ESSENTIAL ALBUMS (#32): Elton John - "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" (1973)

Even the most devoted fan would probably admit that Sir Elton John has spent the last 40 years failing to match up to the albums he released between 1970 and 1975. Specifically, his 1973 album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and 1975’s Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy were landmark releases from this period of ambitious creativity, which he has never equaled. We can forgive him for this, of course, partly because he is a national treasure but mostly because the music is so great. 

On Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, the better known of the two masterpieces, he deployed his splendid piano skills and vocals - yet to sink into the baritone range they occupied on later hits such as, say, "Nikita" - in perfect synch with lyricist Bernie Taupin’s immortal words.

Let's get past the big hit "Candle In The Wind", now the biggest-selling song in the known universe since Elton sang a modified version of it at Princess Diana’s funeral in 1997. It’s a song for the ages all right, even in its original form as a eulogy to the late Marilyn Monroe, but surpassed on the album by its title track and the terrific 'Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting ’. Adopted by heavy-metal bands such as WASP, perhaps because of its aggressive title and speedy tempo, the latter song epitomizes a certain night-out-on- the-tiles vibe that Duran Duran matched a decade later, and Oasis a few years later still.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is a double album, so Elton fans will have their own favourites among the deeper cuts, but we’d definitely point to the very first song, 'Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding', as one to conjure with. Then there’s 'Bennie and the Jets' (alternately spelled 'Benny & The Jets' on the label), 'Social Disease', 'Grey Seal'...