Elton John – Goodbye
Yellow Brick Road
30th
Anniversary Deluxe Super Audio CD two-set
Music:
A+ DSD 5.1: A Extras: B PCM 2.0: B
Bonus DVD-Video
(in triple-sets only): C+
If anyone
trying to write off Elton John as a Rock Liberace, or an overly Pop Bowie, they
were on shaky ground to begin with. He
was already cutting some of the most important records ever made, but had only
done single albums. When the news spread
that he was doing a double album, anticipation was huge. When the result arrived, it was an instant
classic. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road remains the biggest studio album of his
career commercially and one of the greatest double albums ever made.
Its
content is even more stunning years later, with John and his exceptional band
going all out on an amazingly diverse set of 17 songs. The music covers so much territory in John
and lyricist Bernie Taupin’s attempt to do everything Rock N Roll is
amazing. You can break it down into
music genres old and new, like Country, Reggae, ballads, outright Rockers, Glam
Rock, storytelling, drama, and attitude.
The title song is a three-minute epic in the best Phil Spector
tradition, complete with its own kind of Wall of Sound. Funeral
for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding is a masterwork in the great tradition of
long (11:08 here) album Rock cuts of the time, and starting the set
off with sends a message that this album is about listening to the music for
people who want to hear great music, then it delivers.
Candle in the Wind is, in its original form, a tour
de force statement about how cruel the world can be and was decades ahead of
its time in laying blame on the media for out of control hatemongering and
character assassination. Though this
original song is about just how painful the loss of Marilyn Monroe still is, the
transformation of the song into one about Princess Diana is frighteningly
accurate about what really killed her. It
really was no accident and this song’s point in the first place remains
unchallenged.
Bennie and The Jets imagined an all-girl Glam Rock
band, something that soon be emulated in look by Patti LaBelle and her vocal
band LaBelle. However, the song is a
nearly-psychedelic work narratively, and even more so Science Fiction. However, the ultimate point of this brilliant
work is as a celebration of the other and persons so different, that we should
always welcome them, applaud them, and love them the more they are
different. Note Elton’s vocal changes as
the “crowd” gets more excited.
Grey Seal is a sly Rock response to Over the Rainbow from The Wizard of Oz (1939) that this album
constantly references with dark honesty.
It has its own existential truths to unearth as well. I’ve
Seen That Movie Too also achieves this by a knowing, sly deconstruction, as
the character Elton sings as surprises his once intimate opponent by exposure
as an unoriginal fraud. The Ballad of Danny Bailey (1909 – 1934)
is more of a radio drama than a ballad, which brings us back to a sense of
cinema. Roy Rogers is about Rogers as movie star, not noting his
singing cowboy side, as Elton seems to have taken that over.
Add just
that up, and you can see that this is more of a concept album than it is ever
recognized for being. The concepts
surrounding fame, identity, and wanting to escape into another world though
another identity are pure Sgt. Peppers. It is so naturalistic that this goes over
many people’s heads, and the artwork certainly feels inspired by The Who’s
original Tommy (1968, also in an
incredible SACD set reviewed on this site when we return), and the music is
often so epic that this set feels like a Rock Opera in itself. Saturday
Night’s Alright for Fighting is absolutely inspired by The Rolling Stones,
while Harmony is a tribute to The
Beach Boys that works exceptionally well.
There are
also the songs explicit about sex and sexuality that were groundbreaking
here. If Bennie and The Jets simply went further in challenging gender, Sweet Painted Lady (prostitution), Dirty Little Girl (taking advantage of a
lower-class gal with a dose of misogyny), All
The Girls Love Alice (Lesbianism, young gay girls as playthings, and even
pedophilia), and You’re Sister Can’t
Twist (But She Can Rock N Roll) (sexual discovery) tell honest stories that
only the power and honesty of the Rock genre could in this way, though there is
much authentic Rhythm and Blues to be found on this and other vintage John
works of the time.
Most
artists go through an entire career of album-making without doing a tenth of
what this set achieves. The bonus
tracks, of which there are four, offer flip-sides that did not make the
original release and an actually interesting acoustic mix of Candle in the Wind that sounds
great. That says something about how
great the record is, after being so over-exposed, that there is a version that
makes it sound fresh again.
Prior to
this set, Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs had produced the best CD version of this
album. They fit the whole thing on one
24-karat Gold CD and it was pretty good.
The PCM CD tracks here have some clarity advantages over the MoFi copy
long out-of-print, but it is not a major jump up from what the company achieved
years ago on CD. This is otherwise the
best CD playback you will get of the album.
However,
that is nothing as compared to the new 5.1 DSD High Definition sound mix, which
is unbelievable. Ace producer Gus
Dudgeon did an incredible job of bringing the best possible elements together
here and was Elton’s producer through his early glory days. His brilliance and deep work with the
musicians, engineers, and mixers shows great wisdom in musicality. As Dudgeon is no longer with us, Greg Penny
was tapped to do the remix and the result is one of the most revealing 5.1
mixes yet on SACD or DVD-Audio.
Like all
great 5.1 remixes, it does credit to the singers and musicians, and only
purists will complain. For them, they
can go to the CD-only tracks or get limited edition vinyl made possible by the
labels going to the master tapes for these High definition editions. Everyone can be happy now, without oversimplifying. The fidelity is often stunning and will give
you a new appreciation of John and company.
John’s voice in particular is remarkable and remarkably reproduced, all
before he blew it out. Piano, guitars
and electronic music are exceptionally reproduced and integrated. This is demonstration quality for this
format, sounding better than so much badly produced and engineered garbage from
today.
The bonus
tracks sound about as good, but are the only bonus in the double set. There is a more deluxe set with a third disc:
a DVD-Video copy of the substandard Classic
Albums installment of the classic, with poor sound and picture
reproduction. The program, even with its
extras, atypically skips the making of certain tracks! It has also been sold on its own, so it is
not an exclusive by any means. Get it at
your own risk.
There is
also a nice booklet, which reproduces the original album art, liner notes, and
artwork, but has little new to offer, atypical of the kinds of information
Universal Music has been stuffing in these sets. The reproduction is still on high quality
paper with fine color reproduction, but there is nothing like having this stuff
12” album-sized. Oh well. We’ll just have to settle for some of the
best music, with some of the best sound reproduction we are likely to ever
experience from a classic this important.
- Nicholas Sheffo
