Elton John: Jewel Box
This is a huge retrospective box set from Elton John, containing eight CDs and 148 tracks. It is, by his own admittance, a self-curated companion set to his Diamonds collection of his biggest hits. Here we have anything but his biggest hits - we have deep cuts, demos, outtakes, 'b' sides, rarities and a disc of songs that mean a lot to the man himself.
It is clearly a voluminous curation but, for me, you can take away the three CDs of early career demos. I know many aficionados will find these to be dusted with pure gold but I, as I so often do with demoes, remain frustrated and dissatisfied by their lo-fi, home-made sound. This detracts from any merit these early songs may have had. There is probably a few good songs among the mind-boggling nearly ranks of nearly seventy but they just don't do it for me. Once I've struggled through about twenty of them I've had enough. They are mainly recorded with Elton on piano and someone of tambourine and often sound as if they were recorded in his bedroom. Maybe they were. Some of them are full band versions, and they are mainly those that appeared on the aborted Regimental Sgt. Zippo debut album. However, they seem to me to have a much worse sound than on the recently-released stereo version of the album in its own right.
A lot of the songs put me in mind of David Bowie's output from the same period (1967-69) - sort of twee, hippy-ish, even childlike dreamy numbers that probably rightly remained on the cutting room floor. A few of them are ok, the more bluesy ones, and when we get to the demos of songs from Tumbleweed Connection and Madman Across The Water things obviously improve a little, but the act remains that they are still demos and, as you may well know, The Panther doesn't do demos, on the whole.
If I want to play this box set, I firstly play Elton's personal choice of deep cuts, which, although slightly veering in the favour of ballads as opposed to rockers, is an excellent selection. It makes you realise just how much material he has that many people will simply not know.
Personal favourites of mine that appear are Where To Now, St. Peter?, Gone To Shiloh (with Leon Russell), Too Low For Zero, All That I'm Allowed, Stone's Throw From Hurtin', Boogie Pilgrim, All Quiet On The Western Front, The Emperor's New Clothes, Blues For My Baby And Me and the wonderful cut from 1974's Caribou, Ticking. Just how good a track is that, by the way?
My own playlist of Elton john deep cuts differs from Elton's own one, with the two of us sharing only around a third of our choices. Old pudgy fingers would probably have stormed out of any hypothetical discussion we may have had regarding which songs to choose. I suspect he loved choosing these songs, though, I know I do - I love these sort of lists, and I have derived great pleasure from listening to his choices. Give me deep cuts over demos all day along. I know obsessive completists will probably disagree, but it is having Elton's deep cut choices together in one place that is the selling point for this box as far as I'm concerned.
The 'b' sides contain some hidden gems too. White Man Danger is one, A Simple Man, The Retreat, Big Man In A Little Suit, Rope Around A Fool and Fools In Fashion are others. There's a whole load of them.
As for Elton's "this is me" section, highlights are Empty Sky, Lady Samantha, Amazes Me, American Triangle, Cold As Christmas (In The Middle Of The Year) and one of my own favourites, the lovely Sartorial Eloquence.
So, as I said, take out CDS 3, 4 and 5 and you have a genuine box of previously semi-hidden jewels. I am sure Elton would strongly disagree with me for taking out those early demos but there you go, we all make our choices. We all fall in love sometimes.
