Why Caribou Is Elton John's Most Fun Album - Rock and Roll Globe (2024)

The year 1974 is generally seen as an awkward navigation around a corner in time.

I don’t need to run down the usual historical bullet points for ya – suffice it to say, the agonizingly slow attrition of the old plus the relentless, escalating shock of the new presented as some strange growing pains.

But this was nowhere clearer than on the pop charts – a barely reconcilable mélange of Nixon-Rock, rich hippies, Sweet Baby James and Tapestry descendants, entirely too much prog, overwrought metal, overwrought soul, and a smattering of novelties. Everything was eclectic, and with post-Abbey Road and Zeppelin II production a well-funded cause, a lot of it sounded embalmed on arrival, as if “perfect sound forever” was already an ideal. Luckily, punk was hot on its heels, ready to smash the illusion. But through the dross, errant gems kept popping up across pop – pioneering hard rock soon to sound passe, pioneering easy listening soon to sound passe. But by the next decade, 1974’s zeitgeist had the feel of an antique shop in outer space.

Over in Britain near the top of the year, this was especially acute. At the end of ‘73, it was the great war: the teenyboppers (Osmonds/Cassidy) vs. the glam-stormers (Slade/Glitter). By midyear, both would be donezo, with a fascinating crop of post-Roxy nouveau-rockers (Queen, 10cc, Sparks) offering up a fresh dose of new blood. But other than Beatle Paul, hiding behind a band but in a heyday for the last time, the three biggest British solo rock stars in 1974 were pretty easy to name. And each, in their respective way, defined what the early ‘70s were about. Can you guess? Will you disagree? The three in question were a) urbane roots-rocker Rod Stewart, at one point almost as gifted and unique a songwriter as he remains a singer, b) David Bowie, pop’s first and far from last queer alien superstar, and c) Elton John, the ultimate teenage pop fan turned You Can Do It Too exemplar. All would have to escape the ‘70s in different ways.

This is because, as was the case for so many children of the ‘60s with recording contracts, 1974 trends would prove dead ends for all three. And though each remains an institution, their respective successes were never quite so unassailable as at that ‘70s midpoint. Somehow, all three independently invented an unprecedented kind of LP that year: the Superstar Step-Too-Far. Smiler, Diamond Dogsand Caribou – each captures a seminal artist having pushed just past the peak of their powers, and each of those LP covers features said artist staring at you strangely. Bowie’s is painted, so it half-counts, but his defiant “yeah we’re decadent aren’t we?” smirk has always been belied by his dog’s bottom, neutered with an airbrush on the US LP. Stewart appears aptly embarrassed on Smiler, swathed in tartan, the World Cup diverting his attention in the studio. And then there’s Caribou, on which Elton looks like he just farted.

Like Rock of the Westies or Blue Moves, or pretty much any Elton album since (name any three, without looking, from after 1976), Caribou tends to get lost in EJ’s first burst of activity. The consummate singles artist, Elton doesn’t really have ‘classic albums,’ though his oldies from the golden age of gatefold have become hallowed over time. Sensitive souls embrace Tumbleweed Connection and Madman Across the Water, deeply pretentious records brimming with brilliant melodies. Commerce-friendlier Eltonites favor Honky Chateau, the first great compromise from a mercenary in auteur’s clothing, while Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player sold a metric sh*t-ton. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, with its ambitiously tailored scope and lavish package, converts both camps. I’m here to posit that all nine of the studio albums from the self-titled through Westies are terrific, and all are flawed, and none is especially superior to another.

But now it can be told: the only reason Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (or Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy) gets the regular nod over Caribou (or Rock of the Westies) is that Caribou is openly vulgar. I’ve never been clear how an album with “Jamaica jerk-*ff,” or one of the cruelest songs about a queer woman ever invented by a straight man, so frequently passes the white elephant test. But Goodbye and Captain were serious – they had that very serious packaging, and an air of Concept. Caribou and Rock of the Westies had an air of “tossed off for tour product,” in part because they were. But it doesn’t seem to have occurred to everybody at the time that the wildly entertaining, cheeky-cheery Elton was at his best off the cuff. He poses on Caribou’s cover, in front of the fakest landscape ever printed, like a charlatan whose wares are so shoddy even he’s smirking as they fall apart – his grin is like a preemptive apology.

Gus Dudgeon, who was extra through his final days, made no bones about his regrets to John Tobler, an agreeable chap who phoned in (or did his best for) the liner notes for Elton’s 1995 “Classic Years” series of reissues. Copy like this is priceless: “A piece of crap… the sound is the worst, the songs are nowhere, the sleeve came out wrong, the lyrics weren’t that good, the singing wasn’t all there, the playing wasn’t great and the production is just plain lousy!” (Did James William Guercio fiddle with the knobs while you stepped away, sir?) That’s right in the booklet of your new CD! It almost rivals “Congratulations! You have just purchased our worst album.” And it’s true, when Caribou sucks, it sucks more openly than the other “Classic Years” albums – usually when Tower of Power is blasting processed cheese over everything. I promise you, though – Elton rarely doesn’t give a f*ck, so the DGAFs captured here are practically punk.

This is nowhere clearer than on the opening four minutes – a song which instantly makes you wonder if this is in fact the best Elton John album ever made. Elton’s rich, blocky, sustain-saturated playing style, as well as his choice of arranger, made him a natural for ballads. And while his adenoidal caw of a voice was suited to neither those nor the hard stuff, it was clear watching him on stage since his breakout, or hearing him perk up for the first time on “Honky Cat,” that flaming rock ‘n’ roll was where his heart really lied. “The Bitch is Back” is a burst of liberated self-assurance, its tone a kind of openhearted menace – the ideal original “I’m me and f*ck you” anthem. A perusal of Bernie’s lyrics, deliberately mangled in the vocal as usual, makes you wish you hadn’t (though he was definitely the edgiest bad Dylan imitator). But he couldn’t have known what an A+ title he had: the original queen bitch wildly proclaiming her primacy.

That’s the great conundrum of the Elton-Bowie reign – that pop’s greatest original force for gay liberation wasn’t even the gay one. Not that it feels disguised in retrospect. But though you do feel for closeted EJ, strategy over bravery is only so compelling a tale. So it’s lovely to imagine “Bitch” as Prince John getting one over on an audience he just knew he had in his grip in the summer of ’74. “Ah’m a BEEYITCH, Ah’m a BEEYITCH, yah the BETCH IS BAAACK!” (“Stone cold sober as a matter of fact” – though this was actually increasingly less true for Elton at the time, it makes for a ridiculously perfect toss-off rhyme, something we non-drinkers can use to juice ourselves up). Its aura of total dominance hits you like an a-bomb, yet there isn’t a speck of machismo in it. For once on this album, horns so glitzy Vegas wants ‘em back only add to the punch – a fruit punch, overflowing with sugar and zest, vibrant with dayglo color, and spiked.

VIDEO: Elton John performs “The Bitch Is Back” at Dodger Stadium

What follows is a rush of five songs nearly everybody has forgotten, every one of which is an indisputable pleasure, and every one of which makes you wonder exactly why you’re enjoying it so much. “Pinky” is a sumptuous, if somewhat disjointed, ballad, an arrow aimed true from a next-morning melted heart, and captures the deep-in-love feeling earlier just-misses like “Blues for My Baby and Me” were going for. It’s so plainly beautiful, you almost stop wondering why this woman is called “Pinky,” or what in the hell the chorus means exactly: “Pinky’s as perfect as the 4th of July/quilted and timeless, seldom denied/the trial and the error of my master plan [???]/now she rolls like the dice in a poor gambler’s hands.” Somewhere between “Bernie running out of ideas” and “Bernie on the road to the perfected oblique breakup lyric of ‘I Feel Like a Bullet (in the Gun of Robert Ford)’.” Then the LP starts to get even weirder, and even more fun.

The absolutely daffy riff of “Grimsby” is topped for inexplicability only by the way too loud crunchy riff after the choruses – shades of “Social Disease” fixing its own volume level up a minute into the song. Following that, a ditty about a riverboat (“Dixie Lily”) that is as wiggy and silly as “Proud Mary” is stately and righteous. So far, the vibe is, “I’m having a lot of fun, yet I’m not sure this is how I want to.” Well! If you thought Elton was going to ease you back down to earth, you’ve got another thing coming. All of a sudden, a mock-dramatic opening chord, and half-imitating Caruso, Elton bellows this phrase: “oh ma cameo molesting.” The bitch was back – Bernie’s ostensible response to critics of his post-Keith Reid doggerel was to write three stanzas of literal nonsense. I read about “Solar Prestige a Gammon” long before I heard it, and dreaded it. It is a complete delight, and there is perhaps no better testament to Elton’s musical genius. This man can worm some genuine bullsh*t into your ear, and make you love it.

Here’s where things start to go off the rails. “You’re So Static” – that makes at least five titles in a row that make you go “huh?” – asks the question, “what genre haven’t we burlesqued yet?” and answers “tango.” As the immolating climax of a nonstop side, it sticks the rush’s landing – as layer after layer of overdub crowds you off your dancefloor (or out of your car), you’re nothing if not overwhelmed. But if you weren’t dancing or blasting the record in your car, you might start to find yourself getting annoyed. And perhaps Caribou’s greatest achievement is how long it seems to be trying to annoy you before it finally succeeds. In any case, the problem with the second side is the opposite as that of the first – it drags. “I’ve Seen the Saucers” feels as offhand as “Pinky,” but without its emotional core – guess I don’t have to tell you what the song is about – it’s just odd and boring, nice melodies and convinced vocal flights notwithstanding.

Then there’s the aptly named “Stinker.” Elton already – somehow! – got away on Goodbye Yellow Brick Road with a conspicuously protracted, indulgently mean-spirited hard-rocker (“Dirty Little Girl”). And to be fair, “hard blues” was another hat he’d yet to try on. There is so little good about this recording, and by the time Elton is vamping “stinky! stinky! stinky!” near its unbearable climax, you really do wonder where the quality control department he could absolutely afford was on vacation. Then perhaps Elton’s dullest and most indulgently sentimental “classic single,” “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me,” which leans hard into his occasional preference for taking too long to build up to his chorus (see “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” which justifies it). It’s poignant, but not as much as it intends, and the Beach Boys in the chorus serve the same function as Dusty Springfield on “The Bitch is Back”: neato sleeve credit, invisible touch.

VIDEO: Elton John performs “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” in Sydney, Australia, 1986

Finally there’s “Ticking,” which was voted in a Rolling Stone readers’ poll as Elton fans’ second-favorite deep cut – beneath “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters,” which is much better but not as good as a lot of less sincere ones. “Ticking” is aggressively sincere; Elton’s slower ones are always pretty, but many of them meander, and none more than this eight-minute one. Mass shooters were still uncommon enough (god) to make for a temptingly profound subject in ’74, but jesus this is bad. And exactly why did Bernie need to shove in those casual slurs? “Knifed a negro waiter” is bad enough, but it also includes the incidental detail “some g**k said,” though the narrator is a second-person nonentity – if it’s supposed to be some character, it isn’t clear, and it violates the solemn tone of the music. As does the horrible random vocal overdubs on “someone called the police,” at which point you hope Caribou gets caught in the crossfire.

But then you put the record away, and let the bad taste and bewilderment slide of out your mouth and mind a little, and eventually your curiosity tempts you back – or maybe it’s the blue hue of the fake sky or Elton’s questionable but arresting outfit, or the fact that no matter how much wrong he does, you never don’t like Elton John. You just don’t. And then you put it on and hear that assault-rifle round of sterling silver riff, and the bitch is back, and you’re in his/her clutches yet again, having the time of your life. For Caribou is certainly not lacking in joie de vivre – he may have been inching backward toward a long fall off the top of the game, but I think the key to this record full of inconsistently wonderful disposables is, indeed, the superstardom of it all. Elton had more money and love than he’d ever dreamed, and he’d just put out his magnum opus. He could never do whatever the f*ck he wanted more than here.

It may not be Great Art, but golly gosh is it fun – and the fact is, he may never have had this much fun on record again.