The 20th of February 1974
Official U.K. Albums Chart results from Sunday the 17th to Saturday the 23rd of February 1974
Cut-off for sales figures was up to the end of Saturday the 16th of February
Results counted from Sunday the 17th,
and published on Wednesday the 20th of February 1974.
Elton John
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
At No.22, on the “The Top 50 U.K. Albums Chart”, the week of my 2nd Birthday, is Elton John with Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.
An absolute powerhouse…
…of an album sits at this position this week. Regarded by many as Elton’s magnum opus, it’s really not that difficult to see (and hear) why. It’s even more remarkable to learn that Bernie had all lyrics virtually written for every song in under three weeks, and Elton had written the music to nearly everything in three days! That’s just astonishing when you take in the breadth of this album as a whole; not just enough for one album, but two.
This was Elton and Bernie at the absolute zenith of their working relationship. It’s almost impossible to think now that this had been recorded mere months after his last album had released at the beginning of last year in 1973, which itself had gone straight to the top of the UK album charts, and had still been there when I’d completed my first year alive. In fact recording should have begun for this latest release in January of that year, but instead got delayed until May; with up-and-coming engineer David Hentschel flying the desk, who I will eventually discover more of his production prowess further along my musical road; but at this point, one of his biggest achievements so far had been to engineer Genesis‘ album Nursery Cryme a couple of years previously.
With a loose concept…
…of the theme of old cinematic movies, a natural progression from that last album (the artwork for this album even shows Elton with his right hand on the remains of the poster featured on the preceding album, where, back then, it stands on the pavement in front of the cinema, but this time is ripped away where it had been plastered to the brick wall), if the last was a standard feature, then this is built like an panoramic epic. Think something like Ben Hur or The Ten Commandments, but with Charlton Heston in glamtastic platform shoes, and you get the (slightly unerring) picture.
For me personally,..
…I didn’t discover this album properly until I was around 18 years old in 1990, as my eldest sister Susan had heard it back in the mid-seventies, and she had constantly gone on about Funeral for a Friend. I decided that year to buy her the double CD for Christmas, for the new CD player she’d recently bought with her husband Keith. Luckily for me, Our Price sold it to me unsealed, so home I went from Christmas shopping in Kingston to record it onto cassette first before wrapping it for her. Do I regret doing that? Absolutely not. She would have done exactly the same.
When I got the chance to listen to that first track, the thing that struck me was that I had heard it before, although chopped up and splashed to the four winds, due to watching and recording to videotape, the documentary James Dean: The First American Teenager back in the mid-eighties, where it had been used to great effect during the sequences of clips of his movies. I’d always wondered who it was by (not really taking notice of the credits). Now I knew, and it was a bit of a shame that I never got the full effect of the opening track on the album first.
So, if you’ve never heard this album from that first momentous track (highly unlikely, but I hope that someone, somewhere is out there), I urge you, to get a good set of headphones, dim the lights, press play on side one below, and close your eyes for twenty minutes while side one of this album plays. It will be one of the best twenty minutes spent of your life; and there’s still three more sides to go.
The album…
…had slammed into the chart at No.2 last autumn on the 28th of October 1973, and was only denied the top spot by the album which this week sits further back in the chart at No.31.
Eventually the chart positions would relent, and in the weeks leading up to Christmas, a surge in sales took the LP all the way up to the top of the charts, where it stayed for the final two weeks of the year.
As the world welcomed in this new year of 1974, so the album slipped back but remained solidly in the Top 10 for the majority of January, before being knocked back to these Top 20 positions, or thereabouts, where we see it now.
From here,..
…another wave eventually takes it back up and into the Top 10 for a far more substantial run, from the 10th of March to the beginning of June, where it would slip back, but stay in the Top 20 for the whole summer. In fact, the album will stay comfortably in the chart all the way through the autumn too, until it slips out after the 14th of December, having spent over a year in the chart non-stop.
With an album of this calibre, it’s no surprise to me that it will make another visit to the chart at least once more when I celebrate another birthday. Until then, I will leave its progress here, and catch up with it’s story further down my own musical road.
Record 1 / Side 1
Record 1 / Side 2
Record 2 / Side 3
Record 2 / Side 4
Many thanks go to the following YouTube Channels for providing the chance to hear these tracks, so that together we can experience all four sides of this album release, as it was intended, once again.
Please show your appreciation by visiting their channel:
Grab Your Binoculars, Come Follow Me
My Socials
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