Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Time is a construct displaying humanity’s absurd notion that if it can conquer a planet, then it can also be the master of the clock, of the minutes and seconds that ever present in nature; in the grand scheme of the apparent stillness of the universe, the world is only tune to the beat of the one who calls itself master, and that in which plays the tune to be heard in the Honky Château.
A reappraisal of a familiar album is always welcome, especially in a time when we are fortunate to see the progression of music from a different view. When we consider what may have been viewed as ground-breaking 50 years ago and then compare it to the subtleties of remix and reissue today, when we add what was original cutting and sessions, we can truly envisage just how the master strode through Time as if they owned it completely.
There are so many recording milestones in the discography of Elton John that the listener could hardly be blamed for swapping their favourite listed when confronted by a new dimension, a new exploration of a classic.
Many though will forgo the later years, the pop classics held aloft by MTV and the soft gaze of playfulness that the musician produced and refer younger listeners to the time when Elton John and Bernie Taupin were, undoubtedly, one of Britain’s, if not the world’s, greatest musical partnership.
Honky Château enjoys it renaissance 50 years later on the basis of just how incredible the sound is portrayed, almost as of it an extra player stepping out of the darkness and taking a deserved bow between the piano man and the lyric writer, and along with a band that truly understood the brief, Dee Murray, Davey Johnstone, Nigel Olsson, and Jean-Luc Ponty, the depth of the album produced is one of the few that could stand the test of time so well, and along with Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Captain Fantastic and The Dirt Brown Cowboy, to be seen as peak Elton/Bernie collaboration.
From the sheer scope of Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going To Be A Long, Long Time), which has been afforded greater prominence in more recent times with the adoption of an official video tying it to the rights and fears of asylum seekers, through the underrated Amy and the scintillating I Think I’m Going To Kill Myself, Elton John’s Honky Château is a broad, brave, compelling piece of music history, it is filled with sentiment and belief, it has the drama and the understanding of what an album at that time, and across the breadth of the following 50 years, should hold deep in its roots and soul.
An astronomical reissue, an album of grace and pleasure, this is Elton during a period where every song feels as though it has been torn from his very heart and given the right to breath without favour, without demonstration; a joy of music.
Ian D. Hall