Me and Captain Fantastic

Elton John and Billy Joel are playing a concert here in town tomorrow night; my cousin and her daughter are coming to town to see it and they asked me if I was interested in going, and I said, no, I'm too old for concerts. I don't exactly believe that, though I've only seen two concerts in the past few years, and it's altogether possible that I'll never again feel moved to attend a live music event.

But I don't need to see Elton because I saw him in his heyday; it was a great show and I don't want to run the risk of being disappointed in him now. It was 1973, I was a high school senior, and Elton was my idol. I was gay and knew it (though I wasn't exactly out to anyone except myself), but Elton's flamboyance wasn't the main reason I liked him (he wasn't out, either). I discovered him in early 1972, just a few months before he had his first #1 album, Honky Chateau, when a friend turned me on to Tumbleweed Connection, a very non-flamboyant work, almost rustic (though calculatedly and artificially so) with its countryish, folkish sound. It's still a favorite album of mine, and the album's masterpiece, "Burn Down the Mission," is still one of my favorite songs.

His appeal to me was that he was a pop chameleon; he, his lyricist, Bernie Taupin, and his band could do any kind of pop music: rock, R&B, easy listening, glitter pop, bubblegum, art songs, love songs, ballads, whatever. I had always liked piano-based pop, and Elton was a great piano player, a soulful singer, and a damned good songwriter--even when Taupin's lyrics got crazy, Elton's melodies were always compelling. I admit I haven't really followed his career much since the late-80's (and his last really good songs "I Don't Wanna Go On With You Like That" and "Sacrifice"), but I can still listen to most of his music before that and enjoy it. The Elton albums of my high school and college days, especially Honky Chateau and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, hold up well, and give me my necessary nostalgia fix.

The tickets for the Elton John concert, in October of 1973, just weeks before the release of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, were a birthday present from my mom. It was my first concert and I couldn't have picked a better first. Our seats were way up in the nosebleed section of OSU's St. John's Arena, but Elton's colorful outfits, oversized glasses, and shiny platform shoes were still visible to us, and since one of my friends brought along binoculars, we got some good close-up views. The music was great, and though the glow of nostalgia may color my memories, I can only think a handful of other shows that were as much fun for me: Queen in the mid-70's, Manhattan Transfer in the mid-80's, and Erasure just a couple of years ago.

I wrote down the set list all those years ago, and sadly, only a fragment of my written notes remain, but I'm fairly sure that the set list went something like this:

Funeral For A Friend / Love Lies Bleeding
Rocket Man
Your Song
Madman Across the Water (with a long jazzy piano bit in the middle)
Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters
Honky Cat
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Burn Down the Mission
Hercules
Levon
Crocodile Rock
Daniel
Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting
with an encore of Honky Tonk Women

I hope my cousin and her daughter have a great time, but I've had mine and don't want to risk re-living it for real. I'll re-live it in my memory.