this is not pitchfork

In 1973, I was 11 years old and considered myself an Elton John fan on the basis that my cousin had the album Madman Across the Water and I knew all the words to Levon and Tiny Dancer. So I took my birthday money and bought Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and grew quickly bored with it, except for Bennie and the Jets, because it was fun to sing that stuttering B-b-b-Bennie and try to hit that falsetto. But overall, I just wasn’t that into it. Then two years later, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy came out. I was 13. My 11 year old self was long since forgotten by my hormonal, rebellious 13 year old self, who thought she finally understand what Elton John was all about. So I dusted off Yellow Brick Road and gave it another listen.

This time, I blew past Bennie and the Jets and the treacly Candle in the Wind. I focused on the raucous rhythm of Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding, the melancholy of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and the sad depravity of All the Girls Love Alice. That song gave me such a weird feeling in the pit of my soul, something I would feel again much later while listening to X’s Los Angeles.

And then there was Harmony, bitterness and regret wrapped up in pretty pop melodies. I didn’t love the song, but the hot guy I had been crushing on for two years did, so I used it as a conversation starter one day, figuring it would open up a dialogue between us about the poetry of Bernie Taupin and the rumors about Elton John having his stomach pumped of Mick Jagger’s sperm. Well, maybe not that, but certainly we could share a soda in the cafeteria over our mutual admiration of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, right? Until he broke my heart with “I only like that song because my girlfriend likes it.” And I went home and listened to All the Girls Love Alice and imagined whose life was worse, mine or Alice’s.

Every time I hear that song I’m 13 again, thinking that life was just one disaster after another. Little did I know, the biggest disasters were yet to come. Well, at least I never ended up like Alice.

Favorite song: All the Girls Love Alice
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Derek Powazek, which has nothing to do with this album, but I came across it in a search and thought it made good reading.