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Elton John's Yellow Brick Road: Deluxe Edition


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Elton John's Yellow Brick Road: Deluxe Edition

AT AGE 17, AFTER SHOWING his face backstage at enough Elton John concerts, Greg Penny was offered the opportunity of a lifetime. John extended a personal invitation for the devout fan to join him and producer Gus Dudgeon in the studio during the making of what would go on to become a masterpiece: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

Thirty years later, Penny is in charge of the epic release’s anniversary reissue, filling the shoes his recently deceased mentor, Dudgeon, once wore.

Penny recalls to ICE his experience at the original recording sessions, which were held at The Chateau in France after a botched attempt in Jamaica.

"The closest comparison I can make is to the movie Almost Famous," he says. "Elton was my favorite artist in the world, and I was able to follow the process during the last week of the recording of the album."

While he was in the studio, Penny not only formed a bond with John, but one with Dudgeon that he claims was even stronger. "Gus let me watch things, since he knew that eventually, someday, I’d want to be a producer. Dee Murray do bass on ‘Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting.’ The background-vocal sessions. Elton singing ‘Candle in the Wind.’"

Turns out Dudgeon was right: part of the reason Penny was recruited for this reissue is because he’s the man largely responsible for the three bona fide successes John issued in the ’90s: Duets, Made in England and Love Songs. The seeds planted by his teenage trip to France had grown into a lifelong obsession.

In fact, it was an as-yet-unreleased surround-sound version of Made in England that Penny was working on when John’s management (Twenty-First Artists) asked him to put that project aside and focus on Yellow Brick Road instead. It was an offer he gladly accepted.

"After Gus’s untimely passing last year, it seemed like there needed to be someone within Elton’s world who could be a keeper of the flame," Penny adds. "So I did everything according to Gus’s original notes, even using his EQs and balance. I approached it the way Gus would have approached it, and I didn’t do anything I felt was out of keeping with what Gus or Elton would like me to do."

Before his passing, Dudgeon had actually crafted a Yellow Brick Road reissue of his own using the original mixes. His single-disc version of the double-LP (no bonus tracks) came out in 1995.

The latest CD version of the album, though, is purported to be much more spectacular. Embellished with four bonus tracks — prized bounty the Dudgeon reissue did not offer — the Deluxe Edition release will also be bolstered by MLP stereo and 5.1 DTS surround sound. It will be initially available, starting November 11 (Island/UME), as a two-disc CD/SACD hybrid package, and then, sometime early next year, as a DVD Audio set, following the same release pattern as The Who’s Tommy (Ice #199).

Stay focused:limited-edition versions of the CD/SACD edition will come with a bonus DVD featuring a restored version of the Eagle Eye Media film documentary Classic Album — Elton John: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, first released in November 2001. (The second disc in next year’s DVD Audio package will encapsulate the documentary as well, with the first disc holding the entire contents of the two CD/SACDs.)

Unusued vintage photos taken by Penny, reproductions of original lyric sheets and other still images will accompany both sets, in the CD/SACD’s liner-note booklet and as visual elements on the DVD Audio version.

In order to accommodate the extras — three bonus tracks recorded during the Yellow Brick Road sessions but commonly affiliated with John’s other 1973 release, Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player, and a special remix of "Candle in the Wind" — Penny broke the original 76-minute program in half, but did so at the natural LP breaks.

Thus, the first CD features "Funeral for a Friend (Love Lies Bleeding)," "Candle in the Wind," "Bennie and the Jets," "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," "This Song Has No Title," "Grey Seal," "Jamaica Jerk-Off" and "I’ve Seen That Movie Too."

Disc Two completes the album with "Sweet Painted Lady," "The Ballad of Danny Bailey (1909-34)," "Dirty Little Girl," "All the Girls Love Alice," "Your Sister Can’t Twist (But She Can Rock ’n Roll)," "Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting," "Roy Rogers," "Social Disease" and "Harmony." After that appear the B-sides — "Whenever You’re Ready (We’ll Go Steady Again)," "Jack Rabbit" and "Screw You" (originally called "Young Man’s Blues"). And then, following a small gap, a stripped-down remix of "Candle in the Wind" appears, featuring only John on piano and an up-front mix of Davey Johnstone’s lurid guitar playing.

From a content perspective, Penny is most excited about the "Candle" alternate — the one unissued goodie on the package. "I played it for Davey… he brought his wife Kay to my house to hear it, and she started crying. Then I played it for Elton, and he loves it."

As for additional bonus material Penny could have otherwise considered, the answer is simple: there is none.

"There were no demos for Yellow Brick Road," he says, "and there weren’t that many outtakes. The band would start, and within three or four takes, they’d get it. There were maybe false starts, but not many outtakes."

Even the quickly scrapped session begun in Jamaica left no reels of tape behind. Penny remembers that, "They did cut a version of ‘Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting’ down there, and they wanted me to find it, but there was nothing to be found. They must’ve erased the tape — or burned it."

Luckily, the original analog masters of the album itself were safely kept in the Island vaults in England. Penny retrieved them there, transferred the tapes to digital for his new stereo remaster and carried them back to the U.S.

"The transfers are very, very good, and they keep the original analog tapes in pristine condition," he maintains. "The new stereo version gives you, for the first time, a clear picture of the original mixes. You really get a clear idea of what they were doing in ’73."

Penny utilized the original multi-track masters for the surround-sound layer, which he also glows over.

"You get inside this record and hear beautiful music phrases and rock passages you didn’t even realize were there," he explains. "Denser tracks like ‘The Ballad of Danny Bailey’ have so much information on them that you get to hear Elton, Kiki Dee and [percussionist] Nigel Olsson in front of you, Davey behind you and the strings between the front and the rear speakers."

On the other end of the spectrum, "‘This Song Has No Title’ is incredibly strong by virtue of the fact that it doesn’t have a lot of instruments. When you hear the simplicity of it in surround, you’re blown away by Elton’s vocals. When I play the surround mix for people, they say, ‘God, this is a new Elton John album!’"

After successfully completing his mission, Twenty-First Artists has given Penny a new assignment: to revitalize the John catalog starting with a surround-sound version of his soundtrack to the 1971 Lewis Gilbert-directed teen romance Friends. Stay tuned for additional information on those titles as it becomes available.

–Kurt Orzeck

http://www.icemagazine.com/stories/200/elton.asp

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A great album! I took this album to my girlfriends house the day I bought it. In the fall of 1973, I believe. Well her parents were not home. We ended up having sex on the couch as this was playing. It was my first time. To this day, i can't help but to think about that whenever I hear the title song from this album. Great memory!!

:wub:

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