Deep Cuts: 7 Elton John Songs You Should Know

Just about everyone can name a dozen or two Elton John songs off the tops of their head. He's been making music since the very early 1970s and while he's no longer a radio staple, he has a catalog of music that - forgive the overused phrase - is part of the soundtrack of our lives.

"Rocketman" is a movie loosely based on Elton John's rise to superstar and as is the case with movies like that one, it's release is sparking renewed interest in his older music. But rather than concentrating on all the great and familiar hits, I wanted to highlight seven lesser-known Elton John songs you should know.

"Mona Lisas And Mad Hatters" (1972)
The 1972 album "Honky Château" was a transitional one for Elton John as he moved from piano-based troubadour to rock star. His record label had resisted using his road band on his albums, but relented for this one. The addition of bassist Dee Murray, Davey Johnstone on guitar and drummer Nigel Olsson gave John the sound that best fit his style and it became the first of seven consecutive #1 albums for the singer. 

The album had two singles and both of them were worldwide hits. "Rocket Man" hit #6 on the U.S. charts and "Honky Cat" hit #8. A third single "Hercules" was prepared but never released and at the time "Mona Lisas And Mad Hatters" was just seen as another track on a very solid album. But in recent years, it's been used in a number of movies and television shows, ranging from the series finales of "Brothers And Sisters" and "Life On Mars" to the Cameron Crowe rock film "Almost Famous."

In retrospect, the song may be one of the best Bernie Taupin songs from that era. Inspired in part by a visit Taupin made to New York City, used a lyric from the Ben E. King hit "Spanish Harlem" as the jumping off point for his song:

Now I know
Spanish Harlem are not just pretty words to say
I thought I knew,
but now I know that rose trees never grow in New York City.

This is one of those songs that grows on you. Stylistically, it reminds me a bit of another early and more familiar Elton John track, "Tiny Dancer." And I have to admit that as much as I love the loud, rock & roll Elton John, these quiet, poetic songs really speak to me.




"Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding" (1973)
When Elton John's double-disc album "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" came out in 1973, there was a couple of types of rock radio. There was the traditional Top 40 format, which was still primarily played on AM stations. And then there were a bunch of variations of free-form rock on FM stations. These stations shunned most of the current hits, preferring to play longer deep tracks and a wider range of styles than you'd hear on your local Top 40 station. So while Top 40 was playing "Bennie & The Jets," "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" and "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," FM rock radio played the hell out of the 11-minute opus that opened the album.

The two songs weren't originally written to go together into one track. "Funeral For A Friend" was an instrumental only track Elton John write when he was reportedly thinking about the type of music he'd like to hear at this funeral. The synthesizer-heavy almost bombastic sound was created by the album's engineer, David Hentschel, who reportedly layered more than 40 tracks on top of each other to get the right sound. "Love Lies Bleeding" was a more traditional Elton John/Bernie Taupin rocker but combining the two tracks turned it into catnip for FM radio. While it was never a single, the opus was a long-time feature of Elton John concerts.





"Bad Blood" (1975)
Like a lot of 1970s rockers, Elton John started his own record label. In most cases these vanity labels were primarily used a tax-writeoff and a place to release solo albums by the band's friends. But when Elton John and his partners launched Rocket Records in 1973, they saw it as a working, legitimate label. Sure, it did release solo album by longtime Elton bandmembers Nigel Olsson and Davey Johnstone. But primarily the label released albums from either promising new U.K. acts (Blue, Stackridge) or well-known British acts who were currently out of favor with the music industry (Kiki Dee, Lulu, Chris Difford). The label's biggest hit fell into the latter category when it signed Neil Sedaka. 

Sedaka had a string of hit singles in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but his last top 20 U.S. was in 1963 and by 1966, he had been dropped by RCA Records. But Sedaka continued to tour and record overseas, charting a few times in Australia and the U.K. Elton John met Sedaka at a party in 1973 and after hearing that Sedaka didn't have a U.S. label deal, he offered to have Rocket Records release an album. Sedaka's first U.S. album was a compilation of three albums Sedaka released in the U.K. and it led to a #1 single in 1974 with "Laughter In The Rain." The album "The Hungry Years" was released the following year and included "Bad Blood," a song that sounded somewhat Elton John-esque with uncredited vocals by John. The song was the biggest hit of Sedaka's career, spending 3 weeks at #1 in the U.S. before it was replaced by John's single "Island Girl."

There are a lot of reasons this song isn't especially well-known, but one reason is that much of the Rocket Records catalog isn't available for streaming, which pretty much renders it invisible to anyone under the age of 40.


"Pinball Wizard" (1975)
This cover of the iconic song by The Who comes from the 1975 "Tommy" movie soundtrack. Ken Russell directed a big-money adaptation of the Pete Townsend rock opera and Elton John sang the song in the movie. It's markedly different than the original version, including the addition of a rollicking piano and some additional lyrics from Pete Townsend. The result is a smoking rocker that might be the best upbeat tune ever recorded by John. It was never officially released as a single in the U.S., although a promotional single was sent to radio stations.


"Mama Can't Buy You Love" (1977)
When Elton John decided to do an album with veteran soul/R&B producer Thom Bell, it seemed like kind of an unlikely mishmash of styles. But in 1977, John was struggling to adapt to an evolving music scene and the changes in his personal life. He'd battled drug addiction and lots of other personal problems, split with long-time collaborator Bernie Taupin and was estranged from his band and familiar producer Gus Dudgeon. The sessions for the album reportedly began well, with Bell bringing in The Spinners and Bell & James to help with vocals. John was a huge fan of the Philadelphia Soul Sound created by Bell and indeed the tracks that were finished sound confident and soulful. Bell encouraged John to sing in a lower register and the results sound like parts of a great soul album. But the sessions were halted only after a handful of tracks were completed and no reason was given publicly other than John and Bell had clashed over the production.

Elton John went on to write and release the 1978 album " A Single Man" and the Thom  Bell tracks remained unreleased until "Mama Can't Buy You Love" was released on a three-song EP in 1979 and "Mama Can't Buy You Love" went to #9 on the U.S. singles charts. Another unreleased track from the sessions - "Shine On Through" - was re-recorded and included on the "A Single Man" album. In 1989, an album entitled "The Thom Bell Sessions" which included all six completed tracks was released in 1989. And in 2003, an edited remixed version of "Are You Ready For Love?" topped the U.S. and U.K. Dance Track charts.

"Mama Can't Buy You Love" is just a great classic 70s soul track. With backing vocals by The Spinners, this is maybe the best music John made in the latter part of the 1970s.



"Part Time Love" (1978)
The "A Single Man" album was released in October 1978 and it marked a lot of changes for Elton John. Only one of the three previous albums released by the singer was a studio album and that one was the much darker and only modestly-successful 1976 double-album "Blue Moves." And when work began on this collection, John had just come off of an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to record an album with veteran soul producer Thom Bell. "A Single Man" was the first Elton John album not to include any songs by his long-time collaborator Bernie Taupin and it also included minimal help from John's familiar touring band. Instead, John wrote the melodies first and then added lyrics by Gary Osborne. The result was a transitional album that sold enough to be considered a hit but it didn't really thrill anyone. The album only hit #15 on the U.S. album charts and while the instrumental "Song For Guy" was a hit outside the U.S., "Part Time Love" was the only hit in America. 

To be fair, "Part Time Love" is a lightweight ditty, but it's catchy and I've always had a soft spot for the track. Even though other than a couple of appearances during the single's release, Elton John has never played it in concert. It was a dark time for Elton John and it wouldn't improve any with the release of his next album, the disco-flavored "Victim Of Love."



"Kiss The Bride"
1983's album "Too Low For Zero" was a bit of a creative comeback for Elton John. And by that point in his career, he desperately needed a change of fortunes. 1978's marginally successful "A Single Man" album had been followed by 1979's disco-based "Victim Of Love" album, with its inexplicable disco take on Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode." 1980's album "21 At 33" did produce a #3 singles hit with "Little Jeannie," but the album overall wasn't one of his best. 1981's "The Fox" didn't produce a hit and only sold around 300,000 copies in the U.S. 1982's "Jump Up!" was also a huge disappointment, although it did include a top 20 hit with John's tribute to the recently slain John Lennon, "Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny)."

"Too Low For Zero" reunited John with his 1970s touring band: Ray Cooper,  Dee Murray, Nigel Olsson, Kiki Dee, and Davey Johnstone. It was also the first time since 1976's "Blue Moves" that every song on the album was credited to  Elton John and Bernie Taupin. And the result was John's best-selling album of the 1980s. "I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues" hit #2 on the U.S. Hot 100 and "I'm Still Standing" hit #12. Videos for the tunes were staples on MTV and the album spent more than a year on the U.S. album charts.

"Kiss The Bride" was the third single off the album and while it didn't chart, it's one of my favorite Elton John tracks from the 1980s. It's a full-blown rocker and aside from the fact that Elton John was by then singing in a lower register, it would have fit nicely onto any of his classic mid-1970s albums.