The best music of that decade would be amputated without titles like “Daniel, Tiny Dancer, Bennie & The Jets”, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” or, somewhat later, “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” or “Someone Saved My Life Tonight.” The partnership with Taupin has remained intact for more than half a century, barring a brief divorce in the late seventies, and continued to yield great songs until a couple of less iconic albums, Too Low For Zero (1983) and Breaking Hearts (1984). OLI SCARFF (AFP)Īfter the stumble of Empty Sky, Elton and his then lyricist, Bernie Taupin, got it right with the beautiful “Your Song” for the second LP, the eponymous Elton John (1970), and from then on the take-off was as brilliant as that of the Rocket Man rocket. Elton John, performing on June 25 at the Glastonbury Festival in England. John did not dare to let it see the light of day until June 2021, 53 years later, when he already feels in a position to claim his vast songbook as a coherent whole, beyond its ups and downs.

Pepper’s were so blatant that his record company opted to put it in the drawer.

Zippo, but the conceptual similarities with The Beatles’ Sgt. The curious thing is that it was not even, strictly speaking, his first album: in 1968 he had already delivered a 12-song LP, Regimental Sgt. What’s more, his official debut, Empty Sky (1969), was faint and flimsy, and usually occupies a prominent place in the rankings of famous artists with debuts very close to fiasco. Lennon thanked him for that push by bursting in as a guest star at Elton’s celebrated Madison Square Garden concert in November 1974, one of the undisputed milestones of the man who, barring an unlikely change of heart, has just said goodbye to the stage forever.Įlton John has not been a creator of easy beginnings or instant success. It is no coincidence that Lennon, soon to be unstuck in his solo career, turned to Elton John as a revivalist for “Whatever Gets You Through The Night” (1974), which would become his first solo number one. But, beyond punctual sins, the musical legacy of the author of “Rocket Man” is so overwhelming -at least in the nine albums from Elton John (1970) to Rock of the Westies (1975), and we are being stingy in the calculation- as to place him to the very right of the greatest pop prodigy of all times: the Lennon/McCartney duo.

As in the case of the Genesis singer and drummer, Elton John tended to be portrayed as a sweetened and cloying balladeer, a stigma that was not helped by the fact that both ended up delivering sappy melodies to the Disney factory. But not infrequently he has been subjected to a process of caricaturization reminiscent of that suffered by a generation mate who also shared memorable hits and indecent scorns in the history of British pop: Phil Collins. Reginald Kenneth Dwight has never been an artist that arouses great unanimity, among other things because in a service sheet with more than 40 studio works there is also room for some stumbles, stumbles, mediocrities and just routine deliveries. Elton John greeting the audience at his last concert in Stockholm. Thousands of fans of the author of hymns such as “Candle in the Wind” lined up under a scorching sun before attending the farewell to the stage of their idol, reported Agence France Presse. Last night, at the Tele2 Arena stadium in the Swedish capital, Elton John appeared in one of his usual colorful jackets at the beginning of what he announced would be his last concert and which closes the Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour. Because the man who said goodbye this Saturday in Stockholm to almost six decades of live music bequeaths a much more transcendental work than those detractors for whom he has only been a quirky pianist, a composer akin to molasses or the tearful friend of Princess Lady Di will ever acknowledge. Mainly, for the extraordinarily prolific and inspired nature of his work during the seventies, and for the overwhelming concentration of great albums, more than one per year, that preceded that irrelevant 21 At 33. That LP will never go down in history, but Elton John will. It was, in the end, a way of showing off. It wasn’t that difficult either: its author had just turned 33, the age of Christ, and those nine songs represented the twenty-first album of his career.

It was titled 21 At 33 and the fact that many were unable to decipher the strange numerical hieroglyphic of its baptism contributed to its lack of recognition. Back in the spring of 1980, Elton John (Pinner, UK, 76 years old) released an album that almost nobody mentions in the immensity of his discography, because it did not include any of his unquestionable hits or arguments that would provide significant glimpses of excellence.

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