Elton John—funny man? Oh, for sure. The King of Camp may be better known for his love songs, but ever since 1972 and Honky Chateau’s tongue-in-cheek “I Think I’m Going to Kill Myself”—almost certainly the only song about suicide in pop culture history to come complete with a tap dance solo—Sir Elton has been peppering his LPs with satirical numbers such as “Social Disease,” with its great lines, “And I get bombed for breakfast in the morning/I get bombed for dinner time and tea/I dress in rags, smell a lot, and have a real good time/I’m a genuine example of a social disease.”
And talk about your Mad Dogs and Englishmen; he once wandered onto stage during an Iggy and the Stooges gig while wearing a gorilla suit, and almost got pummeled in the process. Oh, and casually informed Brit rock crit Charles Shaar Murray, “I’m gonna give up playing the piano. I’m gonna become a rock and roll suicide and, take my nasty out, and piddle all over the front row, just to get rid of my staid old image.”
My hero may never have gotten around to pulling a G.G. Allin on the big spenders in the front row, but he did the next best thing with “The Bitch Is Back,” the opening cut from his 1974 LP Caribou. John throws himself into the role of queen bitch with unmitigated glee, helped along by some butcher-than-usual guitar wank by Davey Johnstone, brass by the Tower of Power horn section, and backing vocals by some truly amazing female singers—Clydie King, Sherlie Matthews, Jessie Mae Smith, and Dusty Springfield.
And “The Bitch Is Back” marks one of those relatively rare occasions when co-writer Bernie Taupin hits absolutely no false notes, as he does say on “Rocket Man,” a meant-to-be-serious tune rendered ludicrous (although I still love it) by the great “Huh?”-inducing lines, “Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids/In fact it’s cold as hell/And there’s no one there to raise them/If you did.” No, on “The Bitch Is Back” Taupin is at the top of his game, which isn’t quite at the Dylan level, although if you count Dylan’s Christian LPs you’re left with a dead tie.
It’s hard to believe “The Bitch Is Back” made it to No. 4 on the U.S. pop charts, given not only its title but such lines as “I get high every evening sniffing pots of glue.” But at his best, Elton John could have gotten away with anything, and I would have loved to have seen just far he could have pushed the catty queen routine (he beats Lou Reed hands down) and gotten away with it. But I’ll happily settle for “The Bitch Is Back,” as John spends the entire song with a sneer in his voice, crowing about how he’s better than you and in general does whatever the fuck he wants, including spitting in your eye. I especially love the song’s final lines, which are vague to the point of incomprehensibility but nonetheless hilarious, thanks to the catty and utterly horrified tone (and in this he reminds me of Edward E. Grant in Withnail and I) in which he sings them: “I don’t like those, my God, what’s that/Oh it’s full of nasty habits when the bitch gets back.”
No, poor Elton has never gotten his fair due as one of the funny men in rock & roll, but then it’s probably his own fault, or Bernie Taupin’s fault, or nobody’s fault really, as he’d have been a fool to give up on such astoundingly brilliant songs as “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down on Me” and “Bennie and the Jets” to go traipsing down the yellow shtick road. Still, I wish he’d done more, because he was a natural. At the conclusion of the above-mentioned interview with Murray, he responded to the question “What made you the star you are today?” by saying, “Vitamin E. Quaaludes. Heroin. Plus sexual intercourse with sheep.” Kinda makes you look at the sap who sang “Your Song” a bit differently, doesn’t it?
