Performer: Elton John
Songwriters: Elton John, Bernie Taupin
Original Release: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Year: 1973
Definitive Version: Here and There, 1976
You pretty much had to be
living in on another planet to have not noticed that Elton John was kind of big
in the mid-Seventies. His music was everywhere, and, unlike Barry Manilow—whose
music also was everywhere at that time—Elton John’s music actually was
tolerable.
I was first exposed to this
song at Marty’s house. His family also had a formal living room in the front of
their house, also hued in pea green (what was up with that?), also more or less
off limits to the kids—the young ones anyway—and also containing a giant piece
of cabinetry that housed the stereo.
Marty’s older brother, Phil,
had Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, and I remember it was one of the first double
albums—if not the first—that I had seen. By the time we were 11—again after
Marty’s Dad had moved out—the kids got to be in the front room, and when Phil
wasn’t around to kick our butts, we’d put on some records, and Yellow Brick
Road got a few spins during this time.
But the thing that really
sticks out when I hear this song is the first house Dad and Laura had after
they married in 1978, on Southway Drive in old Arlington.
As I noted earlier, the kids
got the largest bedroom, and Dad, at first, had three single beds in there,
dorm style, for each of us. It was an attempt at being normal for us kids, but
as a sullen teen, I wasn’t buying it. I didn’t like spending the night there,
and I suppose I didn’t hide that fact, although I never said so in so many
words. None of my friends were there; none of my stuff was there.
And it wasn’t as though I
could’ve brought either along with me. Dad made it clear to me that he didn’t
like Marty, and because I still was at pre-driving age, I couldn’t have any
other friends over. I didn’t know anyone in the neighborhood, and because I had
learned the valuable lesson of not being noticed to avoid abuse in junior high,
I wasn’t in any condition to be outgoing and meet anyone.
Dad also made it clear that
he didn’t like that I still played with baseball cards at my age. They were
kids stuff. I guess I was supposed to go out and get a job and a girlfriend at
that age—not that I wouldn’t have minded the latter, of course—and anything
short of that was some sort of failure.
So that was a lot of fun.
(Whose life doesn’t suck when they’re 13?) But if Dad didn’t like what I was
into at the time, the feeling was mutual. Mom had told me enough things about
the divorce and the why it happened that I wasn’t exactly feeling affectionate
to Dad. Due to typical teenage male friction, I was presupposed to take Mom’s
side of the argument, but in retrospect, it wasn’t necessarily the right
decision.
Anyway, I spent only a
couple of nights in the bedroom, because I didn’t like the bed or the room. It
was too bright, so it was nigh impossible—even when you closed the drapes—to
not be awake by 7, which, of course, is the last thing that a 13-year-old wants
on a weekend. Dad, of course, was up at the crack of dawn, and if you weren’t,
too, you were a lazy ass.
However, the den was nice
and dark. They had a large leather sofa that I could fit on, and if I slept on
that, I could listen to their stereo with the headphones on. There even was a
half-bathroom: a bonus.
So the den was where I spent
the night when I actually would spend the night, and when I found that they had
Here and There, that album became a regular play on those nights. I’d lie on
the sofa in the dark with this song blasting at full volume, and I’d watch the
mix lights flicker across the front of the stereo from green to red like I was
a stoner caught in a brainloop.
It wasn’t as though I had anything else to do.
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