Elton John 'Island Girl'

Chart Peak:
YouTube

Elton's 14th Top 30 single in Britain was 'Island Girl'. It reached No. 14 in November 1975 and became his 5th No. 1 in America - his 3rd just in 1975 following 'Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds' and 'Philadelphia Freedom'.

Side 3 has been pretty decent so far, albeit very 80s-oriented. The good news is that this single is a break from the latter. Unfortunately, it's kind of a change from the former as well; just like the fifth track on the first disc it's an attempt at reggae by some white people who sound like they might once have had the genre described to them by a deaf person, and it comes with an unpalatable side-order of racial stereotyping. Not only is this statuesque lady "black as coal" but she's a whore who will wrap herself around you "like a well-worn tyre". Really, Bernie Taupin actually wrote that and thought it was OK. I can just about imagine that the chorus "What you want with the white man's world" (note the elided auxillary verb there, to make it sound more "ethnic") is only supposed to be patronising rather than actively racist but it doesn't sound right at all now. The most charitable interpretation I can make is that his album Rock Of The Westies was allegedly somewhat rushed, and this has the atmosphere of an in-joke studio jam that ended up on an album out of desperation. And I obviously do recognise that this was almost forty years ago and the world has moved on. It's not really any good musically, although that odd guitar sound that opens the track and recurs later on is quite nice. Somebody sample it and put it in a better song please.

Available on: Rock Of The Westies

Elton John 'Nikita'

Chart Peak: 3

YouTube

'Nikita' became Elton John's 27th Top 30 single in October 1985. It had reached Number 4 by the end of the month. The single also features the talents of Nik Kershaw and George Michael.

They don't actually specify which talents, although George Michael's backing vocal is easy enough to identify (he was even more prominent on the follow-up 'Wrap Her Up') and Kershaw apparently plays guitar, which was after all where he started out. It's a strangely downbeat start to Side Two of the album and, if memory serves, this is the full-length album version that seems to go on for ages.

Of course, we all know now that Nikita is a boy's name but at the time (before Elton John was out) it was promoted as being a song about a girl on the other side of the Iron Curtain. What's interesting about that is that of course Elton didn't write the lyric, it's by his regular oppo Bernie Taupin who must therefore have been in on the joke. Video director Ken Russell apparently wasn't (or chose to ignore it if he was). But all I really noticed at the time was the car, if I'm honest.

Sexuality aside, it's an odd song to come back to now because the division of Germany proved not to be as permanent as it seemed at this time, and less than five years after this song was in the chart it became an anachronism. By that time, though, the production of this song already sounded out of place, although most of it has aged better than I feared, possibly because that rather cold atmosphere it conjures up seems to fit the subject matter. The same cannot be said for the synthesiser solo in the middle, however.

Also appearing on: Now 4, 11, 12, 18, 22, 56, 61 (with 2Pac), 62
Available on: Ice On Fire

Elton John 'I Don't Wanna Go On With You Like That'

Chart Peak: 30

YouTube

Charted at No. 57 on 29/5/88, had reached No. 41 by 12/6/88

Well, doesn't that sleevenote just drip with excitement?The eagle-eyed will notice that those dates are the Sundays on which the chart would have been announced, as opposed to the official chart date that shows up in reference books and so on, which would be the following Saturday. As well as giving us a clue to when the sleeve went to press, this implies that much further progress was expected from the single, and I do remember hearing it quite a bit at the time. In the event, though, it stalled at 30 for a fortnight and dropped away fast thereafter; indeed it was his last Top 40 single of the decade here. Mind you, it went on to do rather better in the USA, peaking at 2 behind his fellow Briton George Michael.

In the UK at least, the second half of the 1980s seem to have been a pretty tough time for Elton, personally and professionally, and he's described the Reg Strikes Back album from which this track came as an attempt to get his mojo. As a song, it's solid rather than impressive, with a fairly by-the-book Bernie Taupin lyric about a man who doesn't want to share his girlfriend, and the most generous description would be harmless fluff, but as I've said before I often find him more tolerable in this mood that when he's trying to be important.
Where it really goes pear-shaped is the production. It doesn't stand out so much in the video but when you listen in stereo and especially on headphones, the dominant element is the drum machine which beats out the unexciting and unchanging rhythm for four and a half minutes. It sounds more like a click-track for the studio than something you're actually meant to hear and it's quite a surprise that a producer with the track record of Chris Thomas could ever think this a good idea. On the upside, it's apparently one of the few tracks of this era where Elton gets to do the thing that was his original claim to fame, ie playing the piano, though you wouldn't know it from his gorilla-like efforts in the video. Speaking of the video, doesn't he look a bit like Alexei Sayle at around 0:40?

Also appearing on: Now 4, 6, 11, 18, 22, 56, 61 (with 2Pac), 62
Available on: Reg Strikes Back

Elton John 'Passengers'

Chart Peak: 5

DailyMotion

He hasn't been on as many of these as you might think, given his consistent run of hits, and this might not be where he'd have wanted his Now history to start. But here it is anyway, and I have to admit that after years of revisionists telling me how great his "serious" Seventies records were, my contrarian streak has gravitated a little towards this bouncy light-hearted part of his career.

In truth, this song isn't pure novelty. Like the previous Culture Club track, the bouncy tune an call-and-response vocals are supposed to conceal a political message: apparently a version of the train/apartheid metaphor Madness later used to greater effect on 'Waiting For The Ghost Train'. Intentionally or otherwise, though, it's fairly well hidden, especially with the distraction of the gay-James-Bond video (though of course Elton John was married to a woman at this time). Basically, it's difficult to say much for it now, but it was cheery enough for me at the time.

Also appearing on: Now 6, 11, 12, 18, 22, 56, 61 (with 2Pac), 62
Available on: Breaking Hearts