Elton John
Ticking

Introduction:

Elton has produced (so far…) about thirty albums in almost fifty years of career; let's say roughly four hundred songs. Many of them, dozens and dozens of which are concentrated in the eighties and nineties, are insignificant and uninspired, unfocused and hasty, and sometimes counterproductive in their ever so trendy guise for the times.

But many others, the definite majority throughout his entire career including even recent times, are instead lush and satisfying. There is also a good number that are truly stunning and, among them, many are moving, indescribable masterpieces.

“Ticking” is precisely one of them, with the added value of lasting almost eight minutes (one too many… see below), of never having been a single nibbled by the more commercial and vacuous market, of not even having had the role of opening an album (it is instead at the closing of one of them): a solitary gem, not a hidden pearl but at least secluded: Food for connoisseurs, or at least good fans of his.

Context:

The cover of “Caribou”, the 1974 album that contains “Ticking”, is as unattractive as one can imagine. The then twenty-six-year-old piano man is immortalized in full-on hedonistic exaltation, unleashed after the still relatively fresh worldwide success (the double “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” had come out the year before and had definitely gone through the roof after the already best-selling “Honky Chateau” and “Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player”): glasses and attire as tacky as possible and the smiling face oozing cocaine from every pore.

Strengths and Weaknesses:

Everything works: the lyrics (by the “partner” Bernie Taupin, a common event for 95% of Elton's repertoire, who never intended to write a line of lyrics in his life and always created music on the “poems” passed to him by the friend, never the opposite: incredible); the piano, lush and virtuosic, dynamic and touching. The vocal interpretation, heartfelt and engaging, transcends the fact that motivically it is quite limited, certainly not among the most extravagant melodic excursions and indeed quite repetitive, but of course this latter characteristic is suitable to the drama and harshness of the lyrics and thus sought after, intentional.

There is no drum, no rhythm section: (almost) nothing but the still youthful and penetrating voice and the expertly struck grand Steinway by Elton. The “almost” constitutes the only flaw of the piece: a sneery ending of minimoog synthesizer, unnecessarily long, a penalty to be paid in those days of affirmation of that new electronic instrument, then capable of being considered in place of an orchestra (but just imagine!). The song should have been closed a minute earlier and with just the piano.

Key Moments:

The song is in F major, a frequent key in rock and pop piano as it is facilitated by the few black keys to be played. Elton makes the drama of the lyrics put together by Taupin (concerning an alienated murderer tracked down and then shot by the police) work through a continuous rocking octave of the left hand, a rhythmic “ticking” that evokes tension, inevitability as the lyrics unfold, first with the evocation of the protagonist's problems and then with the tragedy that unfolds.

The musical heights are reached in the third line of each of the six stanzas, where Elton's genius frees the right hand which flies, arpeggiates, and strikes freely, detaching from the rhythmic ticking and thus ventilating the shattered description in the protagonist's problems, the hypocrisy and superficiality of those who judge him, the harsh law of justice that intervenes brutally to solve the problem. Six wonderful virtuosic embellishments in their efficiency, followed by the full rhythmic return.

Final Judgment:

I place “Ticking” among the top ten Elton songs of my absolute liking, a list that for the record also includes “The King Must Die”, “Bad Side of the Moon” and “Your Song” from 1970, “Burn Down the Mission” and “Tiny Dancer” from 1971, “Rocket Man” from 1972, “Blue Eyes” from 1982, “Postcards from Richard Nixon” from 2005, and finally “The Diving Board” from 2011.