TAPE Me Back To The Future — MADE For Tape # 4: Elton John, “The Very Best of Elton John” (1990)

An occasional series here that celebrates the cassette-tape format in all its glory. Wobbles

The Very Best of Elton John (1990)

Elton John is a bit like James Taylor or Cat Stevens or Van Morrison, in that the music feels like it’s just always been there. All over the radio when I was a kid — because it had already had its first day, but also, like Billy Joel, he was still making music regularly when I was young. Not quite with the same critical success as his 70s golden era, but a bunch of pop hits still stampeded towards the charts across the 80s. And my dad owned some of the records, so even songs that somehow don’t make the hits compilation every time, like Empty Garden (his John Lennon tribute) were big in my world growing up. And I’m Still Standing was epic. Even though these days I’m more interested in album tracks like Levon and Take Me To The Pilot.

Crocodile Rock, Daniel, Rocket Man and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road felt like the ones I could not escape. I neither loved nor loathed them at the time. They were simply everywhere, and always on. I have feelings about them now — and adore the song Daniel and Rocket Man, and can tolerate Yellow Brick Road some of the time, but not always, and mostly detest Croc Rock.

The one that forever beguiles me though is Song For Guy — a seemingly throwaway instrumental that is the type of dangerously-close-to-Muzak that I have always seemed to adore. It’s a weird wee number, and I remember hearing it in the car a lot as a kid, and thinking it was beamed in from another planet. I could never make out what Elton was wordlessly half-singing near the end of the song. And I never want to (properly) know.

In 1990, when this compilation was released, my father bought it on CD. And my best mate bought it on double cassette tape. So I spent a lot of time with it. I never enjoyed it as a CD. And I can’t really explain why, but I guess it felt too long, whereas the seven or eight songs per side made the double-tape the ultra experience. And, anyway, double tapes were just epic eh!

Also this was one of a limited number of albums we were allowed to play on car trip’s in my mate’s dad’s vehicle. He was an odd man, and could not handle Pink Floyd and would not allow Guns N Roses. He could tolerate a bit of John Farnham, and a lot of Phil Collins, but his thing was classical. That’s what he was into — and I had no respect for that at the time, but if I knew him now I’d be well on board.

Anyway, we played this album a heap, and found new favourites every time. The depth and breadth of one man’s music. Then we found out about the songwriting partnership — Bernie Taupin writing the lyrics, and Elton writing the music. And we loved that. We were obsessed with creative duos. We weren’t one ourselves, nor trying to be — but we loved the McCartney/Lennon combo, and Mick n Keef, and even those brothers from The Black Crowes. It was cool finding out about Elton tossing out music for Bernie’s bonkers poetry.

Many years later I would buy up most of Elton’s 70s albums on CD, and a few on vinyl. I don’t think I own any now.

I decided to buy this album on double tape rather than double-CD. I went in for the nostalgia. I listened through to it and remembered exactly where I was on the Napier-Wairoa Road when Richard’s dad told us that Pink Floyd was “cold sweat music”, and that mechanical harshness of the noise as he ejected The Final Cut and put this on instead.

Ejected = Rejected.

That’s a weird power that cassette-taped music has. That’s a weird energy that my brain propels. And not just my brain, certain brains. There are those of us that form music through memories. Well, many of us do that. But there are some that then use the music to trigger the moment — some 30 years on. Plan a revisitation, pack a lunch, get prepped, check the conditions, then head out on that road again…

The Very Best of Elton John is the very best Elton John compilation. I remember having the new Best Of/Greatest Hits that was released in the early 2000s and though it updated this and added Tiny Dancer and a few others, it doesn’t for some reason tell the real story. Because the real story, for me, isn’t just about a phenomenal talent and so many of his hits. The real story is about the discovery of that music. A guy I’m not longer friends with. His weird dad. The mum that laughed nervously and tried hard to seem like she was a snob. For no real reason, and with an unconvincing effort. The real story is my dad on an 80s rebounder, going hard at it, listening to I’m Still Standing and the sweat is pouring off him and he thinks he’s Jane Fonda or something and and he’s younger then than I am now, or whatever that bloody Bob Dylan lyric is…