Bennie
Producer Gus Dudgeon adds in crowd noise recorded at an Elton John show, even though the song itself was recorded in the studio. By the time the song ends, that piano is dueling with volcanic synth-bursts, and Elton is squeak-stuttering in a frantic parody of Frankie Valli’s falsetto. The part everyone remembers is the piano line, which John absolutely hammers out. Taupin keeps it ambiguous.Įlton wrote the music, as he always does, turning Taupin’s futuristic musings into a blocky trudge, a sort of inversion of his own graceful ballads. Or maybe it’s a note of caution, a warning not to put pop musicians on pedestals. And yet they inspire a whole younger generation to “fight our parents out in the streets to find out who’s right and who’s wrong.” So maybe it’s a case of Elton John, someone who was always happy to come off larger than life, imagining his own ideal. The Jets are mythic figures, objects of pure conjecture. He knows the Jets are “weird and wonderful” and “so spaced out,” and he’s at a distance from them, only knowing about them because he “read it in a magazine.” It’s idolatry. The song’s narrator is a fan of Bennie And The Jets, this Spiders Of Mars-style fictional band, but he never mentions their music, only Bennie’s electric boots and mohair suit. It’s possible to hear “Bennie And The Jets” as a satire of the pop-music industry. In its own way, “Bennie And The Jets” is just as sci-fi as Elton’s previous hit “Rocketman.” Bernie Taupin, Elton’s lyricist, wrote “Bennie And The Jets” about a future where robotic musicians become youth-culture messiahs. I’ve always had trouble connecting to the song, but it remains one of the most ubiquitous and widely beloved tracks in a ubiquitous and widely beloved catalog. But within the context of that album, “Bennie And The Jets” is a bugged-out outlier. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, the late-1973 double album that yielded “Bennie And The Jets,” was an absolute blockbuster - a #1 album for months, and the biggest-selling album of 1973. It’s too smooth to be rock ‘n’ roll and too discordant to be easy listening. And it’s not really a glam-rock song, either, even though it takes place in a strange and robotic alternate future. “Bennie And The Jets” isn’t really a soul song its beat is too clumsy and ungainly for that. “To this day, I cannot see that song as a single,” Elton told Rolling Stone in 2014. But Elton was the first white performer to dress like a leprechaun on Soul Train, which is something, and he beat David Bowie onto the show.) (Elton wasn’t the first white performer to have his music featured on Soul Train he came after both Dennis Coffey and Gino Vanelli. And Elton was so delighted by its R&B radio success that he became the first white superstar ever to perform on Soul Train. And in the UK, Elton got his way there, “Bennie And The Jets” was the B-side to “Candle In The Wind.”īut Elton was swayed when “Bennie And The Jets” started doing well on Detroit R&B radio. His pick was “Candle In The Wind,” the graceful and funereal ballad that, at some distant date, will appear in this column. When Elton recorded “Bennie And The Jets,” MCA, his label, wanted to make the song a single. But for Elton John, a #15 R&B record was probably a bigger deal than a Hot 100 #1. “Bennie And The Jets” wasn’t a huge R&B hit it peaked at #15 on Billboard‘s R&B chart.