Jim Adams challenged us to write about a song that has a title beginning with a P or G. Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road does just that. It is the title track to his 1973 album. Rolling Stone lists the song at #390 of the 500 best ever songs.
The imagery includes references which link to the film The Wizard of Oz with the yellow brick road, and a return to the plough (Kansas). It has deeper meaning in comparing “high society” life and expectations with the simplicity of life.
Lyrics:
When are you gonna come down? When are you going to land? I should have stayed on the farm I should have listened to my old man
You know you can’t hold me forever I didn’t sign up with you I’m not a present for your friends to open This boy’s too young to be singing The blues, ah, ah
So goodbye yellow brick road Where the dogs of society howl You can’t plant me in your penthouse I’m going back to my plough
Back to the howling old owl in the woods Hunting the horny back toad Oh, I’ve finally decided my future lies Beyond the yellow brick road Ah, ah
What do you think you’ll do then? I bet they’ll shoot down the plane It’ll take you a couple of vodka and tonics To set you on your feet again
Maybe you’ll get a replacement There’s plenty like me to be found Mongrels who ain’t got a penny Sniffing for tidbits like you On the ground, ah, ah
So goodbye yellow brick road Where the dogs of society howl You can’t plant me in your penthouse I’m going back to my plough
Back to the howling old owl in the woods Hunting the horny back toad Oh, I’ve finally decided my future lies Beyond the yellow brick road Ah, ah
It was no Truman Show. It wasn’t even Big Brother. It was humanity on display. Tower block over looking tower block and all the life that took place through open curtains or closed drapes. Did they know their domestic existence was on display to be observed or even documented by whoever may?
Well such thoughts and concerns were always in the forefront of Cindy Andrew’s mind. Her mirror-tinted window film, and plug in sound-proofing made sure she wasn’t caught going about her daily routine of recording her neighbours.
She was carried along by the crowd. Going against the flow seemed useless. The mass of humanity surged out of the stadium and into the streets. They were electrified by the words of the address. The leader’s piercing blue eyes seemed to each person to have only been focused on them alone, and the forceful tone of his rhetoric made them want to act, there and then.
Ella hadn’t been as inspired by the blatant populist rant though. She was not “one of them.” She was her own woman, a free-thinker. Yet there she was in the tidal-wave exiting the stadium. Even so, she felt alone among the thousands.
She shuffled her feet waiting for a break in the flow: a side street, anyplace to which she could escape and make her own way. Her own way, she kept repeating to herself. It wasn’t just a way out of the push of crowd she sought, but a way out of the corporate insanity that had brainwashed a nation.