“Tell Me When the Whistle Blows” came out in a single take. A neo-Motown groove, the track detailed the nights when Bernie would catch a train at Kings Crossing to head back to Lincolnshire for the weekend back in the late ‘60s, when he and Elton were first plying their songwriting craft. “I was still fresh from the sticks,” the lyricist said, “and I still had tremendous ties to my friends back home in Lincolnshire. That’s the song. That’s it.”
Noted soul arranger Gene Page later added a silk-smooth string part which meshed perfectly with Elton’s sinuous clavinet and Davey’s bluesy, David Gilmour-esque fret work, adding an aura of thoughtful poignancy to the bittersweet R&B shuffle.
The centerpiece of the sessions was “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” a nearly seven-minute-long epic which recounts in painful detail Elton’s near-marriage to Linda Woodrow and the resultant pressures which led to his suicide attempt.
“That would have been goodbye to the music scene for me,” Elton said. “I would have been down working in Barclay’s Bank or something.”
Musically, the song’s introductory piano figure immediately set a somber mood. “There’s an A-flat chord with an E-flat in the bass,” the pianist said, “which is something one would have never done without musical training. I thought about Brian Wilson and ‘God Only Knows’. From the first chord you can tell that.”
Nigel’s idiosyncratically poignant drumming only added to the overall power of the track. “Nigel had this great thing, which he couldn’t control,” Gus said. “As soon as he would go on a ride cymbal, he’d be tapping his hi-hat [for four steady beats]. If you notice, he just couldn’t stop tapping his foot. Most drummers come off the hi-hat and go for the ride cymbal, and they might put a [fourth beat] on it. But Nigel couldn’t stop. It was part of his style, but I loved it…He’d come off [the hi-hat] and it would change to a softer version in the corner while he’s on the ride cymbal. It was great.”
The song’s structure proved as unique as Nigel’s drumming, featuring as it did a middle-eight bridge and an extended coda, both relatively unusual for ‘70s-era pop compositions.
Yet if the music was complex, the words were painfully direct. Unaware of the song’s true significance, Gus Dudgeon forced Elton to sing the lead vocal multiple times, till the superstar was nearly in tears.
“I kept telling Elton over the talkback to give the vocal more emotion, more power,” Gus said. “But I didn’t know what he was singing about. I never pay attention to the lyrics until later. My first concern is always the sound.”
“Lay off him, Gus,” Davey admonished, putting his hand on the producer’s forearm. “You know he’s singing about killing himself, right?”
The producer was mortified. “I made him sing the most unbelievably personal things over and over again to get a bloody note right or get a bit of phrasing together. Christ.”
The album’s signal rocker was a guitar-riot jam entitled “(Gotta Get a) Meal Ticket,” which detailed the days Elton and Bernie were forced to watch others grab for the brass ring that they so desperately desired. “At the time,” Elton admitted, “I’d put down anybody who was making it, just because we weren’t. I think a lot of artists go through a stage like that.”
The song featured a uniquely off-kilter rhythm propelled by insistent syncopated guitar stabs which helped drive the song ever-forward. The solo, meanwhile, was Davey’s nod to George Harrison. “Two guitars coming in with sort of an ‘octave urgency,’” he said. “Like the solo of the Beatles’ ‘Taxman’: ‘Okay: take-off time!’”
The track’s background vocals were, conversely, influenced by the West Coast rock sound so recently in vogue. “The Eagles were starting to happen at that time,” Davey said, “and we were big buddies with Joe Walsh already, so we took those kinds of harmonies. We kind of nicked the idea…We thought, ‘What would they do on that?’ And it worked out really well.”
“Better Off Dead” proved another session highlight. A swirling pounder accented by Davey’s double-tracked Martin D-28 acoustic guitars, the song recounted the seamy cast of roustabouts Elton and Bernie encountered as they hung out after-hours at a Wimpy Bar burger joint which sat lost inside the diesel fumes on Oxford Street. “Half the people who came in looked as if they’d be better off dead,” Bernie said. “The song’s really about that.” Intriguingly, he left a note at the bottom of the lyric sheet, a rare musical cue for Elton, indicating that the song should sound “á la John Prine.”
“It’s nothing like John Prine,” the pianist said with a laugh. “It sounds like a Gilbert & Sullivan song. Semi-operatic.”
“I wrote it folky,” Bernie said, “and he turned it into like a galloping major, a regimental thing.”
To achieve the distinctively “galloping” drum sound, Gus ran Nigel’s kit through a harmonizer. “Our focus on that track at that time was the amazing ambient drum sound that Gus got together for Nigel,” Davey said. “That kind of thing dictates the way you’re going to play. It’s not like you just play any old crap and the producer puts a weird sound on it [afterward].”
“House of Cards” was undertaken during the same session. The country-pop-flavored tale of cheap sex and broken hearts relied less on studio wizardry than “Better Off Dead” had, yet ultimately proved every bit as effective. Even so, the bouncy electric piano-centered track was doomed for B-side status. “Too bad,” Dee said. “That was actually one of the more fun songs to play.”
The group then turned their attention toward “Writing,” a breezily insouciant remembrance of the days that Elton and Bernie learned to properly write songs together in the late ‘60s. “It’s about honing your craft, about discovering each other’s working patterns,” Bernie said. “We were never so close as we were in those days.”
Much as Goodbye Yellow Brick Road opened with the dual sonic punch of “Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding,” so Captain Fantastic closed with “We All Fall in Love Sometimes/Curtains,” two separate songs recorded as a single entity. “It was done in two takes,” Gus said. “I remember that Neil Sedaka walked into the control room just as we began the second take. The band actually had just started the song as he walked in. And I thought, ‘Now, this is going to be interesting, to see what his reaction is.’ Because it’s nearly eleven-minutes long. So it got to about nine minutes and he came over to me and whispered, ‘My God, are they doing this all in one go, or are they dubbing on?’ And I said, whispering, ‘No, it’s all in one go.’ He went, ‘Jesus, they been going on for hours.’”
“The magic was there,” Nigel later said of the session.
Though similar in tone and tempo, each song had its own unique personality. “We All Fall in Love Sometimes” was, in particular, drenched in an atmosphere of Continental melancholia, as if it had sprung from the songbook of French crooner Charles Aznavour. “[The song] means we all find something sometimes, whether it’s success, or a relationship that works out,” Bernie said. “It’s really a song that said there’s something tomorrow.” Elton’s interpretation was slightly different. “As far as I’m concerned, the song is about Bernie and I realizing we had a future together,” he said. “Not a sexual future, but a brother relationship…It’s about the realization that we could make it. Really, it says it all in that song.”
“Curtains” was perhaps even more telling. A crystalline confessional brimming with references to some of the very oldest John/Taupin songs, the lyrical poignancy was heightened by Nigel’s evocative, narrative-based skins work. “Every drum fill that I ever played is in that whole song,” he said. “We were freaking out, because if we fucked-up, how were we going to be able to edit it? There were cymbals and cymbals and cymbals, and you cannot cut a cymbal…so we had to play it the whole way through and get it right. I tried to do my part in bringing the lyrics to life. You can actually do that on the drums, if you allow yourself to feel the music and let your imagination take over.”
Gus was equally pleased with the summati
onal track. “I got a sound on that particular track that made everything that Nigel played so well so worthwhile. It’s all very well, somebody playing drums well. But if it’s not recorded well—to the point that you go, ‘Fuck, that is superb!’—then it’s a bit of a waste of time.”
Again, the superior backing vocals added to the overall effect. “The idea [for the backing vocals on ‘Curtains’] came from Gus,” Davey said. “He said, ‘Instead of doing your usual vocal pads and oohs and ahhs, harmonize with him.’ We thought that would be a bitch, because Elton’s phrasing is amazing. He’s like Frank Sinatra in that way—he phrases his own way. In ‘Curtains’, when he sings: ‘Cultivate the freshest flower’, I would come in there. Then we would all come in. To sing those lyrics was probably one of the most explosive things ever to happen to me in my music career, and I’m not really a singer. To be able to sing such words that are so beautiful, and [to] have the guys feel the same way, was really scary.”
“When I listen to that record now,” Nigel said years later, “it kind of brings tears to my eyes.”
With the album proper in the can, John Lennon and May Pang arrived at Caribou Ranch so that John could lend his talents to Elton’s “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” remake.
“We shared a cabin with Elton,” May said. “My big thing was, ‘Why are there oxygen tanks everywhere?’ Because I didn’t realize that we were so thin in air, when you were singing, you might need it. You needed to acclimate yourself to the thinness of the crisp air. It [soon] affected John when he sang. Because you’re not getting enough air.”
Thin air or no, everyone at Caribou freaked out when Lennon arrived. “We couldn’t get over it,” John Carsello said, “because, y’know, who wouldn’t be? It doesn’t get any better than that. I grew up with the Beatles. And John was just so nice. Everyone was freaking out—even Guercio—about John being up there with Elton. It was just a very cool time.”
“That night after we unpacked, we joined Elton in the studio,” May said. “As soon as they saw each other, John and Elton fell into each other’s arms. As they did every time they met, they began to trade one-liners. They were both in rare form, and everyone stood around laughing.”
Gus Dudgeon eventually called the session to order. With the pressure on, Lennon lost his nerve.
“Maybe I’ll just do my regular part that I did on the original,” he said. “Or I could just watch you guys go at it. I’m happy just to watch.”
Davey shook his head. “You’ve gotta play on this track, John.”
Lennon grimaced. “You don’t want me playin’ on it, Davey. You’re the guitar player.”
“Just play on it,” Davey said, insistent. “You’re fucking great. You’re a fucking Beatle.”
“But I forgot me guitar, you see.”
Without missing a beat, Davey handed Lennon one of his Les Paul’s.
Unable to remember the chords to his own song, Lennon asked Davey to teach them to him. Together, the two guitarists brainstormed a dynamic ska break which would appear toward the end of the track.
“That was always John’s thing,” May said. “He loved ska music.”
Dee Murray’s intricately distinctive bass playing added another tactile layer to the song. “Dee was probably the finest bass player I ever got the chance to work with,” Gus later reflected. “He was perfect. A really melodic player, really inventive. And just a tremendous person as well.” John Carsello agreed with the producer’s assessment. “Dee was just the greatest guy in the world. Just a beautiful guy. Not only was he an incredible bass player, but he was just very laid-back. Didn’t raise his voice, no ego at all. Just a warm soul. And he had this personality that you could just talk to and just want to be his friend, because he was such a nice guy. Nigel and Davey were great guys too, but there was just something about Dee. And as far as his talent goes, oh my God, he was just such a phenomenal bass player. Just incredible.”
Work on “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” lasted well into the night. “The session was a long, painstaking one,” May Pang said. “Everyone worked efficiently, the changes made sense, and each of the musicians was given precise directions. Both perfectionists, Elton and John set the pace, and everyone buckled down to make a perfect record.”
For his efforts on the track, Gus received one of the greatest compliments of his career. “After he’d know me for about three days, [Lennon] said, ‘You know, when I first walked into the control room and I first saw you, you totally fazed me.’ And I thought, ‘I fazed him? Fucking hell, I can’t believe it!’” The producer laughed. “I just took it as a compliment, because I think it was intended to be one.”
After the vocals were laid—Elton and Lennon huddled around a single microphone—Gus created a rough mix of the track and played it back full volume. Lennon listened in silence, eyes closed. After the song ended, he gave the slightest of shrugs.
“It’s better than the Beatles version,” he said.
John Carsello got into work early the next morning and walked into the communal mess hall to grab a cup of coffee. “And there’s John sitting in there by himself,” he said. “May Pang was still in her room. And I went, ‘Oh my God, I'm sitting here with John Lennon.’ And he said, ‘How are you doing?’ And I shook his hand. It was so smooth and soft, I can’t explain it. And here I am alone in a room with John Lennon. You can’t imagine how that felt like. To be one-on-one with him was amazing. And it was around the time where his green card expired and they were trying to send him back to England. He was living in New York, and he’d just been in the news, ‘They’re trying to deport John Lennon, he’s not a citizen,’ it had just been a few days after all that started. And I said, ‘I hope it works out for you, John,’ and he said, ‘I sure hope they let me stay here in this country. I love where I’m living, it reminds me of home.’”
Elton recorded a cover of Lennon’s Mind Games track “One Day at a Time” the next afternoon, after John and May Pang had taken their leave. The ethereal composition was one that the pianist was particularly fond of. “I loved that song,” he said. “I just wanted to choose one of [Lennon’s] songs to do that was not a Beatles song, and it was my choice to do that.”
“My guitar sounds like a horn on that track,” Davey noted. “Gus wanted to have [my guitar] really up front on that song. I doubled them and put a harmony on them. It almost sounds like saxophones playing those lines…Just a cool little song.”
Elton’s second Caribou Ranch sessions concluded with a song he’d long promised Billie Jean King, who had quickly become one of his closest confidants. “She’s lots of fun,” he said. “I draw a parallel with her and Lennon. It’s that their public image has nothing to do with what they’re really like. And everyone’s got preconceived ideas. You mention Lennon and they go, ‘Oh, he’s a real shit, isn’t he?’ And Billie Jean King: ‘Oh, I hate her. She’s so fuckin’ moody.’ And she’s not.”
Elton provided the title for his proposed King homage, “Philadelphia Freedom,” to Bernie, who protested, “I can’t write a song about tennis.”
Instead, the lyricist came up with a set of esoteric lyrics about being free.
“Bernie wrote the lyric in the morning and we recorded it that day,” Davey said. “We double-tracked that one [intro bass] lick of Dee’s. And I had a direct guitar sound…with a Telecaster plugged straight into the board to get that real clean sound…We finished it in one day.”
“Before he [originally] played it for me,” Gus said, “[Elton] said, ‘I’ve written this song for Billie Jean King and her Philadelphia Freedoms tennis team. And I was going, ‘What? Where the hell does that come from?’ Then he played me the song and I went, ‘Ah, right. Okay. Fine.’ I went out of my way to make a record specifically for the black market, which is why we hired arranger Gene Page, because he had done all those great arrangements for Barry White.”
Page’s session went smoothly. Before it began, the arranger strode up to his podium and
told his musicians, “Gentlemen, today you are going to play on an Elton John record. Now I don’t want any of you to mess up, because your kids are going to hear this record. It’s going to be really big. I want everybody to play the best they’ve ever played, okay?”
“And the most brilliant thing was that when the session was over,” Gus said, “all of the players came in, and they all brought their charts, and they said, ‘Can we keep our parts to show our kids that we played on an Elton John record?’”
With the sessions finally complete, Elton and John Reid headed to New York to meet up with his mother and step-father. Lennon called him up the night he arrived, and offered for him and May Pang to take the four of them to dinner at the Russian Tea Room.
“John was just the nicest man deep down,” Elton said. “The kind of man who would walk into a room full of people and, instead of going up to the biggest celeb, he would go round the room talking to everyone one by one. A real man of the people.”
After dinner, Lennon got up to go to the toilet. As soon as he left, Elton’s mother turned to her son and, with a knowing smirk, said, “Put your money where your mouth is.”
“I just looked over,” May said, “‘cause it was all very playful, but I’m thinking, ‘What’s this?’ So Elton asked John Reid to give him a hundred-dollar bill, and he put it on the table and [Elton] said, ‘Okay, here it is.’ And she took out her [false] teeth and she went around and kissed people, and it was like, ‘What just happened?’ It was so playful, it was just great. Elton had such a great rapport with his mom.”
Captain Fantastic: The Definitive Biography of Elton John in the '70s Page 37