou offers little in terms of both redeeming value or artist development. In fact, it is the epitome of what can politely be considered a “rush job” when its entire package can more accurately be described as a “hose job.”

“Solar Prestige A Gammon” finds Elton trying to test the hypothesis that if he hangs out with ex-members of the Beatles long enough, some of their genius will rub off.  The track pointedly disproves this hypothesis while anally raping the English language in the process.

“Dixie Lily” finds Elton prepping a riverboat tune for a possible skit in The Muppet Show while “Stinker” is the most appropriately titled Elton John song in his entire catalog.

And if the good Lord strikes me dead, the only reason why Caribou gets a generous two-star rating comes at the inclusion of three awesome bonus tracks for the reissue version of this record. They are the seasonal favorite, “Step Into Christmas,” the fairly decent cover of The Who's "Pinball Wizard" from the otherwise shitty Tommy soundtrack and the b-side to “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me,” “Sick City.” In fact, “Sick City” is so good that you’ll wonder why it was delegated to just a flip-side status, especially after hearing the flaccid selections chosen for inclusion on Caribou.

As easy as it is to explain why Caribou is such a setback, the record does very little at hinting how good Captain Fantastic would eventually become. Unfortunately, it would also set the standard for Elton’s ensuing mediocrity. The timing of Caribou would give the record a bit of nostalgic sheen-and somewhat of a religious blessing in terms of my old Priest’s support-but as God as my witness, it does little to warrant further examination or add to Elton’s prodigious 70’s output in any meaningful fashion.

Elton John - Don't Shoot Me I'm Only The Piano Player

Here it is, the record that brought my seven-year-old self to his knees, a cute l’il descriptive until I remembered the Elton John mondegreen joke “Don’t let your son go down on me.”

The reality is that I had no perspective of sexuality at the age of seven. All I knew was that Elton was a crazy dresser with hundred thousand dollar eyewear and he had some good tunes that I enjoyed.

What I also didn’t know at that young age was that Don’t Shoot Me…I’m Only The Piano player was a hodgepodge of derivative styles and formulas that find Elton expanding his range while falling flat on more than one occasion.

And let’s be honest, songwriter Bernie Taupin and producer Gus Dudgeon are partially to blame here for not providing John with a safety net to fall back on when he gets a bit long in the tooth with his grandiose arrangements and over-the-top theatrics.

I’m guessing “Elderberry Wine” is an attempt to channel the nostalgic everyman rocket fuel of yesterday, but with lines like “The bottle went ‘round/Like a woman down south/Passed on from hand to hand” you begin to feel resentful that there wasn’t at least one of them to suggest “Try harder.”

Even more troubling is “Texan Love Song” which paints Elton as some kind of Bob Seger road dog, detailing a redneck’s point of view of some longhaired musician. “Ki-yi-yippie-yi-yi/You long hairs are sure gonna die” is the best that Taupin can come up with for a chorus, and Elton conjures up some dumb Texan drawl to the point where the entire thing is an embarrassment that taints up the entire album.

Don’t think that the hit singles-and there are two huge ones on Don’t Shoot Me-are exempt from criticism due to their high chart positions. “Daniel,” which itself is a tremendous lyrical study on the Vietnam war, is turned into a weak M.O.R. schmaltz thanks to Dudgeon’s production that it completely neuters the subject matter.

“Crocodile Rock” turns out to be nothing more than an American Graffiti cash grab that’s as authentic as a “Sit On It” t-shirt and a Bobby Vee show in Las Vegas. It’d be better served as Sha Na Na’s breakthrough hit instead of Elton’s follow up single to “Honky Cat.” Not only is Elton attempting to channel a bit of the 50’s into his repertoire, he’s clearly pointing the entire vehicle in the wrong direction after making some headway with the previous album, Honky Chateau.

Thankfully, it would be the very same year (1973) when Elton rights the ship with Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, so the stumble that is John’s sixth record was short-lived. But any fan who feels the need to dip into Elton’s catalog will find Don’t Shoot Me as reason enough to use the record for target practice. 

Elton John - Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy

I wanted many records when I was a kid, but even as an only child, I seldom got everything that I wanted.

In 1975, I had no purchasing power whatsoever. Also that year, Elton John was probably at the peak of his career, dishing out hit after hit, even when he and lyricist Bernie Taupin weren’t reaching for commercial success.

Nonetheless, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy volleyed up to the top of the charts and I took notice, point out the album as a desirable purchase for my Dad, so that he in turn could hand it down to me.

I remember my father acknowledging that the album was considered to be the best record in Elton’s career, a detail that honestly didn’t concern me, and a factoid that I don’t know how he came to, unless he was a secret subscriber to Rolling Stone magazine, reading their record review section.

All I knew is that the cover looked awesome.

It still does, and there’s something true about Captain Fantastic being the crowning document in Elton’s illustrious career. A recent listen to this record also confirmed it for me, and two things certainly secure that distinction for me.

One is the fact that this would be Elton’s last effort with his long-standing band for the rest of the decade. The arrangements are sublime, and for anyone (particularly Elton) to suddenly change the dynamics of this line-up after such a wonderful effort is clearly not working within their full capacities.

Perhaps the decision had something to do with the subject matter itself, as Captain Fantastic is essentially a concept album about John/Taupin’s rise to the enormous success they both found only a half-decade after starting out with little more than the clothes on their back and the continual fear that a career in music was little more than the folly of two like-minded dreamers.

It paid off, as they discovered just a few years after their initial struggles, and Taupin began the task of documenting the time of the days of their early struggles in song form, letting Elton add the musical arrangements to their biographies with a keen sense of the dramatic.

The centerpiece of which, “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” documents Elton’s failed marriage and his suicidal thoughts over this broken relationship. The “someone” was Long John Baldry, and Taupin’s narrative of the events may be the best thing he turned back in to Elton, graciously acknowledging  “Saved in time…thank God my music’s still alive.”

It was the album the two needed to make, an acknowledgement of their combined genius and the pinnacle of their hard work. They would never be able to reach these heights again, and Captain Fantastic’s brilliance is reflected the generous amount of tolerance we’ve shown for Elton John in the decades since this record’s release.

It’s the record that bests the better known Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and one that does the impossible: it focuses two creative minds on one final attempt on making the album of their career during a time when their commercial peak was so great, even a fair attempt would’ve been met with a wide audience.