Without fear of contradiction, it is safe to say that through the first half of the 1970s nobody in the rock field was working at the same level of productivity as Elton John.
When ‘CARIBOU‘ hit the shops in June 1974, Reginald Kenneth Dwight (as he was born, Middlesex, England, 25/3/1947), now had eight studio albums to his name, along with a film soundtrack and live L.P. – all this from a recording career that only began in June 1969 with his ‘Empty Sky‘ debut set.
Seven studio releases on from barely creating a ripple, let alone a wave with his first album, Elton John, in terms of record sales by a solo artist, was the biggest rock star in the world.
Indeed, if the first 12 months of his career was a series of fits and starts, when success occurred it was sudden and massive. John made significant inroads into the U.S. charts with a run of best-selling albums and while a sizeable following in his U.K. homeland took longer to nurture, the floodgates finally opened with ‘Honky Chateau’ (1972) – Elton and songwriting partner, lyricist Bernie Taupin, from this point producing more pop-orientated material than the string-laden, wordy compositions that had previously been their forte.
While Dee Murray (bass) and Nigel Olsson (drums) were his long-established sidemen, 1972 also brought the fully-fledged arrival of guitarist Davy Johnstone into a troupe John fronted on piano. This accomplished, tight-knit unit became responsible for the instrumentation in both the recording studio and on stage as Elton became an in-demand live performer, he and Taupin populating ensuing albums ‘Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only The Piano Player‘ (January 1973) and double-set ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road‘ (October 1973) with affecting piano ballads and agreeable, lightweight rock.
Both sold enormous quantities in following ‘Honky Chateau‘ to the number one spot on album charts around the world, added to which was an unbroken run of hit singles (‘Rocket Man‘, ‘Crocodile Rock‘, ‘Daniel‘ ‘Candle in the Wind‘, ‘Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting‘ ‘Benny and The Jets’). This list extended to the ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road‘ title track, Elton and Bernie displaying remarkable consistency over the four sides of the admirable effort from which it was lifted, a collection rightly applauded as their high water mark.
Producing such an excellent offering at the end of a breathless 17-month period during which he had released two single albums, a double and played countless live shows, (in contrast Led Zeppelin, the only act to boast comparable record sales during the period made just one album and played a 28-date U.S. tour), Elton saw his stock rise to a heightened level of acclaim.
But it also begged the question of whether the consistent excellence of ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road‘ could be maintained – sadly, on ‘Caribou‘ it was not.
Recorded at the Colorado studio that gives the album its title through a frantic nine-day period in January 1974 – John and his band shortly to resume their rigorous touring schedule – the haste is evident in lacklustre material, rushed vocals and, surprisingly for an Elton John record of the period, cluttered arrangements, his songs at this time always well structured irrespective of their artistic merit.
Upon release a few months later ‘Caribou‘ received any number of unflattering reviews, (‘Dispiriting‘/Rolling Stone, one of the more favourable), Elton hardly needing a pasting from the critics when closer to home long-serving producer Gus Dudgeon could not have been more disparaging:
‘The sound is the worst and the songs are nowhere. The sleeve came out wrong, the lyrics weren’t that good, the singing wasn’t all there. The playing wasn’t great and the production is lousy.’
Some misgivings then from the man at the control panel. Nevertheless the album was a U.K. and U.S. chart-topper, notching up over one million Stateside sales alone before the year was out.
Due to an excess of substandard material John left himself vulnerable to accusations of complacency and in the case of at least one track willful self-indulgence. But even then he and Taupin managed to concoct two agreeable hit singles, their knack for piano balladry reaffirmed with ‘Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me’ while ‘The Bitch is Back‘ occupied the harder rocking territory they sometimes liked to explore.
The latter allows ‘Caribou‘ to begin in upbeat fashion, Taupin handing in a sneering, provocative lyric that is set to an offhand electric guitar riff – the title said to have been taken from a remark made by his wife when Elton threw a temper tantrum.
Fattened up by the Tower of Power horn section, with his raspy, mocking vocal Elton appears in on the joke, taking delight in offending whoever is the intended target of his writing partner:
‘I entertain by picking brains/Sell my soul by dropping names/I don’t like those/My God, what’s that?/Oh,
it’s full of nasty habits when the bitch gets back.’
If nothing else it proved the week or so spent at Caribou was not a total waste of time and in a year when Mick, Keith and co would muster the uneven ‘It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll‘ (October), Elton and Bernie had already come up with the most engaging Rolling Stones-styled song of 1974.
The artist himself was not in any way enamored by ‘Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me‘, revealing in his 2019 autobiography ‘Me‘ that he frequently stopped the session to express dissatisfaction with the piece:
‘I had to be coaxed back to the vocal booth to complete the take. Then I yelled at Gus Dudgeon that I hated it even more now it was finished and was going to kill him with my bare hands if he put it on the album.’
His discontent is somewhat hard to fathom as this luscious piece, that builds momentum through each verse to the resonant chorus, sits among the more acceptable tracks on the album.
Critical of his own singing performance on this number, contradiction arrived when John was nominated for a Grammy in Best Vocal category for ‘Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me.’ Whether his over-affected pronunciation of ‘discard‘ (dizz-gard’) in the line ‘Don’t discard me/Just because you think I mean you harm‘ went against him in the final reckoning (John losing out to Stevie Wonder), is hard to say, but as an irritation it is one of the more minor on a record that does have a tendency to irritate.
In this regard the prime example is ‘Solar Prestige a Gammon‘, a tiresome ditty made up of nonsensical phrases from words that in many cases do not actually exist. Written apparently as riposte to those who came up highfalutin theories to the meaning of his lyrics, Taupin took John at his word when asked to write something ‘meaningless.’
Passable at a push as a B-side, but better still as three fun but quickly forgotten minutes in the studio, (Elton also taking things much too far with an operatic-styled vocal), the fact it appeared on the album that followed such a grand work as ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road‘ showed John and Taupin were either supremely confident or possessed an over-developed sense of their own importance.
Among the more passable tracks is ‘Pinky‘ a pleasant midtempo affair where Taupin, much as he had done on ‘Mellow‘ (‘Honky Chateau‘) embraces his own cosy domesticity (‘For there’s toast and honey/Oh, it’s ten below zero/And we’re about to abandon our plans for the day’). Built upon a framework of acoustic guitar and congas – percussionist Ray Cooper making his debut as an official member of the Elton John Band – Elton would return to hooks in the melody on the next up ‘Captain Fantastic‘ album.
Through an era when lyricists were writing heartfelt odes to places of their origin, (Dan Fogelberg ‘Illinois‘/The Kinks ‘Muswell Hillbillies‘ two of the more prominent) Taupin expressed affection for his roots with ‘Grimsby‘, the town in question a fishing port on the east coast of England.
John serves an endearing lyric (‘As I lay dreaming in my bed/Across the great divide/I thought I heard the trawler boats/Returning on the tide’) with an energetic melody where Johnstone comes to the fore on electric guitar. Among the upbeat material on offer it certainly has more redeeming features than side one closer ‘You’re So Static‘ a lightweight rocker from the same furrow only without comparable finesse to ‘All the Young Girls Love Alice‘ on ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road‘, while thudding bass lines and funk overtones cannot save side two inclusion ‘Stinker‘ from reflecting its title.
Taupin continues his fascination with the old west in the lyric for ‘Dixie Lily‘ where he evokes a paddle steamer slicing through the water, John serving the words with a tune containing overtones of bluegrass:
‘Dixie Lily, chuggin’ like a grand old lady/Paddles hittin’ home in the noonday sun/Ploughin’ through the water with your whistles blowin’/Down from Louisiana on the Vicksburg run.‘
By no means a poor track, especially in comparison to some of those around it, ‘Dixie Lily‘ is just too contrived for its own good. The horns are an unnecessary adornment and add to the fussy ambience, while the words lack a true sense of drama. When it came to conjuring a song involving vivid characters in similar circumstances, Taupin was shown the way a few years later by his songwriting idol, the master himself Robbie Robertson – ‘Evangeline‘ by The Band, who receive stellar vocal support from Emmylou Harris, included on the soundtrack to ‘The Last Waltz‘ in 1978.
On side two opener ‘I’ve Seen the Saucers’ the focus is outer space rather than old time river travel. The protagonist has looked to the sky and seen UFO’s, ‘I wouldn’t fool you but I, I’ve seen the saucers/So many times I’m almost in tune/Watching them flying in formation/Thinking how I could be so immune.’
His visions are reinforced by sci-fi sound effects through a ponderous, piano-based track that sounds painfully clunky through the transition from verse to chorus. While the perspective Solar System explorer has designs on reaching the outer limits of the cosmos, Elton and the band appear content just to reach the end of a distinctly unremarkable effort.
At seven and a half minutes closing cut ‘Ticking‘ is not only the longest cut, but also by some distance the most impressive.
Stripped back to just Elton on piano, with occasional synthesiser embellishments from David Hentschel, Taupin creates the tale of a shy, unassuming boy, whose parents ‘Never thought of him as their troubled son‘, but who in adulthood commits mass murder:
‘”An extremely quiet child” they called you in your school report/”He’s always taken interest in the subjects that he’s taught”/So what was it that brought the squad car screaming up your drive/To notify your parents of the manner in which you died?‘
With Elton sounding genuinely inspired in his singing and performance at the keys by the potency of the lyrics, the story leads to a New York barroom where a violent and tragic episode ensues:
‘Within an hour the news had reached the media machine/A male Caucasian with a gun had gone berserk in Queens/The area had been sealed off, the kids sent home from school/14 people lying dead in a bar they called The Kicking Mule.’
Living as we do in times when mass shootings by a lone, deranged gunman are sadly commonplace, the song comes over as deeply prophetic, the perpetrator also meeting with a brutal, uncompromising end:
‘Oh, they pleaded to your sanity for the sake of those inside/Throw out your gun, walk out slow just keep your hands held high/But they pumped you full of rifle shells, as you stepped out the door/Oh, you danced in death like a marionette on the vengeance of the law.’
An excellent track in its own right, ‘Ticking‘ stands as an overlooked gem in the repertoire of Elton John that even his halcyon days of the 1970s was liable to peaks and troughs. Overall, ‘Caribou‘ may have been no great shakes, but this song alone was proof enough the collaborative power of John and Taupin still made them a force to be reckoned with.
While ‘Caribou‘ proved his only album of 1974, the Elton/Bernie assembly line of compositions would quickly move back into overload. ‘Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy‘ (May 1975) was the first of three studio L.P.s – ‘Rock of the Westies‘ (October 1975)/double-set ‘Blue Moves‘ (October 1976) – in the next 17 months, his status as the biggest name in rock further endorsed by the live album ‘Here and There‘ (April 1976), no quarter year at this point complete without an Elton John record of some description.
Inevitably quality wavered through this plethora of product, every one a mix of fitful, fulsome and fanciful, but each, in chart terms at least, fantastically successful – all of which had applied in no small way to ‘Caribou.’
ELTON JOHN – CARIBOU (Released June 24 1974):
The Bitch is Back/Pinky/Dixie Lily/Grimsby/Solar Prestige a Gammon/You’re So Static/I’ve Seen the Saucers/Stinker/Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me/Ticking;
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