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Elton John · S4 E5
Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting
Pure glam rock aggression. The song that proves Elton can throw a punch when he wants to
Davey Johnstone plugs in his Les Paul at Chateau d'Herouville and plays the opening riff so loud that Gus Dudgeon has to pull the faders down. For the first time on an Elton John record, the guitar is louder than the piano.
Elton John -- Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting (1973). The hardest-hitting song Elton ever records. Davey Johnstone's guitar drives the entire track while Elton hammers the piano like a percussion instrument.
The Lyric
Bernie writes about Saturday nights in his hometown: getting drunk with mates and looking for trouble. It is the most autobiographical thing on the album, a teenager in a Lincolnshire pub with too much beer and not enough to do. Every line sounds like something shouted across a crowded bar.
Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting (1973)
The track opens with a guitar riff that sounds closer to the Rolling Stones than anything Elton has done before. His piano is buried in the mix, functioning as rhythm rather than melody, while Johnstone's guitar and the drums take over. The whole band plays at the edge of falling apart: the tempo pushes, the guitars distort, and Elton's vocal is raw and shouted rather than sung.
TAP TO REVEAL: Why was this chosen as the lead single?
Social Disease -- Elton John
From Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1973). The album's other pub song, a stumbling, boozy blues track about being a cheerful drunk. Where "Saturday Night" is a fist through a window, this one is an arm around a stranger's shoulder at last call.
How many tracks does the complete Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album contain?
GBYBR delivers his biggest album, hardest single, widest audience. Next: two more albums in twelve months and a work pace that would destroy anyone else.
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