Right on cue, just as Watergate was about to hit, America
turned to its Beatles, and even put one of them at number one, but in the
absence of the others – all relative, since both George and Ringo scored number
ones that year – they instead turned to Elton John, requesting some sense. They
got a tasteful, melodic calypso-lite ballad which, if it had never hit
anywhere, would doubtless have resurfaced on some themed compilation on Ace
Records decades later, but more importantly Elton – and Bernie – were saying
things which (the audience felt) mattered, to people who were hurting, because
of Vietnam.
“Daniel” – which is also Stevie Wonder’s favourite Elton
song – is about Vietnam, but not quite in the way that you’d expect. Daniel is
the singer’s older brother and is flying off to Spain (because, frankly, it
rhymed with “’plane”) to escape the attention that he got when he returned home
from the war – Taupin says that he read a piece in Time magazine about veterans of the Tet Offensive and how they
struggled to cope with the hero’s welcome and the seeming inability to return
to their old ways of life; think of Daniel as a farmer in Texas, perhaps, and
that may explain the very subtle banjo-picking throughout the record. Possibly
one should also think of Elton’s next number two in that context. Hence “Daniel”
is about escaping the world and the protagonist’s own past; the blindness in
his eyes may be actual or as metaphorical as the clouds in those of his brother.
Date Record Made
Number Two: 2 June 1973
Number Of Weeks At
Number Two: 1
Record At Number One: “My
Love” by Paul McCartney And Wings
UK Chart Position: 4
Other Information: The
extremely 1973 cushion of ARP synthesiser was played by engineer (and producer
of Ziggy Stardust) Ken Scott. In
addition, a closing verse was excised because the writers felt it would make
the song too long but Taupin reckons you’re missing nothing and, in any case, a
song like this would be belittled by having it “explained.”
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