“And someone saved my life tonight sugar bear
You almost had your hooks in me didn't you dear
You nearly had me roped and tied
Altar-bound, hypnotized
Sweet freedom whispered in my ear.”
—“Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” lyrics by Bernie Taupin, music by Elton John, from the Elton John LP Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy (1975)
Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy became the first album to debut at No. 1 on the pop charts on this date in 1975.
Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy became the first album to debut at No. 1 on the pop charts on this date in 1975.
The story of the Taupin-John rise to mega-commercial success, it—along with Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run—closed a decade of concept albums, or song cycles devoted to a specific idea or narrative line. Not the best of this genre (by general agreement, that honor would probably belong to the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds or The Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band), it still represented a high point for Taupin and John.
The single from the album—and the emotionally shattering centerpiece—was “Someone Saved My Life Tonight.” Clearly, it represented a moment when Elton John had plunged into a personal abyss and needed to be rescued. But from what, exactly?
At the time, most people believed it involved rescue from a woman—but not for reasons that would became apparent for awhile. But there were—and are—dissenters, owing to the existence of a rock ‘n’ roll genre discussed as much in the media—perhaps even more so—than the concept album.
I refer, of course, to the rock/pop/folk Drug Song.
This particular genre came into prominence, roughly, in the mid-‘60s—the same era when Pet Sounds appeared, as a matter of fact. The Association’s “Along Comes Mary” was about marijuana, it was said (a nickname for the drug: “Mary Jane”), and, despite The Byrds’ insistence that “Eight Miles High” was about their disastrous trip to the U.K. on the heels of their initial success, many, many people insisted to the contrary that it was about—well, getting high.
The counterculture, of course, didn’t like it when a drug song really made no bones about it, as in Brewer and Shipley’s “One Toke Over the Line.” Half the fun of The Drug Song was about being part of the cognoscenti who knew how to decode its (undoubtedly drug-influenced!) lyrics, as allusive and cryptic as anything you’d find in T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.”
Hence, John Lennon could say till he was blue in the face that the title “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” was inspired by a painting done by his son Julian, but everyone could point to the acronym hidden in plain sight, about the psychedelic drug du jour, L.S.D. And if John Fogerty wanted to claim that he wrote “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” under the inspiration of Dr. Seuss for his young son—well, let him. Everyone knew that "Won't you take a ride on the flying spoon?” really referred to cocaine.
Which brings us back to “Someone Saved My Life Tonight.”
A good friend maintained at the time of its release (and may still believe) that the Taupin-John tune was a drug song. In vain did I point to the phrase “altar-bound,” which seemed (to my unknowing ears) to refer to matrimony.
At the time, I thought that my friend was maintaining not merely a distinctly minority position, but, let’s say, playing in a one-man band. More recently, however, I’ve found at least one post on the Web (and it doesn’t sound like my friend’s writing style) that uses many of the same arguments.
Let’s deconstruct the song according to this line of reasoning, shall we?
* “Sugar bear” refers to the white powdery essence of cocaine.
* “Roped and tied” connotes drug addiction.
* “Hypnotized” evokes the haze into which heavy users can fall.
* “A princess perched in her electric chair” is the surface allure of a substance that leads to death.
* “We’ve all gone crazy lately, rolling round the basement floor” describes the mental effects of the drug.
This interpretation can be hugely appealing. For those who have never been able to get enough not only of Bob Dylan but of all the “new Dylans” since, a song that says one thing but symbolizes something else is the very essence of what critic Richard Goldstein once called “the poetry of rock.”
The drug symbolism also has the advantage of fact, both in the rock ‘n’ roll culture in general and Elton John’s life in particular. Drugs were—and very much still are—ever-present in the lives of musicians. It took Elton years to shake off a substance-abuse addiction that brought him perilously close to madness.
But ultimately, none of these arguments holds water. You can give an alternate meaning to much in the song, but “altar bound” is a bit hard to explain away.
That Elton’s desperation might involve a woman rather than drugs should be no surprise, either. Fear and trembling over the end of bachelor days have been known to afflict many a better man than the flamboyant piano player.
(As I pointed out in a prior post, the opening chords of Felix Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” have probably stricken more men with terror than the sight of Count Dracula catching a glimpse of poor Renfield’s finger prick.)
But more than the general, existential prospect of losing one’s freedom ate away at John. Several other factors began to come into play as the singer-songwriter contemplated marriage to Linda Woodrow in July 1968:
* Linda was heiress to the Epicure Pickle fortune and, therefore, used to the best in life. Elton (then known as Reg Dwight) didn’t know how he could keep up.
The single from the album—and the emotionally shattering centerpiece—was “Someone Saved My Life Tonight.” Clearly, it represented a moment when Elton John had plunged into a personal abyss and needed to be rescued. But from what, exactly?
At the time, most people believed it involved rescue from a woman—but not for reasons that would became apparent for awhile. But there were—and are—dissenters, owing to the existence of a rock ‘n’ roll genre discussed as much in the media—perhaps even more so—than the concept album.
I refer, of course, to the rock/pop/folk Drug Song.
This particular genre came into prominence, roughly, in the mid-‘60s—the same era when Pet Sounds appeared, as a matter of fact. The Association’s “Along Comes Mary” was about marijuana, it was said (a nickname for the drug: “Mary Jane”), and, despite The Byrds’ insistence that “Eight Miles High” was about their disastrous trip to the U.K. on the heels of their initial success, many, many people insisted to the contrary that it was about—well, getting high.
The counterculture, of course, didn’t like it when a drug song really made no bones about it, as in Brewer and Shipley’s “One Toke Over the Line.” Half the fun of The Drug Song was about being part of the cognoscenti who knew how to decode its (undoubtedly drug-influenced!) lyrics, as allusive and cryptic as anything you’d find in T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.”
Hence, John Lennon could say till he was blue in the face that the title “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” was inspired by a painting done by his son Julian, but everyone could point to the acronym hidden in plain sight, about the psychedelic drug du jour, L.S.D. And if John Fogerty wanted to claim that he wrote “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” under the inspiration of Dr. Seuss for his young son—well, let him. Everyone knew that "Won't you take a ride on the flying spoon?” really referred to cocaine.
Which brings us back to “Someone Saved My Life Tonight.”
A good friend maintained at the time of its release (and may still believe) that the Taupin-John tune was a drug song. In vain did I point to the phrase “altar-bound,” which seemed (to my unknowing ears) to refer to matrimony.
At the time, I thought that my friend was maintaining not merely a distinctly minority position, but, let’s say, playing in a one-man band. More recently, however, I’ve found at least one post on the Web (and it doesn’t sound like my friend’s writing style) that uses many of the same arguments.
Let’s deconstruct the song according to this line of reasoning, shall we?
* “Sugar bear” refers to the white powdery essence of cocaine.
* “Roped and tied” connotes drug addiction.
* “Hypnotized” evokes the haze into which heavy users can fall.
* “A princess perched in her electric chair” is the surface allure of a substance that leads to death.
* “We’ve all gone crazy lately, rolling round the basement floor” describes the mental effects of the drug.
This interpretation can be hugely appealing. For those who have never been able to get enough not only of Bob Dylan but of all the “new Dylans” since, a song that says one thing but symbolizes something else is the very essence of what critic Richard Goldstein once called “the poetry of rock.”
The drug symbolism also has the advantage of fact, both in the rock ‘n’ roll culture in general and Elton John’s life in particular. Drugs were—and very much still are—ever-present in the lives of musicians. It took Elton years to shake off a substance-abuse addiction that brought him perilously close to madness.
But ultimately, none of these arguments holds water. You can give an alternate meaning to much in the song, but “altar bound” is a bit hard to explain away.
That Elton’s desperation might involve a woman rather than drugs should be no surprise, either. Fear and trembling over the end of bachelor days have been known to afflict many a better man than the flamboyant piano player.
(As I pointed out in a prior post, the opening chords of Felix Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” have probably stricken more men with terror than the sight of Count Dracula catching a glimpse of poor Renfield’s finger prick.)
But more than the general, existential prospect of losing one’s freedom ate away at John. Several other factors began to come into play as the singer-songwriter contemplated marriage to Linda Woodrow in July 1968:
* Linda was heiress to the Epicure Pickle fortune and, therefore, used to the best in life. Elton (then known as Reg Dwight) didn’t know how he could keep up.
* John was afraid that in the process of doing so, he’d have to forsake his music career: “That would have been goodbye to the music scene for me. I would have been down working in Barclays Bank or something.”
* Musician Long John Baldry engaged Elton in a long, fierce discussion on whether he was ready or not for marriage. (Baldry didn’t think so.)
* A homosexual, Baldry might have sensed something that John still wasn’t able to confront: his confused sexual identity. Only subconsciously might Elton have sensed that his lack of desire for Linda spelled disaster.
Matters came to a head one night when Taupin returned to the flat he shared with Elton and Linda, only to find his friend with his head in the kitchen oven. (Fortunately, the desperate but discombobulated Elton had left the windows wide open.)
In this conventional reading of the song, then, Baldry becomes “sugar bear” and Linda, not drugs, the soul-destroyer, the “princess perched in her electric chair.” “I’m sleeping with myself tonight” describes the outcome of the failed suicide attempt.
Even those who ostensibly knew the star quite well didn’t realize the tune's full import.
Count among these Gus Dudgeon, who produced all of John’s albums from 1969 to 1976, then again for a period beginning in the mid-‘80s. In the studio, Dudgeon wasn’t concentrating particularly on the words—he was pushing Elton for one try after another on the song to eliminate the small technical difficulties that kept cropping up.
It was left to Elton’s bandmate Davey Johnstone to draw Dudgeon aside and explain why the session was turning out to be so traumatic for the star. “I made him sing the most unbelievably personal things over and over again to get a bloody note right or get a bit of phrasing together!” Dudgeon marveled later.
“The most unbelievably personal things” didn’t relate to drugs—unless you liken falling out of love to an addict’s withdrawal.
I still have trouble with the idea that Born to Run is a concept album. Short version: nothing happens.
ReplyDeleteIirc, old Reg has now been married three times, putting him one behind Rush Limbaugh.
Of course, I always assumed SSMLT was about love; after all, the flip side of the single was "House of Cards" ("I hear tell some playboy has/kidnapped your heart/with his plane and his fancy/games after dark.") Most of the real songs about drugs aren't so insistently in major keys. (Think "Heroin" or "Lust for Life," to choose the obvious.)
To answer your last question, YES! Especially when it happens 16xs a day.
ReplyDelete