Elton John’s Derivative Rock

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British-born Reginald Kenneth Dwight, better known by his stage name, Elton John, hit #1 on the singles and album charts in the U.S. prior to doing so in his home country.

His first #1 album stateside was Honky Château, which topped the chart in 1972, thanks to hit singles “Rocket Man” (#6) and “Honky Cat” (#8).

The first single off his follow-up album was inspired by a song Elton discovered while touring Australia the year Château was released. A local band named Daddy Cool had a million-selling smash in that country called “Eagle Rock,” which remained at #1 on their singles chart for ten weeks. The song told of a popular American dance from the 1920s.

Bernie Taupin, Elton’s lyricist in those days, wrote of a fictional American dance from the early days of rock and roll. Taking Bill Haley & His Comets’ “See You Later Alligator” as inspiration for this dance, Taupin called it the “Crocodile Rock.” Another Haley classic is referenced in the song, as Elton sings “while the other kids were rockin’ ‘round the clock.”

Other early rock-and-roll tunes inspired the writers (Elton composed the music) as well. Buddy Kaye, writer of “Speedy Gonzales,” a 1962 hit for homophobic shitbag Pat Boone, accused Elton of copying that tune for “Crocodile Rock”’s “la la la la la” refrain. Elton’s response to Kaye’s claim was that “Crocodile Rock” was “a really blatant homage to ‘Speedy Gonzales’ and all the great ’50s and ’60s records that we used to love.” So there!

“Crocodile Rock,” which, by the way, contains eighty “la’s,” was released as a single in the U.S. in November of 1972, the first single released by MCA Records. It became the first of eight #1 singles for Elton John. In the U.K. the single peaked at #3. The long-player from which it was taken, Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player, became the second of seven #1 Elton John albums in the U.S. and his first #1 album in the U.K.

(Elton’s first solo single to top the charts in the U.K. was 1990’s “Sacrifice.” He previously topped the U.K. chart with “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart,” a duet with Kiki Dee, in 1976.)

Of Elton’s first U.S. #1, Bernie Taupin said “I don’t want people to remember me for ‘Crocodile Rock.’ … But there are things like ‘Crocodile Rock’ which was fun at the time, but it was pop fluff. It was like, ‘Okay, that was fun for now, throw it away, and here’s the next one’” and called the song “a strange dichotomy because I don’t mind having created it, but it’s not something I would listen to.”

Elton’s retort to critics who called the song derivative was “it’s derivative in every sense of the word.”

Today Elton John turns 68 years old. Here are twenty tracks from when he and his rock were young.

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Neil Young’s Homophobia and AIDS-phobia

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“You go to a supermarket and you see a faggot behind the fuckin’ cash register, you don’t want him to handle your potatoes.” – Neil Young in Melody Maker, September 1985

It sucks when anybody makes an ignorant and offensive statement, particularly when it’s somebody the public eye. For this post I‘ll focus on homophobia (and related AIDS-phobia).

It sucks when Pat Boone says children are being “indoctrinated with an appreciation for homosexuality,” but that didn’t hurt me too much as Pat Boone is a talentless has-been who built his career on taking songs recorded by Little Richard and Fats Domino and making them safe for uptight white folks. I wasn’t his target audience (notwithstanding that I wasn’t born yet when he rose to fame).

It sucks when Donny Osmond says he condemns homophobia and opposes gay marriage, but at least he’s (inadvertently) condemning himself, thereby saving me the trouble. Also, he’s marginally more talented and slightly less of a has-been than Pat Boone, and while I love “Morning Side of the Mountain,” if someone told me I had to delete all Osmonds recordings from my iTunes library, I wouldn’t put up much of a fight.

It sucks that Eminem’s new song has the lyric “Happy as Anderson Cooper having a tuba crammed in his pooper.” It’s not so much that it’s homophobic per se. It’s that a 42-year-old feels he has to resort to such juvenilia to feel relevant and not see his career go the way of Pat Boone and Donny Osmond. He doesn’t need to stoop to this. He still sells truckloads of records, despite having made only one or two good singles in the past decade. He could probably keep coasting for a while. And seriously, a tuba? That doesn’t even rhyme.

It sucks that The Beastie Boys wanted to title their first album Don’t Be a Faggot, with a couple of song lyrics that were interpreted as homophobic. However, in 1999 the trio’s Ad-Rock sent a letter to Time Out New York that read “I would like to … formally apologize to the entire gay and lesbian community for the shitty and ignorant things we said on our first record, 1986′s Licensed to Ill. There are no excuses. But time has healed our stupidity. … We hope that you’ll accept this long overdue apology.”

It’s odd that director Jonathan Demme reached out to Neil Young to compose and record a theme song for his 1993 film Philadelphia. Demme told The Toledo Blade that the film was “intended to reach an audience in desperate need of sensitization on the issue of homophobia. We thought how the right movie could help young males – the most rigid of all – open up to the humanity and courage of gay people. So I had this idea that I would start it off with a giant Neil Young guitar anthem and it would relax all the young uptight homophobic guys.” So he asked a guy who thought AIDS was spread via potatoes touched by faggots. Young recorded a song for the film, and while it wasn’t the anthem Demme was expecting (Bruce Springsteen ended up providing that), it fit the film well and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song, which it lost to Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia.”

I don’t recall Neil Young ever apologizing for his boneheaded homophobic and AIDS-phobic remarks; however, I don’t recall him making similar statements since the mid-eighties, and that may be better than an apology.

In his 2002 biography of Neil Young, Shakey, Jimmy McDonough writes “I had found out that Young was planning on donating the proceeds from the ‘Philadelphia’ track to the Gay Men’s Health Crisis center. He acknowledged it was true but didn’t seem anxious to publicize the fact. I got the feeling there were other chartable acts I didn’t know about. ‘I’m not trying to score any social points,’ he said.”

Today Neil Young turns 69 years old. Here are twenty career highlights. (NOTE – “Philadelphia” is not on Spotify.)

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Ten Facts About Little Richard

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1) Mojo magazine’s list of “The 100 Records that Changed the World” placed Little Richard’s “Tutti-Frutti” at #1.
2) Pat Boone, who made a career of recording new tracks by African-American acts and sanitizing them for white audiences, covered Little Richard’s “Tutti-Frutti” in 1956 and had a bigger hit with it than Richard did. To avoid a repeat of this, Richard and his producer, Bumps Blackwell, rehearsed the follow-up single, “Long Tall Sally,” until Richard could sing it as fast as possible, with the thinking that Boone wouldn’t be able to sing it as fast. Little Richard’s version became his first top ten pop hit and the biggest-selling single in the history of Specialty Records. Unfortunately, Pat Boone also enjoyed a top ten hit with his version.
3) Richard wrote a song about a female impersonator from his hometown who was called Queen Sonya. He changed Sonya to Lucille, which became the song’s title. It became Richard’s longest-charting hit in 1957.
4) While on tour in 1957 Richard decided to give up rock & roll and enter the ministry. He left the tour ten days early. The original flight on which he had been scheduled to return home crashed into the Pacific Ocean.
5) In 1962 Richard returned to performing secular music while touring Europe. Sam Cooke was his opening act.
6) Later in 1962 Little Richard’s opening act was The Beatles. Richard taught Paul McCartney how to sing like he does.
7) In 1963 The Rolling Stones opened for Richard. Said Mick Jagger: “I couldn’t believe the power of Little Richard onstage. He was amazing.”
8) Members of Little Richard’s band at times include Jimi Hendrix and Billy Preston. This line-up can be heard on the track “I Don’t Know What You’ve Got (But It’s Got Me),” the last single released by Vee-Jay Records.
9) Rolling Stone magazine’s list of The Greatest Artists of All Time has Little Richard at #8.
10) Today is his 81st birthday.

Enjoy this playlist inspired by one of rock and roll’s originators, Little Richard.