Honky Chateau [Remaster] - John, Elton (CD 1996)

Sic Transit Gloria - Glory fades...

It's sad to watch a once great musician fade into an adult-contemporary, easy-listening malaise. On some level it's like watching a loved one wasting away. Fortunately, in a situation like that, we can always fall back on stories of the old days, complete with pictures and treasured souvenirs. Likewise, as our once-cherished musicians fumble towards mediocrity, we have their old albums to fall back on and to comfort us.

For me, Elton John is one of these musicians. Sure, he's been a powerful force in the music industry for more than thirty years. He rightly deserves every bit of praise and honor he's been given. But still, I haven't been able to get at all excited about any of his music since, well, since my musical tastes grew to liking his early work. Fortunately, John's early years were extremely productive. His albums often came less than a year apart from one another. This frantic pace helped him to master the various musical styles he would become known for, and by 1972, when he released Honky Chateau, he and lyricist Bernie Taupin had virtually perfected their game.

So many of Elton John's early albums are classics, but I keep coming back to Honky Chateau over and over again. It's got everything: teenage angst, spirituality, nihilism, egoism, despair, joy, and so much more. An album covering this much ground shouldn't, in any way, come together in a cohesive whole, and yet this one manages to hop from feeling to feeling with an amazing ease and grace.

The songs start out with the semi-titular tune Honky Cat. This song, surely a familiar one to longtime listeners of classic rock radio, is all sass and swagger. The honky-tonk style piano, staccato brass horns, and backing banjo storm through the song like a rag-tag militia. The lyrics, too, are pretty inspired, all about a redneck who has grown accustomed to city life. Memorable lyrics include lines such as "It's like trying to find gold in a silver mine, it's like trying to drink whisky from a bottle of wine." Sure, the song is almost all style with hardly any substance, but I certainly don't care.

After the boisterous opening track, the album moves on to Mellow, a song that truly lives up to its title. Heavy on gospel-style piano and an insistent bass line, the song rocks smooth and slow, as the lyrics say. Adding to the relaxing feel of the song is a fantastic electric violin solo halfway through the song.

Knowing that the next song is titled I Think I'm Going to Kill Myself, you might expect something rather depressing and serious, but nothing could be further from the truth. The song has a tap dance solo in the middle. That alone should tip you off to the song's tongue in cheek attitude. The song clips along at an upbeat shuffle, and the words feature the kind of rebellious teenage frustration that anyone over the age of twenty can look back at with awkward embarrassment. Consider the lyrics:

A rift in my family
I can't use the car
I gotta be in by ten o'clock
Who do they think they are?

Any teen who has offhandedly used the phrase "I wish I were dead," only to receive a parental lecture not to joke about serious matters will relate perfectly to this song. And even if those days are far behind you, the song still has a bounce and spirit that anyone can enjoy.

A few more tracks down the line comes Rocket Man (I think it's going to be a long, long time), another familiar song for classic rock radio fans. This is easily the bleakest song on the entire record. Reportedly inspired by a Ray Bradbury story, Rocket Man is the simple narrative of a man whose job is simply to fly a shuttle to and from Mars. The verses sing about the loneliness and isolation of the job, but lyrically they're nothing to write home about. The true beauty of the song lies in its simply chorus of:

And I think it's gonna be a long, long time
'till touchdown brings me 'round again to find
I'm not the man they think I am at home

These words, along with John's singing and the backup vocals from the rest of the band expertly blend together a sense of pride and isolation that I find absolutely touching.

Following this is a brief nadir in the album, with the songs Salvation and Slave. Neither of these songs is bad in any way, but they lack the same inspirational spark that made. Fortunately, this break is only two songs long, bringing us fairly quickly back to a few more top-notch songs.

Amy brings a different feel to the album, being the first and only minor key song on Honky Chateau. The song also has a much more electric feel to the backing instruments than the previous, mainly acoustic tunes. Above this foundation, John pounds out some powerful lines on the piano and sings in a low, insistent voice about the local prostitute. Lyrically, Amy is the greatest masturbatory teen fantasy song in English pop since The Who's Pictures of Lily. It may not exactly be the most appropriate song for very young listeners, perhaps prompting a few too many unwanted questions, but otherwise it's another great classic.

Afterwards, Honky Chateau reaches its true high point with Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters. To me, this is one of the most beautiful songs ever written. Sung at a slightly slow pace and backed only by gentle piano, bass and mandolin, the song praises the beauty of the everyday world. In the chorus, John sings:

for unless they see the sky
but they can't and that is why
they know not if it's dark outside or light

The song is at once a joyful tribute to those who have been enlightened to the glory of the everyday world and a touching lament for those who are not yet so enlightened. This is one of the rare cases where all elements of a song support each other flawlessly, bringing as close to musical perfection as we can hope to come. (And if every track on the album besides Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters were replaced by outtakes of a drunken Elton John stumbling around the studio knocking things over, I would still find this a worthwhile album.)

The final track, Hercules isn't anywhere nearly as strong as its predecessor, but it's a fun number to end the album with. Overall, the song is a thinly veiled tribute to Elton John himself. For anyone who doesn't already know, Hercules is Elton John's middle name. (he chose it when he had his name legally changed from Reginald Dwight.) The lyrics are mostly goofy with a few mythological references thrown in for good measure. The song's real purpose, though, is to bring the album back to the rockin' piano driven style that opened the album, bringing us full circle. At this, Hercules performs admirably.

Don't let the 1972 recording date frighten you away. Seventies music has gotten a pretty bad rap (some would say quite undeservedly), but Honky Chateau manages to transcend every clich of the music from that era. This is one of those timeless albums that will never really feel ties down to any one specific era.

I have no doubt that Elton John will continue to produce a few more albums over the next few years, but I also have no doubt that I will continue to relish his early albums, particularly Honky Chateau, more than anything else that might be forthcoming. I certainly wish John the best for his upcoming projects, but I've already found what I like, and I'm sticking with it.