On this day (October 5) in 1973, Elton John released Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, his first double album. Later that year, it topped the charts in multiple countries. In the United States, it spent eight consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. The album included multiple hit singles that became classics, including the title track, “Bennie and the Jets,” and “Candle in the Wind.”
Initially, John, Bernie Taupin, and his band intended to record Goodbye Yellow Brick Road in Jamaica in the same studio where the Rolling Stones cut Goats Head Soup. However, the studio was in disarray, and tensions in the country were high. After days of being utterly unproductive, they chose to return to Château d’Hérouville, where they previously recorded Honky Chateau.
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While they were comfortable at the Château d’Hérouville, they also knew they had to make up for lost time. So, they came up with a system. “During a typical day, the band would come down, there’d be instruments around the breakfast table, Bernie would be writing at the typewriter, I’d be sitting at the electric piano,” John told Rolling Stone. “As the band came down for breakfast, I would write the song, they would pick up their instruments and play it,” he added.
“By the time breakfast was over…we’d written and rehearsed two songs. Then, we went into the studio and recorded them. That was the routine,” John explained in a retrospective interview about the album.
Elton John Didn’t Want “Bennie and the Jets” for a Single
Elton John scored multiple hits with the singles from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. The lead single, “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting,” reached No. 12 in the United States. The title track went to No. 2. “Bennie and the Jets” was the only single to reach the top of the Hot 100. However, John had to be convinced to release it.
John was already working on his next album, Caribou, at Caribou Ranch studios in Colorado when his label called and told him they wanted to release “Bennie and the Jets” as the next single in the United States. He disagreed, telling them that he wanted to release “Candle in the Wind.”
“They fought and fought and fought. And I turned them down so many times until they told me that the record had gone to No. 1 on the R&B station in Detroit. For me, a white boy from Pinner who had grown up loving Black music and played the blues and R&B all my life, I went, ‘Oh,’ and let them have their way,” he recalled. “It just goes to show that sometimes as an artist, you know nothing.”
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