Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Full title: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road: 30th Anniversary Edition.
This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players. This release includes a bonus DVD.
Personnel: Elton John (vocals, piano, electric piano, organ, Farfisa organ, Mellotron, keyboards); Del Newman (arranger); Prince Rhino (vocals); Davey Johnstone (acoustic, electric, slide & steel guitars, banjo, background vocals); Leroy Gomez (saxophone); David Hentschel (ARP synthesizer); Dee Murray (bass, background vocals); Nigel Olsson (drums, congas, tambourine, background vocals); Ray Cooper (tambourine); Kiki Dee (background vocals).
Recorded at Strawberry Studios, France. Originally released as a 2-LP set on MCA. Inlcudes liner notes by John Tobler.
Generally regarded as Elton John's masterpiece, GOODBYE YELLOW BRICK ROAD is a double-album (on one CD) that includes several of his signature songs alongside a sprawling array of lesser-known (but by no means lesser) tunes. The hits included "Candle In The Wind," an elegy for a real, misunderstood idol; "Bennie And The Jets," a funky, falsetto tribute to a fake one; the Rolling Stonesy rocker "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting"; and the gorgeous title ballad. Actually, "Candle In The Wind" didn't become a certified hit until 14 years later, when John re-recorded it with the Melbourne Symphony. The fact that it wasn't released as a single at the time is testimony to the wealth of pop pleasures available here, and to the era in which the album was made. If GOODBYE YELLOW BRICK ROAD came out in the '90s, John would have sat back for the next three or four years while the record company issued a slow and steady flow of singles; instead, he went right back to work, making three more albums in the next two years.
Which left some of YELLOW BRICK ROAD's best moments to be found by adventurous radio programmers. The swelling, synth-fueled "Funeral For A Friend" is magnificent, and it leads into one of John's toughest guitar-rockers, "Love Lies Bleeding"; the 11-minute medley of those two songs supplied FM radio with John's own "Stairway To Heaven." "Grey Seal" is both piano showcase and perfectly constructed verse-chorus-verse, practically begging for a synth-pop cover. The rocking "All The Girls Love Alice" is one of the era's most overt references to lesbianism, and "Harmony," the soft ballad that closes the album, may be John's grandest melody.