Glad to meet you..but where was my head all those years?

It was June 1975.

Teen aged young man whose life revolved around music and photography.
I’m talking lived and breathed music and photography.

We’re in Alabama visiting mom’s side of the family. I was in the kitchen, hanging out doing whatever (can’t remember now). My uncle, who was only a few years older than me comes in the house and drops an album on the coffee table. Looks right at me and says, “You’re going to want to check this one out. You’ll love it, promise you.”

Now, he and I got along fine, but two very different people with different interests and different circles. He wasn’t one I usually went to for music selection advice. But in time I went in to the living room, sat on the couch and picked up the album.

Huh. Now, that’s a different cover. Looking closer, I’m mesmerized and drawn in. The more I look the more I see and the more I’m pulled in. I can’t put it down. There’s an insert, a comic book; this is damn creative!! Not sure where I can play the actual vinyl here at Granny’s house, so I write down information to get a copy when I get home. Elton John: Captain Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy. Got it.

I get back home, get to the record store and buy my copy. Back home and in to the bedroom, cuing it up on my stereo, slide on the headphones and lay back. Well, it starts a little slow, but nice. The more I listen the more magical the music becomes and the more tantalizing the album sleeve and insert becomes. Wait, what? It’s over?? Reset everything and do it all over again.

Someone had given us a console piano when I was about 8 or so. There were a couple of beginner books there too or something like that. Anyway, I sat down and started to play. Followed the books, and before too long they started talking about and looking for a piano teacher for me. My father had a trumpet and saxophone from his early years, so I was also learning to play trumpet and in the school band. By that point I was either going to school, playing music, or listening to music on the little portable record player in my room.

Just before becoming a teen we moved. The new house had a space under the stairs where my father build a itty-bitty darkroom and my grandmother gave me the 35mm camera she bought to take to pictures during her 1950s trip to Europe.

Now my days were filled with going to school, followed by hours of playing music, listening to music, taking pictures, and developing pictures. It all fit well together. Spend an hour or two shooting a roll of film, head in to the darkroom to develop it while listening to music then hang it to dry. Now head up to the piano or pick up a horn and play for an hour or two, then back to darkroom with the radio on again while I print from yesterdays negatives. Eventually, go to bed exhausted, and get up at daybreak the next day with a smile from ear to ear to repeat.

Anyhow, back to 1975.

This album was freaking amazing!! The jacket and insert were amazing!! Who is this Elton John? Being 1975, there wasn’t Google or Wikipedia or anything of the sort. So, my research gene kicked in. Back to the record store. To the library to look for books and read Rolling Stone (see kids, we actually had to get off our arse and go out in to the world to do research in those days LOL). Pay more attention to a song of his came on the radio.

Oh, Crocodile Rock, yea I’ve heard that, like that one. Let’s see, Bennie and Jets, well who hasn’t heard that. Daniel, yes, wonderful ballad. And so on.

OK, so I’ve heard him on the radio but how did I not notice?? I mean I listened to A LOT of radio. And any act that featured a keyboard and not just guitars always made my ears perk up. I listened to a couple of local FM stations in Columbus; at night I could get WLS out of Chicago if the wind wasn’t blowing the wrong way. I poured through record sections of department stores and visited record shops all the time. How the hell was my head in the sand about Elton John until his autobiographical album was released and my uncle of all people pointed it out to me?

Good grief, Charlie Brown.

And my life was about to change.