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1974
Your All-Genres Guide To Exceptional CD Reissues and Remasters
All Reviews In-Depth and from the Discs Themselves
(No Cut And Paste Crap)
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"...A Fragment Of Your Life..."
Super-hyped on EJ after the
brilliance of "Don't Shoot Me I'm Only The Piano Player" in February
and the twofer splurge of "Yellow Brick Road" in October 1973 (a
single and double-album in one year) - I recall seeing the cover art for 1974's
much-anticipated follow-up "Caribou" for the first time. What! My
heart sank. What a dire sleeve - laugh-out-loud bad - especially after the
tri-gatefold painting and photos cool of Yellow Brick Road. And the rear cover
snap of Elton and Bernie Taupin sat on chairs in some toilet backdrop looking
bored out of their cocaine-addled skulls didn't lift the hopes up much either.
Luckily though, the clearly
strung-together album (named after the Studio in which it was recorded -
another Honky Chateau moment) contained enough decency alongside the obvious
filler to warrant a phew. And in 2020, the shifty little brute is still
available on this huge-sounding Expanded Edition 'Classic Years' CD Remaster
for under a fiver. Sneering, tarty, bitchy and cheap - the way I like my EJ.
Let's get to the place where you don't want the sun to ever go down...
UK released May 1995 -
"Caribou" by ELTON JOHN on This Record Co Ltd/Mercury 528 158-2
(Barcode 731452815828) is an Expanded Edition (Four Bonus Tracks) in 'The
Classic Years' Remastered CD Series and plays out as follows (64:12 minutes)
1. The Bitch Is Back [Side
1]
2. Pinky
3. Grimsby
4. Dixie Lily
5. Solar Prestige A Gammon
6. You're So Static
7. I've Seen The Saucers
[Side 2]
8. Stinker
9. Don't Let The Sun Go Down
On Me
10. Ticking
Tracks 1 to 10 are his tenth
album "Caribou" - released June 1974 in the UK on DJM Records DJLPH
439 and June 1974 in the USA on MCA Records MCA 2116. Produced by GUS DUDGEON -
it peaked at No. 1 in both countries.
BONUS TRACKS:
11. Pinball Wizard
(Recorded in 1974 for the
March 1975 UK 2LP set "Tommy: Music From The Soundtrack Of The Film by Ken
Russell" on Polydor Records 2657 014. Elton played the character 'The
Pinball Wizard' in the movie. The single was eventually issued as a 45 in March
1976 on DJM Records DJS 652 with "Harmony" from the 2LP set
"Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" on its B-side)
12. Sick City
(24 May 1974 UK 45 on DJM
Records DJS 302, non-album B-side of "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On
Me")
13. Cold Highway
(30 August 1974 UK 45 on DJM
Records 322, non-album B-side of "The Bitch Is Back")
14. Step Into Christmas
(December 1973 UK 45 on DJM
Records DJS 290, non-album track. Its non-album B-side "Ho Ho Ho (Who'd Be
A Turkey At Christmas?)" and is one of the Bonus Tracks on the 40th
Anniversary 2014 Box Set of "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road")
The 20-page booklet is a
pleasingly chunky affair with the album's inner lyric sleeve reproduced across
the pages along with the colour photos of Elt's band and new highly informative
liner notes from JOHN TOBLER. Interviews with key players include Producer Gus
Dudgeon and lyricist Bernie Taupin - both clearly proud of the roll all in EJ's
stratosphere were on in those halcyon years. It's easy to forget now in 2020
that EJ was just huge in 1973, 1974 and 1975. "Caribou" hit the No. 1
spot in the USA and UK and many other countries around the world and he would
replace that with his first "Greatest Hits" in November 1974 - again
numero uno in both countries. The GUS DUDGEON appendage to the Tobler liner
notes explains of how the master tapes were all carefully prepared for this CD
Remaster Series - "...much closer to the reproduction we had originally
intended." This is a great remaster and although there have been variants
since (like Japan last year) - I didn't take too much to those 'flat transfers'
- so for a fiver - I'll stick with this wee thing.
The album was recorded in
the States at the Caribou Ranch in the mountains of Colorado (his first proper
studio outing there) with his regular band members in tow - Davey Johnstone
(Guitars), Dee Murray (Bass), Ray Cooper (Percussion) and Nigel Olsson (Drums).
Sessions were augmented with Keyboardist David Hentschel and the five-strong
Tower Of Power Horns and Trumpets including soloist Lenny Pickett ("The Bitch
Is Back", "You're So Static" and "Stinker"). In
between are an array of cool backing singers from session darlings Clydie King,
Shirlie Matthews and Jessica Smith to special guests Dusty Springfield (all
four are on "The Bitch Is Back" with Tower Of Power) - while Carl
Wilson and Bruce Johnston of The Beach Boys lent their arrangement superpowers
to "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me" (that song also features Billy
Hinsche - associated with The Beach Boys - and Toni Tennille of Captain &
Tennille). And unlike so many reissues I review, this one actually acknowledges
the Four Bonus Tracks – and gives a good account of these non-album
single-sides for the first time (the only downside is not reproducing the
lyrics).
The album opens on a belter,
the wicked guitar-groove sexiness of "The Bitch Is Back" - a tune so
apt that Tina Turner opened sets with it and the audience ate it up (its said
Elton returned the compliment by once turning up on an American stage dressed
as the great lady). Pinky owes the world nothing (say the lyrics) - a typically
lovely mid-tempo ballad from EJ - subtle ARP synth playing from guest David
Hentschel while Davey Johnstone keeps it light with beautifully produced
acoustic picking and clever backing vocals. I've always "Pinky" to be
one of his lovelier moments. The grim trawler-boat English delights of
"Grimsby" just about passes muster while the Country-Rock-fied
twang-dangle of "Dixie Lily" gets a tasty Saxophone Solo from Tower
Of Power's Lenny Pickett. The near three-minutes of "Solar Prestige A
Gammon" has elicited as much ridicule as a cheesy Eurovision Song Contest
entry and is the first time that the album is testing your patience. "You're So Static" ends Side 1 with
a neither here nor there franticness.
The Remaster for "I've
Seen The Saucers" is superb - big and bold - even if the radar and
something moving outside lyrics feel like both EJ and BT are reaching (the references
to crazy wavelengths and other worldly alienation smacks of both men being lost
in those heady days of drugs and touring). The low-down Seventies pimp-funk of
"Stinker" is another one of the album's rare winners - a sexy crawling
sleaze of a song aided hugely by Tower of Power's Chester Thompson on a Billy
Preston-like Organ (so tasty). Then comes the biggy - 5:37 minutes of the ballad
"Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me" now forever linked with George
Michael's cover. "I can't light no more of your darkness...I just took out
a fragment of your life..." - the lyrics etched into our memories like
those harmonics Davey Johnstone hits as he introduces the guitar. Carl Wilson
and Bruce Johnson from The Beach Boys add those gorgeous and distinctive
California vocals to a song that contains so much pain and yet remains
beautiful in some kind of epic way.
"Caribou" comes to
an end with the near eight-minutes of "Ticking" - EJ's piano playing
coming out of your speakers with such wonderful clarity. A child is taking
interest in the subjects he's taught, and yet the squad comes come screaming. A
man goes on a gun rampage in a bar called The Kicking Mule leaving a trail of
bodies - a priest in St. Patricks rationalising all the violence with the image
of pain as as 'ticking' bomb (don't ride on the Devil's knee). This track alone
feels like the magnificence of "Love Lies Bleeding"on GYBR.
Rather than feeling like
filler, his cover of The Who's "Pinball Wizard" is fantastic and the
Remaster huge. It's rare that a Townshend tune suits someone else so perfectly,
but on this occasion it did. "Sick City" was the non-album B-side of
"Don't Let The Sun..." - a greasy, cute and mean funk number that should
have replaced some of the lesser crap on Side 1 of the album IMO. In pretty
much the same vein, "Cold Highway" feels too good to be relegated to
a flipside. Your 64 minutes and 12 seconds ends with the fun of "Step Into
Christmas" – yo ho ho Prancer and Donner and thanks for the good year...
"Caribou" used to
turn up in secondhand record collections being sold into us at Reckless Records
with alarming regularity - like the punter selling it figured he'd get
"The Bitch Is Back" and "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me"
on "Greatest Hits" and that'd be enough.
But while its never going to
win an Unsung Masterpiece of 1974 gong in Mojo or Record Collector magazines - I'd
genuinely forgotten the other goodies contained within. And this CD bolstered
up with those four cracking bonuses, great audio and a price tag that's less
than a cod 'n' chips in 2020 - and I'll find it in my heart to forgive that cover art (what
a guy, a song for guy, oh stop it)...
