Tumbleweed Connection

Elton John's third album, released in 1971, had a concept--it was all country and Western. Many British kids grew up loving American rhythm and blues, but many also loved country, especially Bernie Taupin, who has written many songs about going back to country roots: "Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road," "Honky Cat," and "Country Comfort," which is on this album:

"Now the old fat goose is flying cross the sticks
The hedgehog's done in clay between the bricks
And the rocking chair's creaking on the porch
Across the valley moves the herdsman with his torch"

The album kicks off with "Ballad Of A Well-Known Gun," about a gunfighter who has been caught, and also includes "My Father's Gun," about the Civil War:

"From this day on I own my father's gun
We dug his shallow grave beneath the sun
I laid his broken body down below the southern land
It wouldn't do to bury him where any Yankee stands"

It seems that rock musicians find the romanticism of the failed Confederacy better fodder for songs, witness The Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." No mention of slavery in either song.

John created increasingly more complicated melodies that were at times confounding, but always interesting. "What Now Saint Peter" is one of them, as is "Burn Down The Mission," which may be the best known song from this collection. The latter song has four key changes, and the main melody is an earworm I haven't been able to shed in the last few days. I'm not sure what the lyric is about--it appears to concern an act of arson to save a community--but it is a grand epic.

Tumbleweed Connection also contains a double rarity with the tune "Love Song." It's one of the only songs I know that appears on a John album that wasn't written by him (it was written by Lindsay Duncan) and also does not feature a keyboard (it is accompanied by acoustic guitar). To make up for that is "Talking Old Soldiers," which features just a piano.

John had still not broken into the big time, but it was coming.