By Bruce Edward Walker

The Union, a collaboration between Sir Elton John and one of his earliest idols, Leon Russell, is more than retro-cool. Yes, it sounds like the best album of 1972 you’ve never heard, and it features lyrics by Bernie Taupin and sepia-toned photographs in the liner notes of the principals wearing old-timey garb in rustic settings, but it resonates far beyond the too-easy Americana appellation.

If you were alive and listening to music in the early 1970s, you may recall the giddiness of the era. As Sir Elton noted in a recent Entertainment Weekly interview, 26 albums were released each week and you simply had to own each and every one of them. Nowadays, he stated (and your author concurs) you’re lucky if there’s 26 albums released each year considered must-haves – and I would contend that most of those 26 are reissues.

A little historical background: After the Beatles closed up shop in 1970, it was doubtful for some if pop music would survive the onslaught of bubble-slummers. Remember the top-selling 45 rpm record of 1969 was “Sugar, Sugar” by the Archies – a studio group based on cartoon characters also notable for sparking the careers of singers Andy Kim and Ron Dante; the former went on to solo success with the hit single “Rock Me Gently” and the latter as lead singer on “Tracy” by one-hit wonders The Cufflinks and producer for Barry Manilow. This didn’t auger well for the decade, believe me.

Rock music, however, was in good hands. The Stones were in the middle of a creative renaissance, the Allman Brothers and Mothers of Invention were laying the groundwork for such bands as Little Feat and Steely Dan, Clapton had weathered the respective storms of The Cream and Blind Faith breakups to guest on an album and tour with Delaney and Bonnie and produce a fine solo album featuring playing and songwriting for said contingent – including collaborations with piano player extraordinaire Leon Russell.

Russell was ubiquitous – the Where’s Waldo? of early 1970s rock – from fronting Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour and film to producing tracks for Bob Dylan and bringing down Madison Square Garden by stealing the show from Clapton, Dylan, and George Harrison at the Concert for Bangladesh with a rousing medley of the Coasters “Young Blood” and the Stones’ “Jumping Jack Flash.” Trust me on this one: I’ve only scratched the surface of one of the most impressive resumes in rock. Yes, this is the same guy who played bass against Roger McGuinn’s Rickenbacker 12-string on the Byrds’ inaugural hit, “Mr. Tambourine Man” and arranged the orchestrations on the Phil Spector-produced Ike & Tina Turner classic “River Deep, Mountain High.” And so on.
In the middle of this era, Russell was able to issue some solo albums of no small merit. If his self-titled debut is near perfect, his second, Leon Russell and the Shelter People is a magnificent achievement, featuring astounding covers of four Dylan songs, including “It Takes a Lot to Laugh (It Takes a Train to Cry)” and Harrison’s “Beware of Darkness;” as well as equally astounding originals “Stranger in a Strange Land” and “Crystal Closet Queen.”

Time magazine placed Shelter People in its 1970 Top Ten list of the year’s rock and pop albums, where it kept good company with the likes of George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass and a pair of albums by an English bloke calling himself Elton John, one eponymous and t’other titled Tumbleweed Connection.

In “Your Song” from Elton John, Western Civilization discovered pop music was safe from a steady diet of bubble-slum music from 1910 Fruitgum Company, Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods, the Poppy Family, The Archies, and Tony Orlando and Dawn. True, this music continued to press its nose under the tent and – arguably – possesses its own charms, but Elton John righted pop radio-listening standards to allow music ranking in quality with the best of the Beatles, Stones, Simon and Garfunkel, and Creedence Clearwater Revival.

And you could listen to it in the car without parents fearing for your immortal soul or older siblings labeling you a bubble-gum wimp.

This Elton John guy didn’t spring up overnight. He had paid his dues as keyboardist in a band led by Long John Baldry, where he also penned songs and sang. In 1967, he saddled up with Bernie Taupin, a lyricist obsessed with the mythos of the American West and South, released several tentative singles, and a hit-and-miss 1969 debut album, Empty Sky. Taupin began writing his own version of The Band’s Americana narratives and Traffic pastorals for John’s musical interpretation, and the result, remarkably, paid off.

When John toured the United States behind Elton John, one Leon Russell was in attendance at his second of two highly acclaimed August performances at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. The rollicking vibe of John in this era is documented on the terrific live album, 11-17-70, and one can hear the wild abandoned style John picked up from Russell, from the vocal gospel yelps and outright rebel yells to the frenzied pounding of the keyboards.

The two pianists conducted a brief tour afterwards, before going their separate ways – Elton to the pop pastures of AM radio and Leon to FM album-oriented rock. But during this brief intersection, the two bonded – and the classically trained John continued to hail Russell as the master leading him to the style that made him the top solo performer of the 1970s. Russell’s star faded into relative obscurity, but your writer has seen him perform several times over the past years and has never seen him play to anything but a full house.

So in 2008 when interviewer Elvis Costello asked Sir Elton to name three influences whom he believed deserved more recognition from contemporary audiences, he answered Laura Nyro, David Ackles (whom Taupin produced), and Russell.

“Leon Russell was my biggest influence in the late 60s and early 70s, from a piano-playing point-of-view and from a vocal point-of-view,” Sir Elton subsequently wrote in the liner notes for “The Union,” which brought the two talents together to record for the first time.

Or three talents. Taupin provides solid lyrical assistance throughout.

Or four talents. T-Bone Burnett produced, and his contribution is what makes the whole project cohere. Burnett insisted the recording be done without computer assistance, and succeeds in creating the same warm sound he captured on the soundtrack for Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou? and his under-appreciated solo efforts.
Guest appearances include Robert Randolph, Neil Young, Jim Keltner, and Brian Wilson. None of the guests overstays their welcome nor do they overwhelm the proceedings.

Standout tracks include Russell’s opening track, “If It Wasn’t for Bad,” where the Oklahoma native picks right up where he left off 40 years ago. The voice may have lost some of its mushy growl over the years, but there’s certainly enough left to carry the acerbic message of the song.
Speaking of vocals, Sir Elton has always possessed some of the best pipes in the business, but surgeries, age, and substance abuse have depleted the resource. On The Union, he allows his voice to fall into a smooth bourbon croon, where a listener can comfortably understand the lyrics while appreciating the singer’s skill and technique.

Sir Elton’s “Eight Hundred Dollar Shoes,” with lyrics by Taupin, may or may not be a piss-take on the artist himself. “Monkey Suit” seems to taunt a certain out-of-office politician heading home to Texas with such obscure references as: “Beat on that sacred drum,/Trample on the hands of those,/That cling to every rung/…You never drew a decent breath,/But you’re just dressed to kill.” Perhaps because Sir Elton and Taupin saw fit to name check Richard Nixon on their 2006 album The Captain and the Kid – a sequel of sorts to 1975’s Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy – and many critics felt the 1972 album title Honky Chateau referred to the year’s White House occupant, they felt a political jibe was necessary for this year’s model. The song is saved by keeping the lyrics obscure enough as not to be dated immediately, as well as a rollicking performance reminiscent of such early ‘70s gems as “Take Me to the Pilot” from Elton John and “Son of Your Father” and “Ballad of a Well-Known Gun” from Tumbleweed Connection.

“Gone to Shiloh” finds the boys trading verses with Neil Young on a story deliberately evoking The Band’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” Taupin’s lyrics ably conjure workers leaving farms and family for the fateful U.S. Civil War battle.

While other songs also come to mind when it comes to drawing comparisons between The Union and the salad days of Russell and Sir Elton, what is most important is the comfort of the two old masters playing and singing with one another – two geniuses with nothing to prove to anyone, sitting down with a batch of lyrics, a sympathetic producer, and a band and chorus allowing them room to strut their considerable talents.

One can only hope that this isn’t a one-off adventure for Sir Elton, Russell, Burnett, Taupin, and hope further a sequel is in the works wherein the quartet rips it up a little more up-tempo. Afterwards, perhaps Burnett can resuscitate the recording careers of other early ‘70s superstars on the creative skids looking to recapture a bit of that era’s mojo. Steve Winwood, Joe Cocker, Pete Townshend, Eric Clapton? Are you listening?