Elton John -- "Tower of Babel" (1975)

There are too many amazing Elton John songs, and it would be a no-brainer to pick a classic like "Your Song," "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" and "The Bitch is Back." I actually loved many of his songs that were not necessarily chart-toppers, like "Burn Down The Mission," "Take Me To The Pilot," "High Flying Bird," "Teacher I Need You," "Harmony," "Pinky," "Dixie Lily," and "Elderberry Wine" (and that's just the tip of the iceberg).

Earlier this week, actor Kiefer Sutherland was on a local rock station discussing the five or six albums that had the biggest impact on him, and he had the class to name Captain Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy among others (Led Zeppelin IV and Abbey Road were two others). For this post, it's as good an out of left field album to pick from, especially since I believe the first two thirds of it stand up as good as anything Elton John has done.

Captain Fantastic appeared two years after the massive success of the double album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, following on the roaring success of Caribou. Elton John was on an unparalleled prolific global run of success, fame and fortune, cranking out a new brilliant album every year, which nowadays is unheard of.

My younger brother owned nothing but Elton John records, so basically played them in rotation one after the other, and I just didn't have to buy them myself. I found it easy to overdose on non-stop EJ, so I kept my album collection diverse, when I could afford to.

Captain Fantastic was the first album to ever debut at the number one spot on the Billboard charts, a testament to the frenzy the man caused in the 70's. Even more impressive was that it was an autobiographical concept album that ran a little deeper and more personal than the records before it, and from a musician's viewpoint, the compositions more sophisticated.

Despite its cartoonish cover and artwork inside, Captain Fantastic was a gritty autobiographical look at the destitute and emotional days that John and lyricist Bernie Taupin were trying to make it as songwriters. From a sardonic shot at the Denmark Street publishers who dismissed their work ("Bitter Fingers") to nearly getting married young to the wrong person ("Someone Saved My Life Tonight") to scraping enough up enough money to eat ("(Gotta Get A) Meal Ticket," this was far from the cinematic fantasy world of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

"Tower of Babel," the album's second song, dives right into some of the anger, sarcasm and betrayal that permeates the record. It starts cold on John's voice accompanied by his piano, Dee Murray's electric bass, and the slight woosh of a ride cymbal for the first 40 seconds. Stark and bitter, "Tower of Babel" is a tableau of corrupt and dark times growing up in Middlesex. With a complex chord and melodic structure that goes through three different key changes, John was blessed with making all these elements flow together naturally. While each verse was low-key and full of hurt, the choruses sped up with full drums and guitars, laying on the vindictiveness.

Snow, cement and ivory young towers.
Someone called us Babylon.
Those hungry hunters
Tracking down the hours.
But where were all your shoulders when we cried.
Were the darlings on the sideline
Dreaming up such cherished lies
To whisper in your ear before you die.

It's party time for the guys in the tower of Babel
Sodom meet Gomorrah, Cain meet Abel.
Have a ball y'all
See the lechers crawl
With the call girls under the table.
Watch them dig their graves
`Cause Jesus don't save the guys
In the tower of Babel.

Watch them dig their graves
`Cause Jesus don't save the guys
In the tower of Babel, no no no.

Junk, angel, this closet's always stacked.
The dealers in the basement
Filling your prescription
For a brand new heart attack.

But where were all your shoulders when we cried
Were the doctors in attendance
Saying how they felt so sick inside
Or was it just the scalpel blade that lied.


I remember it taking a while for this song to sink in, as I was just coming off the lighthearted bombast of the Caribou album ("The Bitch Is Back," "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me"). As an American, I was thrown by Elton John's pronunciation of "Babel" ("bay-bull"), which I didn't know if it was an English quirk or a convenient device to rhyme with the word "Abel."

Electric Light Orchestra - "Can't Get It Out Of My Head" (1974)

I thought I had pretty good taste in music until I went away to college and found out that I only knew the tip of the iceberg. Down the dormitory hall from me was a junior pre-med student who was on the fencing team and an incredible cartoonist. He sometimes thought it was his mission to turn me on to new music and one of the bands he urged me to check out was the Electric Light Orchestra. So without having heard it, I splurged on their then current album, Eldorado.

Little did I know what a heavy album this was going to be. A concept album about a typical English working sod who escapes the real world by fantasizing about being in Eldorado, a land full of mythical creatures and characters out of fairy tales and storybooks. It's sort of like a trip through his madness until it seems at the end he has no choice but to stay in that make believe world entirely. The album had an overture, finale, and even a song called "Illusions In G Major." Well!

I studied the inside album sleeve with all the lyrics and credits -- it was truly a Total Music Geek album. This was my introduction to ELO's mastermind, songwriter and singer, Jeff Lynne, who very rarely ventured out from behind his sunglasses propped around his very large and curly hair.

The three string players of ELO were accompanied by a full blown orchestra, choir, and the band itself, playing traditional amplified rock band instruments. It was as perfect a combination of orchestral music combined with flat out rock and roll as you'd ever likely heard.

"Can't Get It Out Of My Head" was the big hit single from the album since it was clearly the most commercial song on it, as much as a song about losing one's mind can be. It had that famous opening C major chord with the 2nd added, used to great effect on many ballads, notably Chicago's "I've Been Searching So Long." Drummer Bev Bevan's thundering toms drop in before the pre-chorus, while the strings are arranged almost classically, atypical for a pop song.

Pretentious? A bit, but not enough to sound the alarms. I must have listened to Eldorado a zillion times on my turntable. At a record store, I found out that this was ELO's fourth album but the first to really break through on the charts, something unheard of with record company patience nowadays. Needless to say, I bought every single ELO album that came out from that point on and played them regularly.

Worth noting that power popsters Fountains of Wayne covered this song in concert and it could probably be found on Bit Torrent sites.

Below are a couple of really special videos of ELO performing this song when it was a hit. The first was definitely performed live in studio on an Australian TV show ("they're going to slaughter you!"), as it includes both the "Eldorado Overture" segueing into "Can't It Out Of My Head." The second one is the band lipsynching to a shortened version of the song in somebody's boarded up wooden shack! Both videos are notable for the fact that Jeff Lynne is not wearing his trademark sunglasses, rarities indeed.

ELO - Can't Get It Out Of My Head
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