Elton John goes back to 'Honky Chateau' on its 50th anniversary

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Of all the factors that boosted David Bowie to stardom in 1972, his guitarist Mick Ronson was by far his greatest foil. Had the fates only leaned a little bit to the left, however, it might have been Elton John who turned out on U.K. television, singing a song about a spaceman, while a platinum spider preened and poured magic over the act.

In the event, of course, Elton did it on his own. But just a year before “Rocket Man” gave him his first major worldwide hit, and while the Starman was still a fast-fading one-hit wonder, producer Gus Dudgeon gave folkie Michael Chapman a call, to see if he’d help out on Elton’s latest album, and who was the guitarist in Chapman’s current band?

Mick Ronson.

You can hear what happened on “Madman Across the Water” — not the familiar version that haunts oldies radio, but the nearly eight-minute outtake that turned up first on Elton’s Rare Tracks compilation, back in the early '90s, and again on the soundtrack to the Mick Ronson documentary Beside Bowie. And it blazes, even allowing for all that the guitarist would subsequently accomplish. 

It is, quite simply, quintessential Ronson, wildly inventive over a wash of piano and sundry acoustics, a symphony of imagery and intelligence. And all the while, Elton matches him every step of the way, effortlessly transforming his introspective past into a psychedelic warlord… so psychedelic, in fact, that Elton’s U.K. label head Dick James gave it one listen, declared that very term as a death-dealing slur, then demanded the boy start again. This time without that band.

Chapman later recalled recording as many as five tracks before James pulled the plug. Gudgeon, too, spoke highly of the recordings, and while he could not recall how many other songs were attempted, he too was disappointed when the sessions were ended. He even recommended that Elton consider offering Ronson full-time employment behind him, but again, James nixed the notion. Ronson returned to Bowie, and Elton (though he would later augment his approach with a full band, and a great guitarist, Magna Carta’s Davey Johnstone) returned to basics. And it’s unlikely that either had any complaints about how the next few years panned out. But, for one glorious moment, the entire course of Glam Rock history could have been altered.

Because Elton obviously didn’t forget. One more album in his established style, was the last James would ever hear of his scruffy balladeer, little Reg with his quiet smile, the man who still encored with “Your Song.” By the time Elton returned from his next set of sessions, at the Château D'Hierouville in early 1972, he was already styling himself Hercules… and had written a song to confirm it.

And Honky Chateau — reissued this year for its 50 (first) anniversary — is the sound of those first giant strides.

Elton John was in a peculiar position back then. America loved him — four out of four studio albums made the top six; a live set just missed the Top 10. The U.K., on the other hand… the albums did OK, but his singles could not get arrested. And singles were where the pop stars played, and that’s what Elton wanted to be. The biggest pop star on earth.

Honky Chateau would set him on his way.

He’d already started paving the path, joining Marc Bolan and T Rex at the Christmas Top of the Pops, to bash out guest piano on a celebratory “Get It On” — and looking pretty trendy for an early '70s singer-songwriter.

He would cringe, of course, at such a description. “I know I haven't the best image for rock and roll,” he told the New Musical Express, “and that probably gets in the way of my music sometimes. When I played the Fillmore East with Wishbone Ash, their manager saw me jumping on the piano. He said: ‘He's not allowed to do that — he's too fat’.”

Now Elton was in France, recording the album that would change those perceptions forever.

The lineup that accompanied him across Madman Across the Water had shifted. As Elton admitted, he’d never recorded a full album with his road band, a trio of himself, bassist Dee Murray and drummer Nigel Olsson, “[and] we were so pissed off and bored that I thought we should either break up or do something new. So I decided to use the band more prominently and add Davey [Johnstone] — we didn't rehearse with him or anything. We just invited him to France with us. It was the first time that everybody chipped in on an album.

"It seems like more of a group now that we have four members," he continued. "There were restrictions as a trio. Our main problem was that the piano was lead instrument, and, of course, it doesn't sustain notes — like Keith Emerson's organ does in ELP. But since Davey joined on guitar, it's been like a piece of cake for me. I can really relax when I play, whereas before we had to all work at filling in the sound. We went as far as we could as a trio and started boring the ass of everybody — including ourselves."

The album sessions certainly gave them opportunity to get to know one another. Tiring of working in the usual London studios, Elton took Marc Bolan’s advice and headed for the Chateau, a residential complex so comfortable that "I could never face the midday to midnight scene again.”

Interviewed by Beat Instrumental magazine, he admitted, ”Even if we were to book into an English equivalent of the Chateau, such as Manor or Escape, we'd be tempted to go back home at the end of the day. In France we're totally out of our own environment and there are no hangers on there, no phone calls."

The sessions were significant for other reasons, however. “I'd say I've got rid of three years of shit,” Elton told Sounds once the LP was complete. “That might sound strong, but there were three years of songs and back catalogue which we've finally come to an end of.” Madman Across the Water, he swore, was the end of the backlog and finally, he and songwriting partner Bernie Taupin could begin writing new material.

“Bernie and I had hit a very odd situation when we came to cut Madman. We had written only about eight songs that year, working on them separately, and it came to the point that there was nothing to fall back on if we hated one of the tracks. Normally we write about 25 numbers a year so you can tell the sort of state we were in. So wrapped up the tail end of our [old] writing, and it was the very last album of it's kind we'll ever do.”

Certainly, the mood, the subject matter, the very feel of the songs that would make up Honky Chateau was very different to those spread across their predecessors — Elton liked to call it “uncluttered,” and that’s as good a description as any, both musically and lyrically. Writer Charles Shaar Murray went so far as to add, “This album marked the first time Bernie Taupin produced a set of lyrics that didn't make you cringe when you saw them written out.” And that’s not far off the mark, either.

It was a process, too, that they were clearly gagging to dive into; “The first morning we were there,” Elton reflected, “I had three [songs] done by the time the band drifted downstairs looking for something to eat: ‘Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters,’ ‘Amy’ and ‘Rocket Man.’”

The enthusiasm remains tangible today as, for the first time across the new Honky Chateau release, we get to hear no less than eight of the album’s outtakes — recorded, as were the finished cuts, “[with] the band…. set up around me on a stage. It was just very free and easy.”

There are no songs, it must be admitted, that we haven’t heard before, but with only 10 days recording time at their disposal, Elton and the band had already finalized the album’s contents, with the only real question being, should “Slave” be recorded fast or slow?

In fact, we have previously heard the fast version, first on the Rare Masters collection and subsequently as a bonus track on sundry reissues of Honky Chateau. But there’s a lovely early version of “Mellow” awaiting discovery; “Honky Cat” is even dafter (and swearier!) in demo form than its finished version; and “I Think I’m Going To Kill Myself’ is a corker, too. Plus, there’s just enough studio chatter, false starts and unexpected raspberries that the entire sequence takes on an almost cinema verite feel. It’s just a shame that demos for neither “Amy” nor “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters” are included

With the sessions complete, the album was brought back to London for final mixing at Trident Studios, but there was no time for anyone to rest back on their laurels. Rather, Elton’s confidence in the new material was such that, as his next U.K. tour drew closer, he announced that more or less the entire LP would be debuted onstage at the most prestigious venue he could find, the Royal Festival Hall in London on February 5, 1972.

They warmed up for the gig with an appearance on Cliff Richard’s BBC show at the end of the January, but it was Madman on display that night. The gig would be the new material’s world premier and, though the concert itself is familiar to many fans from a slew of old bootlegs, few of them are complete.

Indeed, the most-circulated versions of the concert omit all eight of the songs from Honky Chateau (“Slave” and “I Think I’m Gong To Kill Myself” were absent from the show), which means disc three of the anniversary album will be many people’s first chance to hear them, just Elton and the band sounding spectacular.

Elton, meanwhile, made certain that everyone knew what he’d achieved, even admitting that hed been planning it almost a year before, only for time pressures to curtail his ambitions.

“I’d wanted to do this kind of uncluttered album when we cut Madman, [but] in the end it was cut because we had to do an album. [I]t was very painful. It was done under pressure and really tortured out of us, and I think it's remarkable that it turned out as well as it did.”

Neither was his confidence in the new direction misplaced as even journalists who didn’t customarily warm too much to Elton professed themselves impressed, particularly once the first advance pressings of the album dropped onto their desks.

“[Davey] Johnstone was excellent and considering it was his first gig as an electric guitarist, his work on Honky Chateau was pretty bloody phenomenal,” wrote the New Musical Express’ Charles Shaar Murray. “Consider also Jean-Luc Ponty's astounding electric fiddle on 'Mellow' and 'Amy.' And remember also the songs.”

April saw the release of the first single from the album, and there’s a lovely irony there. While David Bowie (and Mick Ronson) sat anxiously awaiting the hit that would justify the sheer amount of money and effort being poured into their career, “Rocket Man” looked back at Bowie’s first hit, “Space Oddity,” and delivered a timely, and cruelly so, reminder of Ziggy Stardust’s humble origins.

Later, Bowie could afford to tell the world how flattered he was that “Elton John took so much out of [Space Oddity’].” At the time, though, it wasn’t so funny. “Rocket Man” entered the U.K. chart on April 22 and, by the time “Starman” stumbled onto the same listings, Elton had already been to No. 2 with both single and the parent LP, May’s Honky Chateau.

And there was more. Portraying himself as the lonely spaceman of both songs’ fame, Elton warned: “I’m gonna be high as a kite by then.” It woul take Bowie another eight years before he discovered how Major Tom had been occupying his lonely orbit: “Ashes to ashes, fun to funky / We know Major Tom’s a junkie.”

Elton’s latest American tour was scheduled to begin on April 26 in Waco, Texas, but the days before he departed were busy, recording the TV appearances that would keep him in the public eye while he was gone. Thus, on April 27, Elton returned to Top of the Pops, performing “Crocodile Rock”; two nights later, he appeared on the in-concert Sounds for Saturdays. At the beginning of May he turned up on Sandy Shaw’s TV show; and at the end of the month, home again from the tour, it was Top Of The Pops again.

His American success had continued on as before, but bigger — “Rocket Man” reached No. 6, eclipsing “Your Song” two years earlier; Honky Chateau marched straight to No. 1, and remained there for a month.

At home, however, the landscape had completely shifted. Single and album were both high in the charts; his name was on everyone’s lips. In fact, the only cloud to cross Elton’s horizon was when he landed at Heathrow Airport at the end of the tour, to find a huge crowd of screaming girls had taken over the place… waiting to catch sight of the Osmonds. Elton was completely ignored, and the only consolation was, so were the similarly disembarking Jackson Five.

The year moved on. On June 3, he played the massive Crystal Palace Garden Party in London; in August he launched his second U.K. tour of the year. The comparative failure of a second single from the album, August’s “Honky Cat,” maybe gave him a moment of concern. But Honky Chateau was still selling strongly and, when he launched another Stateside jaunt in September, the venues were bigger and the crowds even wilder than any he’d played for before.

Photographer Bob Gruen, who had been following Elton since his American beginnings, captured just how fast this rising star ascended. “Elton was back at the Fillmore… in April [1971]…. for three nights at the top of the bill. A few months later, in June, he played two nights at Carnegie Hall; in September, he sold out a week at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. And the next time he was in New York City [in October 1972], he was playing Nassau Coliseum.”

There was no time for rest. A pre-arranged break in the U.S. tour at the end of October was arranged only to permit Elton and the band to fly home to play the Royal Command Performance in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II. And two nights later, they were in Stillwater, OK.

He had never seemed so buoyant. A new album. Don’t Shoot me,I’m Only The Piano Player, was already in the can — it was recorded again at the Chateau in June. Now, with the first single, “Crocodile Rock,” poised for release as the American dates wound down, he also took to introducing “Daniel” as just the second song in the set, before the band joined hom onstage. By the end of the year, the crocodiles would be America’s No. 1 single.

Hindsight makes it easy for critics to look back and describe Honky Chateau as a transitional album, in that it’s a lot easier to see the chap who made Tumbleweed Connection in its songs, than the rock’n’rolling lunatic who gave us “Crocodile Rock.” And while maybe some people did feel betrayed by the latter’s apparent embrace of rock and roll basics, there was a lot to keep on loving, as well — just flip the new single over, and sink into “Elderberry Wine.”

A new Elton was definitely coming, inspired by the glam rock that was now exploding over the U.K., and facilitated by the massive popularity of Honky Chateau. He remained an excellent singer-songwriter, warm, romantic, clever and confessional. But he also had a sensational wardrobe; he wore glasses with more glitter than Gary’s entire torso; and when he rocked, he glammed like billy-o.

And while it’s hard to disassociate his third hit in the year from his later appearance on The Muppet Show, when this delightful Fifties’ style rocker was voiced, indeed, by crocodiles., it was scarcely an accurate presage of the Don’t Shoot Me LP, which naturally served up more of the syrupy stuff. His next single release was “Daniel,’ and you can’t get much sadder than that.

But if you remember when rock was young, and you and Susie had so much fun… altogether now: La! Lalalala-la, lalalala-la….. And if you spool back from that, indeed to “Honky Cat,” Honky Chateau is the album that made all those memories possible.