This was pop music, John argued: You weren’t supposed to think about it too much, and god help you if you did. By 1973’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, John said they were writing a couple of songs at breakfast and recording them before lunch. Even if you didn’t know exactly what it meant-who is the dancer, and why are they so tiny?-the feeling was immediate, universal.
But beneath the feathers, John’s music-written with the lyricist Bernie Taupin-was direct and unpretentious, the kind of rock ’n’ roll storytelling that met you where you were. The excess was always apparent: the rhinestones, the costumery, the old Hollywood glamour retrofitted for a new, gender-bending world. But John had a show to put on, and wouldn’t that be something to talk about?
Adjusted for inflation, you’re talking about something more like $25,000. At the height of the fever dream that was Elton John’s life in the ’70s, the singer-songwriter had the optician Dennis Roberts design a pair of giant, sculptural glasses studded with 57 battery-powered lights in the shape of the name Elton-to the tune of about $5,000.
0 kommentar(er)
