Elton John – "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" (1975)

You almost had your hooks in me

Didn’t you, dear?

You nearly had me roped and tied

The last 2 or 3 lines featured “Kids,” a song from the Broadway musical, Bye Bye Birdie.  

While writing that post, I watched a clip from the movie version of Bye Bye Birdie that included “Kids” being sung.  Just before the singing starts, there’s a scene involving the main male character, Albert Peterson (played by Dick Van Dyke) and his widowed mother (played by Maureen Stapleton).

(Obviously not an electric oven.)

Albert – who still lives with his domineering mother – has told her he is planning to get married.  She is aghast that her little boy (who looks to be about 40 years old) is going to move out of her house, and goes to extraordinary lengths to persuade him to call off the marriage and keep living with her.

For example, she marches into the kitchen of the neighbor’s house where the scene takes place, falls to her knees, pulls open the oven door, and sticks her head inside.  As the horrified Albert runs to her side to prevent any attempt at suicide, the neighbor taps him on the shoulder and delivers this line:

“It’s not gas.  It’s electric.”

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The next day, I came across something very interesting while I was reading a spy novel called The Last Tourist by Olen Steinhauer.

One of the key events in the novel is the death of a Russian dissident named Anna Urusov.  The government claims that she committed suicide by sticking her head in her oven and turning on the gas.

The Americans think that the Russians murdered the dissident to silence her , and send a spy stationed in Moscow to search the her apartment.  After he’s finished snooping around, the undercover agent is overcome by morbid curiosity and takes a peek inside the oven that was supposedly used by Urusov to commit suicide:

Only as he was closing it did he register the most striking detail.  It was an electric oven, not gas.  

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In 1968, Elton John was living with his fiancee, Linda Woodrow, in a flat in North London.  John was desperate to escape from the relationship, but saw no way out of it because he thought she was pregnant.  So he attempted to commit suicide by asphyxiating himself in a gas oven.

Bernie Taupin, John’s long-time songwriting partner, says he was the one who discovered John attempting to kill himself.  According to Taupin, John had turned on the gas oven and lay down on the floor to it.  But before doing so, he apparently opened the kitchen window – which some people believe was an indication that he didn’t really want to die. 

But at least he didn’t use an electric oven.

*     *     *     *     *

John’s 1975 single, “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” was inspired by  engagement and suicide attempt.  At 6:45, it’s unusually long for a single, but John refused to let his record company release a shorter version.

Despite its length, the record got plenty of radio play in the U.S., and made it all the way to #4 on the Billboard “Hot 100.”

Click here to listen to “Someone Saved My Life Tonight.”

Click on the link below to buy the recording from Amazon: