We All Fall In Love Sometimes

Going deep into Elton John's back catalogue

I did a long train trip over the holidays and used the time to listen to the classic album Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. I’ve been meaning to listen to it for a while now. (I think I did listen to it once while doing something else and was so distracted it didn’t click.) This song jumped out and hasn’t let me go.

Turns out I picked up on something very personal to Elton here. He’s described the song as the one that best describes the relationship between collaborator Bernie Taupin and himself:

I cry when I sing this song, because I was in love with Bernie, not in a sexual way, but because he was the person I was looking for my entire life, my little soulmate. We'd come so far, and we were still very naïve. I was gay by that time and he was married, but he was a person that, more than anything, I loved, and the relationship we had was so odd, because it was not tied at the hip. Thank God it wasn't tied at the hip, because we wouldn't have lasted. That relationship is the most important relationship of my entire life.¹

The song was recorded along with next song on the album, Curtains, in one long take. The two songs together tell the story of the young songwriting team at the beginning of their career. The album is the last one to feature the original Elton John Band of guitarist Davey Johnstone, bassist Dee Murray, and drummer Nigel Olsson (although they would occasionally reunite for songs in the 80s and beyond) Longtime producer (and part of the Rocket Record Company along with John and Taupin) Gus Dudgeon was at the helm . It was recorded at the Caribou Ranch studio² in Colorado, the second of three albums John would record there.

Just to show the power of interpretation and arrangements, turns out Coldplay did this song on the Revamp album, which I did listen to. It didn’t make an impression then and re-listening to it for this it just sounded like any other song. It’s really the passion in Elton’s voice that makes it. A lesson for me as I learn the song myself.

Here’s Elton John performing it in 2005, with Bernie Taupin in the audience.

Enjoy your song of the day!

1. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/elton-john-my-life-in-20-songs-10473/crocodile-rock-223978/

2. The studio has a storied history and is located near an abandoned mining town. Between 1972 and when it was damaged by fire in 1985, over 150 artists recorded there, many multiple times. A ridiculous number of seminal albums came out of that place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caribou_Ranch