11. Elton JohnMadman Across The Water
When I purchased my first record, it was from Woolworths and it was what I thought was an English artist but was in fact a purchase that ended up with me in tears. I went down to choose none other than Elton John’s Greatest Hits. Now at the time, I didn’t pay much attention to artwork, I just saw that on the front it said Elton John – Greatest Hits. But in small print it said ‘as played by Kings Road’, so of course the album sounded like shit and it wasn’t anything like the music I was expected and I wasted all my money. Madman Across The Water, on the other hand, was an album that was lying around in my parent’s collection, so that was one that I didn’t buy. In fact, I probably became interested in this after my experience at Woolworths, because it would have been when I was starting to become interested in songwriting and in songwriting based around a piano. So I paid a lot of attention to it after we came to California. But I think that parts of the album were actually recorded in California, and it does have that Californian vibe about it. Those Elton John albums were influenced by the sound of the west.
