"Caribou" by ELTON JOHN – June 1974 UK and US LP on DJM Records – featuring Dusty Springfield, Tower Of Tower, Carl Wilson and Bruce Johnston of The Beach Boys, Toni Tennille of Captain & Tennille, Clydie King, Sherlie Matthews, Jessie Mae Smith (May 1995 UK This Record Co. Ltd/Mercury Expanded Edition CD Reissue – Part of The Classic Years CD Remasters Series – Gus Dudgeon Remasters) - A Review by Mark Barry...

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1974

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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)...