Sorry for starting two threads on the same day, but this one is near and dear to my heart.
I’ve been a big Elton John fan for a long time. I went to college for a semester, and was first exposed to him there. I mean, I’d heard his songs on the radio, and liked them, but had never heard his tracks together and in context. Immediately, he impressed me as a brilliant composer, talented pianist, and exquisite singer.
Back in those days, Paul Buckmaster, who did his orchestral arrangements, called his music “an inspiration, a real turn-on”. And it really was — an incredibly rich variety of melody, harmony, and rhythm spanning every style from opera to gutter blues.
And that glorious, one of a kind voice.
He was famous for doing it in one take in the studio every time. Brian Wilson (the Beach Boys sang backing vocals in Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me) remarked that Elton was amazing, knocking out the entire album song by song sequentially in an hour or so, while everyone else did multiple retakes all afternoon for bad notes or timing.
I guess it was the throat surgery, or maybe age, or both or something else, but his voice is a mere shadow of its former glory. It is ordinary, and with a limited range and forced timbre. All the sweetness is missing when he sings Tiny Dancer or Your Song. There’s no more fire in Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting. No richness in Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters. And certainly no hauntingly high D-flat in Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.
The incomparable falsetto… gone. Absolutely gone. It broke my heart to watch him sing Rocket Man on his Vegas special last night. There used to be a tour-de-force of vocal range on the maaaa-aaaaa-aa-haa-aa-aan just before the bridge. And now it’s a one-syllable, chopped-off man with a couple of ohs added to fill space, and none of it higher than a middle C.
Honestly, I think that if I were a young’un hearing him today for the first time in one of his live performances, I would go, “What the hell is the appeal of this guy?” But as it is, I’m hanging in there for the habit of it more than anything, and the loyalty too. Thank God his old stuff is preserved. It’s the only way to prove to someone that he once had talent.
Elton, honestly you were great once, but it’s over. Of all the people to say this, I thought I would surely be the last. But it’s time for you to quit. Just stop it, and let your legacy be how we remember you.
:eek: