Caribou

Super-hyped on all things EJ after the brilliance of "Don't Shoot Me I'm Only The Piano Player" in February and the twofer splurge of "Yellow Brick Road" in October 1973 (a single and double-album in one year) - I recall seeing the cover art for 1974's much-anticipated follow-up "Caribou" for the first time. What! My heart sank. What a dire sleeve! Laugh out loud bad, especially coming as it did after the tri-gatefold painting and photos cool of Yellow Brick Road. And the rear cover snap of Elton and Bernie Taupin sat on chairs in some toilet backdrop looking bored out of their cocaine-addled skulls didn't lift the hopes up much either.Luckily though, the clearly strung-together album (named after the Studio in which it was recorded - another Honky Chateau moment) contained enough decency alongside the obvious filler to warrant a phew. And in 2020, the shifty little brute is still available on this huge-sounding Expanded Edition 'Classic Years' CD Remaster for under a fiver. Sneering, tarty, bitchy and cheap - the way I like my EJ. Let's get to the place where you don't want the sun to ever go down...UK released May 1995 - "Caribou" by ELTON JOHN on This Record Co Ltd/Mercury 528 158-2 (Barcode 731452815828) is an Expanded Edition (Four Bonus Tracks) in 'The Classic Years' Remastered CD Series and plays out as follows (64:12 minutes)1. The Bitch Is Back [Side 1]2. Pinky3. Grimsby4. Dixie Lily5. Solar Prestige A Gammon6. You're So Static7. I've Seen The Saucers [Side 2]8. Stinker9. Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me10. TickingTracks 1 to 10 are his tenth album "Caribou" - released June 1974 in the UK on DJM Records DJLPH 439 and June 1974 in the USA on MCA Records MCA 2116. Produced by GUS DUDGEON - it peaked at No. 1 in both countries.BONUS TRACKS:11. Pinball Wizard(Recorded in 1974 for the March 1975 UK 2LP set "Tommy: Music From The Soundtrack Of The Film by Ken Russell" on Polydor Records 2657 014. Elton played the character 'The Pinball Wizard' in the movie. The single was eventually issued as a 45 in March 1976 on DJM Records DJS 652 with "Harmony" from the 2LP set "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" on its B-side)12. Sick City(24 May 1974 UK 45 on DJM Records DJS 302, non-album B-side of "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me")13. Cold Highway(30 August 1974 UK 45 on DJM Records 322, non-album B-side of "The Bitch Is Back")14. Step Into Christmas(December 1973 UK 45 on DJM Records DJS 290, non-album track. Its non-album B-side "Ho Ho Ho (Who'd Be A Turkey At Christmas?)" and is one of the Bonus Tracks on the 40th Anniversary 2014 Box Set of "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road")The 20-page booklet is a pleasingly chunky affair with the album's inner lyric sleeve reproduced across the pages along with the colour photos of Elt's band and new highly informative liner notes from JOHN TOBLER. Interviews with key players include Producer Gus Dudgeon and lyricist Bernie Taupin - both clearly proud of the roll all in EJ's stratosphere were on in those halcyon years. It's easy to forget now in 2020 that EJ was just huge in 1973, 1974 and 1975. "Caribou" hit the No. 1 spot in the USA and UK and many other countries around the world and he would replace that with his first "Greatest Hits" in November 1974 - again numero uno in both countries. The GUS DUDGEON appendage to the Tobler liner notes explains of how the master tapes were all carefully prepared for this CD Remaster Series - "...much closer to the reproduction we had originally intended." This is a great remaster and although there have been variants since (like Japan last year) - I didn't take too much to those 'flat transfers' - so for a fiver - I'll stick with this wee thing.The album was recorded in the States at the Caribou Ranch in the mountains of Colorado (his first proper studio outing there) with his regular band members in tow - Davey Johnstone (Guitars), Dee Murray (Bass), Ray Cooper (Percussion) and Nigel Olsson (Drums). Sessions were augmented with Keyboardist David Hentschel and the five-strong Tower Of Power Horns and Trumpets including soloist Lenny Pickett ("The Bitch Is Back", "You're So Static" and "Stinker"). In between are an array of cool backing singers from session darlings Clydie King, Shirlie Matthews and Jessica Smith to special guests Dusty Springfield (all four are on "The Bitch Is Back" with Tower Of Power) - while Carl Wilson and Bruce Johnston of The Beach Boys lent their arrangement superpowers to "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me" (that song also features Billy Hinsche - associated with The Beach Boys - and Toni Tennille of Captain & Tennille). And unlike so many reissues I review, this one actually acknowledges the Four Bonus Tracks – and gives a good account of these non-album single-sides for the first time (the only downside is not reproducing the lyrics).The album opens on a belter, the wicked guitar-groove sexiness of "The Bitch Is Back" - a tune so apt that Tina Turner opened sets with it and the audience ate it up (its said Elton returned the compliment by once turning up on an American stage dressed as the great lady). Pinky owes the world nothing (say the lyrics) - a typically lovely mid-tempo ballad from EJ - subtle ARP synth playing from guest David Hentschel while Davey Johnstone keeps it light with beautifully produced acoustic picking and clever backing vocals. I've always "Pinky" to be one of his lovelier moments. The grim trawler-boat English delights of "Grimsby" just about passes muster while the Country-Rock-fied twang-dangle of "Dixie Lily" gets a tasty Saxophone Solo from Tower Of Power's Lenny Pickett. The near three-minutes of "Solar Prestige A Gammon" has elicited as much ridicule as a cheesy Eurovision Song Contest entry and is the first time that the album is testing your patience. "You're So Static" ends Side 1 with a neither here nor there franticness.The Remaster for "I've Seen The Saucers" is superb - big and bold - even if the radar and something moving outside lyrics feel like both EJ and BT are reaching (the references to crazy wavelengths and other worldly alienation smacks of both men being lost in those heady days of drugs and touring). The low-down Seventies pimp-funk of "Stinker" is another one of the album's rare winners - a sexy crawling sleaze of a song aided hugely by Tower of Power's Chester Thompson on a Billy Preston-like Organ (so tasty). Then comes the biggy - 5:37 minutes of the ballad "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me" now forever linked with George Michael's cover. "I can't light no more of your darkness...I just took out a fragment of your life..." - the lyrics etched into our memories like those harmonics Davey Johnstone hits as he introduces the guitar. Carl Wilson and Bruce Johnson from The Beach Boys add those gorgeous and distinctive California vocals to a song that contains so much pain and yet remains beautiful in some kind of epic way."Caribou" comes to an end with the near eight-minutes of "Ticking" - EJ's piano playing coming out of your speakers with such wonderful clarity. A child is taking interest in the subjects he's taught, and yet the squad comes come screaming. A man goes on a gun rampage in a bar called The Kicking Mule leaving a trail of bodies - a priest in St. Patricks rationalising all the violence with the image of pain as as 'ticking' bomb (don't ride on the Devil's knee). This track alone feels like the magnificence of "Love Lies Bleeding"on GYBR.Rather than feeling like filler, his cover of The Who's "Pinball Wizard" is fantastic and the Remaster huge. It's rare that a Townshend tune suits someone else so perfectly, but on this occasion it did. "Sick City" was the non-album B-side of "Don't Let The Sun..." - a greasy, cute and mean funk number that should have replaced some of the lesser crap on Side 1 of the album IMO. In pretty much the same vein, "Cold Highway" feels too good to be relegated to a flipside. Your 64 minutes and 12 seconds ends with the fun of "Step Into Christmas" – yo ho ho Prancer and Donner and thanks for the good year..."Caribou" used to turn up in secondhand record collections being sold into us at Reckless Records with alarming regularity - like the punter selling it figured he'd get "The Bitch Is Back" and "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me" on "Greatest Hits" and that'd be enough.But while its never going to win an Unsung Masterpiece of 1974 gong in the Mojo or Record Collector magazines - I'd genuinely forgotten the other goodies contained within. And this CD bolstered up with those four cracking bonuses, great audio and a price tag that's less than a cod 'n' chips - I'll find it in my heart to forgive that cover art (what a guy, a song for guy, oh stop it)...

OK I have always known that "Caribou" opens with one of Elton and Bernie's finest, "The Bitch Is Back", but it's that terrible front cover with it's cheap studio backdrop and EJ looking like a 'dilly rent-boy that screams "Elton-The-Smooch-Machine" and not Elton-John-kick-ass-god-of-rock-n-roll-excess that has put me off buying "Caribou" for more than forty years. But at long last I've overcome my prejudice and added "Caribou" to my collection, but like the song says, its a stinker.Were it not for the two big songs, the rocking opener "The Bitch Is Back" and the ballad "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me" and a couple of others this CD would already be on its way to the charity shop. It would seem that after the effort of producing the double album "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" John and Taupin's muse had deserted them, or was at least on vacation, when the record company came knocking resulting in a set of songs most of which would have failed to make the cut for the bloated GYBR.Ok maybe that's a might harsh; "The Bitch Is Back" and the last three tracks on the original side two, all of which exceed five minutes are excellent. "Stinker", the first of these, is contrary to its title a wonderful funky blues stomper albeit the horns are a little overblown [no pun intended], and is after "The Bitch Is Back" probably my favourite track on the album and the one I'll return to. The excellent "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me" follows, and then its "Ticking", the longest song on the album that tells the tear-jerking story of a repressed child that grows to be a barroom mass-killer, this really is one of the great but unrecognised songs from the Taupin/John catalogue although some of the playing is a bit clunky.But elsewhere it's all a bit disposable with the tracks between "The Bitch Is Back" and "Stinker" leaving no impression. "Pinky" is a throw-away EJ by numbers love song, "Grimsby" paints a half-baked romantic picture of the once great North Sea trawler port [of which Sacha Baron Cohen's film paints a more realistic picture]. "Dixie Lily" is a vacuous hill-billy piece, and "Solar Prestige A Gammon" an unnecessary song with a mid-European lilt to accompany the nonsense lyrics, the sort of thing 10cc did, only better. "You're So Static" is better but loses its way becoming cluttered when the horns start and could almost have been a filler on GYBR. "I've Seen The Saucers" sounds like a show tune and would have been a contender for the worst track on the album crown if the race to the bottom hadn't been so fierce.I am not one to usually take the bonus tracks into account when reviewing an album, each reissue coming with its own set. Fortunately though the bonus tracks on this reissue are better than much of the main album, and include John's excess-to-the-max cover of "Pinball Wizard" that takes Townsend's original excesses up another couple of notches, while "Sick City" and "Cold Highway", the B-sides of "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me" and "The Bitch Is Back" respectively are strong songs; but I don't like the inclusion of "Step Into Christmas", leave Christmas songs for Christmas compilations I say.So perhaps it's not going to the charity shop this week, but the original "Caribou" album only gets two stars from me I'm afraid.

Very under-rated entry in the Elton and Bernie catalogue. Although there were moments of indulgence and excess here, they didn't dilute the overall quality of the album nearly as much as with the overstretched and flawed masterpiece that preceded it. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is a towering achievement but there is a nagging feel of the kitchen sink and Uncle Tom Cobbly about it. Caribou has a much smaller palette but all the songs are very strong; many of them equal the quality of the pair's finest work, and the dramatic highlight, 'Don't Let The Sun...' is arguably their greatest commercial release. Many of Elton and Bernie's best songs are less well known, tucked away among the more familiar, and several of them are here on Caribou. Its main weakness is perhaps the lack of a coherent, unifying theme and a sense that things were rushed; certainly the album cover was a ghastly mistake, but I also miss the acoustic feel of Elton's earlier work. By the time of this release he was a superstar and the music had moved on. While still writing fantastic songs and lyrics; the production, instrumentation, and vocal delivery had changed; commercial stardust had been sprinkled over it, and the simple and effortless artistry beneath had become slightly obscured. All that said, this really is one of their best works; it has drama, emotion, fun, intelligence, silliness, seriousness and grit, probably all knocked off in a couple of weeks between tours. Just a shame about that cover.

Not a bad album but not one of his best but still a great voice which was at his best in the 70s and 80s his voice was better then than now whatever Elton says

My old copy ( Nearly fifty years old) was a bit crackly So I thought it was time for a new one!

Good remaster quick delivery