A couple of months ago, and with an eye on the Valentine's Day that is now upon us, I decided I was going figure out what Elton John did to my head. It's a little bit funny, so let me explain.
I'm a piano player. It's not how I make my living. I'm probably as competent as John Tesh, unfortunately, but that doesn't keep me from playing. Anyway, all piano players can play a little Elton John, but I decided to learn all of it, or all of the good stuff, anyway, which comes down to a five year run of classics like "Rocket Man," "Levon" and "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me." Why, look at you, you're humming them right this very minute.
It's hard to explain this decision, especially to my remarkable and understanding wife. I neglected paying work to take up the Elton oeuvre, spending the better part of my working week engaged with evocative songs like "Tiny Dancer," "Daniel" and "Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word." It was no walk in the park.
Learning Elton is nothing like working your way through "Witchy Woman." His songs are complex, densely structured affairs. They cop licks from honky-tonk, gospel, country and pop. Pity the pianist who decides to learn the concert versions.
No, if it were easy to play Elton, we'd hear a lot less Billy Joel at weddings. But I did this, honey -- and this is where I am now writing to my Valentine, though the rest of you can follow along -- because like a lot of guys who grew up in the '70s, I have long sensed something melodramatic and dreamy about my brain, and I wanted to know how this odd characteristic got there.
By the age of 9, for instance, I grew to harbor powerful crushes on girls I could not so much as look in the eye. When other boys were building go-karts, I would listen to soft rock and think ponderous thoughts about romantic love for girls for whom I would struggle to work up the courage to borrow an eraser. Embarrassing, yes, but maybe this same history is what gave me the courage to knock on the door of the girl I ended up marrying, and for my heart to race when doing it. If that is the case, I can only thank having heard too many spins of "Your Song."
In the ballad, a shy man is trying to offer his love a gift, even though all he has are thoughts. The lyrics capture his happily precarious state of mind. The chorus begins with a chord over its third, an Elton trademark that creates a feeling of drama out of thin air.
Forget about the jewelry, it says, just tell her how you feel.
Brian Wilson knew it was a great tune. So did John Lennon, who called it the best thing that had happened at that time since the Beatles. Last year, Prince William and Kate Middleton picked it for the first dance at their wedding. And Elton wrote it in 10 minutes, broke, sitting at his mother's small piano.
By now of course, the sight of a thoughtful male perched soulfully at the piano has become something of a cartoon -- a cheap way for a rocker to let the ladies know how sensitive he is. I have seen Kid Rock do just this, and was afraid of looking this way the first time I played a song on the piano for my wife. She even joked about a gentleman caller who had once performed "Desperado" for her. But she didn't make me feel like that guy, and in the years since then, she has heard me play hundreds of times, and to her credit, I have never felt like that guy. Even though surely I am.
Recently I have been asking around, and have come to learn there's hardly anyone who dislikes Elton John, even among the well-cultivated connoisseurs of indie rock. He made all of us feel a little more forgiven for being soft, confused and romantic. Even if there is no good use for those things in the middle of a working week.
Paul John Scott is a writer and musician who lives in Rochester. His Valentine's Day tribute to Elton John begins at 8 p.m. in the Amsterdam Hall & Bar in St. Paul.
