The kitchen light at the cottage has burned out. Just the kitchen light bulb, actually, since no light fixture has graced it yet. This required a fourteen-foot ladder to be brought into the kitchen complete with various vestiges of circular sawing detritus. At least we have a fourteen-foot ladder. And now we have a new light. But I digress.
This is not the topic for today. The topic for today is Elton John and maybe also Paul Simon. The former avec the spouse from Scarborough. The latter of the Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover, all fifty ways I think I am guilty of. And both who have decided to be on their last live tour in 2018.
Full disclosure: I like both Elton John. And Paul Simon. Not necessarily in that order. And I have seen both of them live. Not necessarily in that order.
My first introduction to Paul Simon came with his sidekick, Mr. Garfunkel, singing Sounds of Silence and what not. Subway walls and tenement halls were not in my lexicon. But when he came along to be Rhyming Simon that’s when he jumped right into my wheelhouse. “You have to learn how to fall, before you learn to fly,” and indeed I did. And when I saw him at Maple Leaf Gardens in the early 1980s on the One Trick Pony tour with my one-trick-pony of a boyfriend. I’m pretty sure Paul was telling me to cut bait. And eventually, to get diamonds on the soles of my shoes. Which I did, post haste.
Then came Elton, sitting on the roof and kicking off the moss. And then he was the Rocket Man. With the weirdly worded lyrics “Mars ain’t the place to raise your kids, and there’s nowhere there to raise them if you did.” And all the winter-summer students at the Byways. But Elton was also with me in the summer of 1975, telling me not to let the Sun Go Down on Me at summer French school. And telling me Country Comfort’s any truck’s that’s going home.
Just heard a radio interview with Bernie Taupin, Elton’s lyricist, that was kind of interesting. He talked about writing U.S. stuff before ever having been there. Tumbleweed Connection was their notion of Western rural life. And they had never been to New York when Mona Lisa and Madhatters were galivanting around.
But I did see Elton in San Francisco at a free concert at Oracle World in 2015. Oracle World, for those who are not in this world, is Larry Ellison World in full flight. The America’s Cup boat, as non-boat-like as it is, sits on the closed off street outside the Moscone Center on its massive axis. Or maybe that’s ‘axi.’
We went to Treasure Island in San Fran bay to see Elton. It was outside. There were about 1,000 people. Elton had his tour piano. We had food stations. We had wine and beer. We had Tiny Dancer. We had Your Song. We had Goodbye Norma Jean. And it was awesome.