Elton John – "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" (1973)

My old man’s drunker 

Than a barrel full of monkeys

And my old lady, she don’t care

The New Yorker once had a three-panel cartoon that depicted three people.  

The person in the first panel was captioned “More fun than a barrel of monkeys.”

The second person was captioned “Less fun than a barrel of monkeys.”

The third and final person was captioned “Exactly as much fun as a barrel of monkeys.”

I think we all know that third person, right?

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I always thought the phrase “More fun than a barrel of monkeys” originated with my grandmother.  But apparently she didn’t coin that expression.  

Some of the other expressions I learned from her were “She’d cut off her nose to spite her own face,” “He’s too pretty to be a boy” (which was her comment about my younger son when he was was a toddler), “If it was a snake, it would have bit you,” and “Why buy the cow when you’re getting the milk for free?”  (Actually, she never said that last one.  But it’s a question I often ask myself.)

We know that “more fun than a barrel of monkeys” goes back to at least 1895, when the Chicago Daily Tribune ran a story about the Republican Convention in Syracuse, New York, that described the event using those words.  That was 13-plus years before my grandmother was born.

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Did you ever play the “Barrel of Monkeys” game when you were a kid?

“Barrel of Monkeys” was first sold in 1965.  Today it’s marketed by Milton Bradley.

You might think that “Barrel of Monkeys” is a really dumb game, which it is.  But it’s not just a really dumb game.  From Wikipedia:

[“Barrel of Monkeys” monkeys] have been used for the modeling of polyhedral structures, including virus particles and other protein structures. . . . A pair of monkeys can hook around each other in more than eighty different ways, forming quite stable links.  The links may be either symmetrical or asymmetrical.  Repetition of an asymmetric link generates a helix.  A symmetric link is self-limiting, so that the structure cannot grow further unless a new link is used to join symmetric pairs.  It is possible to generate structures with point, line, 2D or 3D symmetry by choosing two or three different links (from the 80 or more possibilities) and repeating them systematically.  An enormous number of compatible combinations can be found by trial and error. . . .

[Each monkey’s] arms, legs, hands and feet are able to twist around each other to form many stable links.  In this, they resemble protein molecules which can also link together in many ways.  The resulting assemblies simulate biologically important structures, but their symmetry follows general geometric principles.  The monkeys provide a “hands on” approach to understanding these principles. 

Did you know that in 2012, Dartmouth College student Parker Phinney led a fundraising group that built a record chain of 5990 “Barrel of Monkeys” monkeys.  (Parker’s parents must be soooo proud!)

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Click here to listen to Elton John’s “Saturday Night’s Alright (for Fighting),” which was the first single to be released from his 1973 album, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.

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.

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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:

Elton John – "Burn Down the Mission" (1970)

Behind four walls of stone, the rich man sleeps

It’s time we put the flame torch to their keep

So have you figured out what this year’s “28 Songs in 28 Days” theme is yet?  (It’s super simple . . . )

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In 1958, the eleven-year-old Reginald Kenneth Dwight won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music.

Dwight was something of a child prodigy – one of his instructors said that after listening to an unfamiliar Handel piece, he sat down at a piano and played it back note for note.

The young Reginald Kenneth Dwight

“Reggie” Dwight got a gig playing popular standards in a pub when he was 15.  Shortly thereafter, he and some friends formed a band they called Bluesology, which kept busy backing touring American soul and R&B acts (including the Isley Brothers and Patti LaBelle).

In 1967, Dwight answered a magazine ad placed by Liberty Records, which was recruiting songwriters.  When he went to Liberty’s offices, an A&R man gave him an unopened envelope with lyrics by Bernie Taupin, who had answered the same ad.  Dwight wrote music to go with the lyrics and mailed it to Taupin.  

Within a year, Dwight – who had started going by the name “Elton John” in honor of two of his fellow Bluesology members (saxophonist Elton Dean and vocalist Long John Baldry) – and Taupin were hired as a songwriting team by a different record company.

Bernie Taupin and Elton John in 1970

Some 50-odd years later, the two men are still writing songs together.

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Elton John – who legally changed his name to Elton Hercules John in 1972 – is one of the wealthiest musicians in the world.  He’s worth an estimated £200 million.  

Sir Elton – he was knighted in 1995 – has been known to spend his money like a drunken sailor.  (He once admitted to spending £30 million in less than two years – or about £1.5 million each month.)

A room in Elton John’s London home

He owns homes in Atlanta, London, Los Angeles, Nice, and Venice.  His main residence, Woodside, was originally built in the 1500s for King Henry VIII’s surgeon.  It has been rebuilt three times, and currently has eight bedrooms, five reception rooms, a billiard room, and a squash court.

Woodside is surrounded by 37 acres of formal gardens.  Those gardens are home to a retired Melbourne, Australia streetcar that John bought during what he described as “one of my drug-induced moments.” 

How much did the streetcar cost?  “Ten thousand to buy it,” he told an interviewer in 2010,” and a million to ship it over.”

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Elton John recorded the Bernie Taupin lyrics quoted above in 1970.

I’m guessing that his attitude toward rich guys’ houses had changed by the time he bought Woodside in 1974.

Click here to listen to “Burn Down the Mission.”

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

Three Dog Night – "Lady Samantha" (1969)

The tales that I told round the fire every night

Are out of proportion and none of them right

She is harmless and empty of anything bad

Three Dog Night’s Suitable for Framing was one of the albums I listened to over and over when I was a senior in high school.

I didn’t brag about it, of course.  I viewed Three Dog Night as a lightweight band, and would never compare them to Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones or the Doors.  I’m actually surprised that I bought one of their albums.

Three Dog Night put out a lot of good singles – their first hit, “One,” is one of the best singles of its era – but they put out some pretty hokey stuff as well.

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Three Dog Night made a living off other people’s songs.  They wrote a few of the songs they recorded, but mostly did covers.

You’ve got to give them credit – they chose songs written by some of the very best songwriters of the sixties and seventies.  I’m talking Harry Nilsson (“One”), Laura Nyro (“Eli’s Coming”), Randy Newman (“Mama Told Me Not to Come”), Robbie Robertson (“Chest Fever’), Dave Mason (“Feelin’ Alright”), Neil Young (“The Loner”), Tim Hardin (“Don’t Make Promises”), Hoyt Axton (“Never Been to Spain”), and many others.

I didn’t know until recently that today’s featured song, “Lady Samantha,” was an Elton John-Bernie Taupin song.  In fact, “Lady Samantha” was Sir Elton’s first American single.  (It didn’t chart.)

Three Dog Night’s cover is quite similar to John’s version, with one important difference.  For some reason, John repeated the first chorus in what seems like a blatant attempt to stretch a too-short, two-verse song to an acceptable length.  

You can repeat the final chorus.  Hell, you can repeat it five or six times if it’s really good.  But you shouldn’t repeat the chorus the first time you sing it.

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I can’t think of a band other than Three Dog Night that had three lead vocalists.  (Plenty of groups have three singers, but there’s usually only one lead vocalist.  The others may occasionally get to sing lead, but are first and foremost backup singers.)

I took my older kids to see Three Dog Night perform live at the annual “Hometown Holidays” celebration in Rockville, Maryland.  I’m thinking it was the early nineties – maybe ’92 or ’93 – but I can’t be sure.  I’m pretty sure they didn’t perform “Lady Samantha,” which was never released as a single.

Here’s Three Dog Night’s version of “Lady Samantha”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: