The best Elton John album is "Tumbleweed Connection".\u00c2\u00a0 Released on the heels of "Elton John" and the huge success of "Your Song", "Tumbleweed Connection" had no singles and itself was soon followed by "Friends", "11\/17\/70" and at the end of the year, "Madman Across The Water".\u00c2\u00a0 Casual listeners are unaware of the record, but fans hold it dear.\u00c2\u00a0 It contains Elton’s original showstopper, "Burn Down The Mission", his take of "Country Comfort", which Rod Stewart had just done, "Son Of Your Father", which Spooky Tooth was placing its ultimately failed hopes in, and…<\/p>\n
Where To Now St. Peter?<\/span><\/p>\n The first side ended with the laconic "My Father’s Gun".\u00c2\u00a0 Well, it started out like a tale from a hayseed with a stick of straw emanating from his mouth, but eventually it devolved into the rhythm of a paddle-wheeler on the Mississippi, blend a margarita and listen on your back porch as the sun sets, as this epic unfolds.<\/p>\n But the second side opened with something we hadn’t heard from Elton previously, an intimate piano figure, an ethereal vocal…\u00c2\u00a0 Listening to "Where To Now St. Peter?", you truly felt like you were floating down a river.<\/p>\n I took myself a blue canoe<\/span> Floating is the operative word.\u00c2\u00a0 "Tumbleweed Connection" arrived during Christmas vacation, when I returned to Middlebury for Winter Term I saw the Record Club of America box over the shoulder of the mail clerk.\u00c2\u00a0 Also included in the box were "Gasoline Alley" and the very first Rod Stewart album, eponymous in the U.S., entitled "An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down" in the U.K.\u00c2\u00a0 And I loved them both.\u00c2\u00a0 But when I dropped the needle on "Where To Now St. Peter?" I resonated, like this track was made just for me, it took me away from my studies, I felt like Elton lived next door and dropped by to play a tune long after dark.<\/p>\n And it being the winter of marijuana, and long days on the ski slopes, I’d drop the needle on the second side of "Tumbleweed Connection" to hear "Where To Now St. Peter?" and it would slide into "Love Song".\u00c2\u00a0 This was long before CD players, long before remote controls, long before endless repeat.<\/p>\n There was a percussion element that sounded like a scratch, believe me, I checked.\u00c2\u00a0 And a song unfolded which sounded like nothing else on the album.\u00c2\u00a0 Because it wasn’t written by Elton, but one Lesley Duncan, who duetted on the track with him.<\/p>\n There’s a story here.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know what it is.\u00c2\u00a0 Aspiring stars don’t cede that real estate, they don’t give up those royalties.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, unable to move from my bed, I heard "Love Song" again and again, I broke open the gatefold cover and read the credits, I knew who was responsible.<\/p>\n This is the genesis of album rock.\u00c2\u00a0 It wasn’t about the radio so much as the limited music we acquired and our inability to get up off our rear ends.\u00c2\u00a0 The needle slipped into the next groove, and over time we became fans of what followed.<\/p>\n And what follows "Love Song" is "Amoreena", a song with such a swagger, you want to put on your guns and amble down a dusty Texas street.<\/p>\n Then there was the quiet "Talking Old Soldiers" and the tour de force of "Burn Down The Mission".\u00c2\u00a0 Side two was my favorite.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d put the play ratio of side two to one that month of January 1971 at ten or twelve to one.\u00c2\u00a0 It took quite a while to sink in how great "Comes Down In Time" truly was…you see it was located on the first side.<\/p>\n "Love Song"’s key feature is its intimacy.\u00c2\u00a0 As if it were playing in your head as you strolled through the park on a spring morning.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not the best song on "Tumbleweed Connection", nor is it my favorite.\u00c2\u00a0 But I know it.\u00c2\u00a0 Like I know a member of my family.\u00c2\u00a0 Because, believe me, these records rode shotgun with me through my life, they were right there in my saddlebags.<\/p>\n Lesley Duncan just died.<\/p>\n
And I floated like a leaf<\/span>
Dazzling, dancing half enchanted<\/span>
In my Merlin sleep<\/span><\/p>\n