Elton's Song

[Guest Dabeagle]

As a young man very unsettled about who and what I was I found a lot of release through Elton John's music. Most of it is depressing, from an earlier perspective, and I was good with that. But then I found this VHS of some of his songs from 'The Fox' album and was just blown away. I watched it repeatedly and even wanted to pretend to lose it just to have it.

I forgot about it for years. 'The Fox' was one of just a slew of albums Elton released, and I don't think it was considered major one for him. Then I got this Laser Disc Player. It doesn't work right, I'm going to try and have it fixed this afternoon. But i have two concerts for it, and some of that stuff never got released to CD. For instance, if you bought the album 'Live in Australia' there was a whole selection of songs with just Elton's band that wasn't included, things like surprisingly catchy 'One Horse Town' or 'Hercules'. I think Hercules was one. ANYway. Then there was the 'Breaking Hearts Tour' in support of that album in 1984. There were two parts to that concert and they were separate releases, the Day and Nighttime shows. Day is reasonably available but Nighttime isn't.

So here I was fiddling with the LCD and I went to my computer to do a search for the Nighttime concert (75.00 on eBay. Gah) and I started to screw around and rediscovered this video. What a great song for young love to begin with, but can you imagine the impact in your life if you'd seen this as a teenager?

[Cole Parker]

You can't watch that and not be touched.

C

[The Pecman]

Yeah, I remember that when it was first released 30 years ago. Very moving. I haven't seen it since it was first released, and didn't know the name of the song since it wasn't one of Elton's hits (at least not in America).

Interesting story about the music video on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elton%27s_Song

The shot in the stairwell at 2:38 is one from which I've had a still-frame in my head for decades. I know that feeling.

BTW, note that director Russell Mulcahy was also one of the co-creators of Queer as Folk in England, and also directed some of the biggest music videos in history, including many by Duran Duran, Billy Joel, and Fleetwood Mac (among others). Some of his music videos have some very interesting gay touches, including Joel's "

" and Elton John's "

."