I've made a decision tonight – this is going to be the last show. It's been a painful decision, whether to come back on the road or not. Having completed what he described as a "gruelling American tour", John gave only a handful of performances at the time of release, and later announced (during a charity concert at Wembley Arena the following year), "I haven't been touring for a long time. The album reached number 3 in the US charts, ending a long streak of chart-topping albums for John that began with Honky Château in 1972. It was John's second double album (after Goodbye Yellow Brick Road) and the first to be released by his own label, Rocket Records Ltd. I highly recommend a dip into this and a dive into the album.Blue Moves is the eleventh studio album by English musician Elton John.
ELTON JOHN BLUE ALBUM SERIES
Making this book one of the best in the series – and one of the best music books I’ve read in a while. So there’s all of this – and some spot on musical analysis. Subtly, Restall looks at the difficulties both men had with managing their public image and the recklessness and burnout that plagued them at various times in their career how Elton’s cautionary tale couldn’t be the lesson for George either. He also covered two tunes from Blue Moves. There are obvious parallels between John and Michael, they were fans of each other and of course George Michael basically ended up owning the song Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me. And Restall looks at all of this and draws the link to one of the album’s super-fans, George Michael. They were ignored at the time but Elton has always been a fan of this record, mentioning it where he can, playing an album cut or two in shows. It’s a disastrous and strange period.īut the album in question not only offers clues around John’s unhappiness it also shows more intriguing orchestrations and changes in musical mood. After Blue Moves the Taupin/John songwriting partnership falls to pieces and Elton makes a disco record high on coke and nowhere near a keyboard. And soon the world decides it isn’t listening to Elton John records any longer. At first he tells the world he’s bisexual.
So Blue Moves becomes his coming out album. He had tried to come out without ever really truly coming out but the open secret was largely ignored.
And in the background of all of this Elton was exhausted – of course. The albums coming twice a year, the touring never stopping.
It is extraordinary to look back at how ubiquitous his hits were – on every station and all the time. Randy Newman once joked that Elton John made several records while he was still brushing his teeth. And for the next five years he is unstoppable and running at a relentless pace. He has hit after hit after his 1970/71 first payday. It arrives on the back of an unheralded run, Elton John records, at one point, accounting for 2% of all global record sales. It is not his best.”įrom there we learn about Restall’s origin story with the record and then the wider context of the delivery of the record. In fact the book opens in a way that is unique for this series So he spends times with the record despite not being sold initially. II – slightly reluctantly and a bad copy had him taking the counter-clerk’s tip to get the then-new EJ studio album. I fell totally in love with Blue Moves and I was gripped by Restall’s narrative – including his discovery of the record by mistake. I generally enjoy them even if they don’t convince me to do more than a surface skim back through the album in question.īut this volume I sat reading it while listening to the record. Also I’m a card-carrying fan of the 33 1/3 series, it’s been a while since I’ve written about any of them but I’ve covered about 15 of the more recent ones hereand though the series is starting to get away on me I have read over 100 of the now 150 ish titles. So, a book about Elton’s Blue Moves album is right up my alley and I probably don’t need quite the level of convincing as might be the case for others. And it sent me off on a path to look through some of the other lesser known/maligned Elton records (I’d grown up with his 80s catalogue so I was pretty aware of the hit-miss factor that kicked in after that phenomenal run in the 1970s. I bought the double LP and spent some time with it, really digging it.
Not many hits at all (really just the one mega hit – Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word) but worth the ride. A while back someone told me to check out Elton John’s Blue Moves album – I knew of it but hadn’t spent a lot of time with it the advice was that it was a hidden gem.
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