11/6/22
Newsletter #180
The Crack of Dawn
[I’m in San Rafael, CA, using my new laptop for the first time]
I distinctly recall hearing David Bowie’s song Space Oddity for the first time. I was living down in the basement and I’d guess this was 1971. I was listening to Detroit’s most radical rock station, WABX, that played the newest, coolest music, and would also play entire albums. What’s interesting about this to me, aside from the song itself, was that this song had been recorded in 1969 and was now being played on what was considered underground American radio for the first time in 1971. It didn’t become a hit for another year. Anyway, I thought it was a fabulous song and I’d never heard anything like it.
In 1970 Elton John got his first big record contract, with his good buddy and brilliant lyricist, Bernie Taupin. The record company asked Elton what sound he was looking for and he replied, “Just like David Bowie’s Space Oddity.” Being very accommodating, they got him the producer of that song, Gus Dudgeon, with whom Bowie had already stopped working. Gus Dudgeon worked with a string arranger named Paul Buckmaster, who made fantastic music with small ensembles: two basses and two cellos. The first album, entitled Elton John, produced the hit, Your Song, and is a completely great album. Elton, Gus and Paul Buckmaster would then produce about ten gigantic albums in a row, all with one or more big hits. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road had so many hits that they didn’t have time to release them all as singles before Elton released a new album.
So, Elton, just like Ziggy Stardust before him, “Making love with his ego/Ziggy sucked up into his mind,” and realized that he was everything and Bernie Taupin was nothing and fired him.
Meanwhile, there was a Detroit band me and my sister liked back in 1969-70 called the Frost, led by a musician named Dick Wagner. Their big hit song was wittily entitled, Rock & Roll Music, and the lyrics are the title repeated over and over again, and even still it was a good song. Dick Wagner worked with Alice Cooper and they did several records like, Welcome to my Nightmare.
So, after Elton shit-canned Bernie, he hired Dick. Elton went from one of the greatest lyricists in rock & roll to the guy whose biggest hit goes like this: Rock & roll music/rock & roll music/rock & roll music/rock & roll music/rock & roll music is all that you need to be free/rock & roll music/rock & roll music/rock & roll music . . . Elton and Dick had no hits together.
Let’s see if I can figure out how to post this.