I recall when the song came out, but was too young to have a concept of what being gay was. Anyhoo, assuming I am not starting from a false premise, if, as I am told, Elton John’s gayness was not common knowledge in his 70’s heyday, what then did people make of a song where he is referring to himself as a “bitch”? Did that clue everyone in, and if not, why not? Did bitch have a different meaning back then? 
Maybe I’m the only person who thought this, but when I was younger, I assumed he was singing about a woman, from her point of view. This belief was compounded in my slowly maturing brain when I heard Elton perform a duet of this song with Tina Turner.
“Bitch” was not automatically associated with gayness in the early '70s. I think xnylder’s interpretation was a lot more common.
I don’t recall anyone making the connection back then. As was typical, only a small portion of those who listend to top forty songs actually listened to the lyrics. My impression was that he was referring to a woman.
People were not as obsessed about gayness as they are today.
Wasn’t he officially “bisexual” in the 70s?
Not until much later in the '70s, and it might have been the '80s.
Hard to believe, but 30 years ago, people weren’t as blase about gayness as they are now. Elton John coming out was a very, very slow process, and though he was becoming more flamboyant during this period, the actual, um, thrust of his sexual preference wasn’t really a big concern to most people. It’s kind of like Liberace being gay – looking back, well, yes, of course he was – but at the time, parsing for sexuality wasn’t really the preoccupation it is today.
In a 1976 Rolling Stone interview titled “Elton’s Frank Talk”, he said he was bisexual.
In any case, the lyrics to “The Bitch Is Back” were by the heterosexual Bernie Taupin.
“You can do anything with one bass drum that you can do with two, if you’re a bitch. And I’m a bitch.” – Buddy Rich, legendary, heterosexual, jazz drummer
What, the sunglasses weren’t enough of a clue for some people?
I was about 10 years old at the time.
The song was catchy, EJ dressed like one of the cast of HR Puffnstuff and I got to say the word “bitch” when singing the song - what’s not to like?
But, at the time, that was hardly notable, since David Bowie said the same thing. Most people figured it was just a publicity stunt – it did do a lot for Bowie.
But it didn’t do a lot for Elton John. Shortly after the interview, his popularity took such a sharp dip that by 1979 he was considered all but over as a relevant artist. Of course, things did pick up for EJ by the early 80’s but he never returned to the mega-superstar level he was at during the mid 70’s.
A lot of that was due to his music, IMHO. He had moved into the middle of the road area of pop. He was a story teller who switched to straight-up (pardon the pun) pop songs that really didn’t sound any different from the rest of the white guy singers (like Christopher Cross and his clones) were releasing. I don’t remember his sexual preference being important to all but a few people, and they didn’t like his stuff anyway.
No, but I doubt the Rolling Stone article had much to do with it. Believe it or not, it was trendy for a short time for rock stars to declare themselves bisexual. His dip was primarily due to the fact that he was burned out a bit and produced albums and singles that no one cared for all that much.