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susannah_n's review
4.0
Tom Doyle knows how to write books about popular musicians: Pick a critical period of their careers and dig in for 250 pages. Don’t try to cover an entire career; don’t try to write 500+ pages.
Like his Man on the Run about Paul McCartney’s first post-Beatles decade, this book covers Elton John in the Seventies. It’s a bit repetitive—make an album, go on tour, experience drama—but Doyle’s spare writing helps to keep it from feeling like a drudge.
If you enjoy music journalism, I really recommend this one and/or Tom Doyle’s writing.
Like his Man on the Run about Paul McCartney’s first post-Beatles decade, this book covers Elton John in the Seventies. It’s a bit repetitive—make an album, go on tour, experience drama—but Doyle’s spare writing helps to keep it from feeling like a drudge.
If you enjoy music journalism, I really recommend this one and/or Tom Doyle’s writing.
georgedoll's review
5.0
What a phenomenally stellar read. As my all time favourite artist, I’ve grown up engulfed in the magical musical makings of Sir Elton John and loved following his life behind the microphone whenever possible. Tom Doyle truly opens the window into 1970’s Elton, allowing readers to get a solid glimpse of what it was like being a super star in such a drug-fuelled era. He still remains to be my favourite artist and this beautiful book has provided even more depth behind the enjoyment of Elton and Bernie’s outstanding melodies.
mrdashwood's review
3.0
Elton John provides interesting transatlantic companion to Jimmy Hendrix. Both were perceived as immensely talented musicians, but held back by flaws. In Hendrix' case, it was a kind of waywardness that sat uncomfortably with the discipline required of a performing artist. Elton John was universally regarded is too short and plain to be a pop star. Both also found success outside their homelands, John in the US and Hendrix in Britain, but were initially at least underachievers in their own countries. Jimmy Hendrix, however, never enjoyed the fame and wealth that John did while he was alive. John became immensely wealthy, even for a pop-star, at the time. For Doyle, John was one of the artists who blazed the trail that made these sorts rich as Croesus.
Doyle's book is a solid contribution to understanding how the transatlantic pop culture of the 1960s-80s worked. The author never loses sight of the career, and I can imagine some readers will be put-out by there being too much about the career and not enough about the personal life. He perhaps skates over the wider implications of John's to-ing and fro-ing between the United States and Britain too superficially for the reader to understand why John really broke through in the 'foreign' country before he did at home. It's quite a lively read, too.
Recommended for those interested in Elton John and 1970s pop culture generally.
Doyle's book is a solid contribution to understanding how the transatlantic pop culture of the 1960s-80s worked. The author never loses sight of the career, and I can imagine some readers will be put-out by there being too much about the career and not enough about the personal life. He perhaps skates over the wider implications of John's to-ing and fro-ing between the United States and Britain too superficially for the reader to understand why John really broke through in the 'foreign' country before he did at home. It's quite a lively read, too.
Recommended for those interested in Elton John and 1970s pop culture generally.
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