Elton John 29: Sleeping With The Past

Now that Elton John was “back”, he was as determined as ever to keep his God-given place on the charts. Sleeping With The Past was again written solely with Bernie Taupin, to whom he even dedicated the album. The idea was that he wanted to emulate soul giants of previous decades, but the production is all ‘80s, cold and lacking personality, dominated by his electronic piano.

With an intentionally pounding hammer of a beat, “Durban Deep” would appear to be a metaphor about a sad coal miner, or maybe it’s supposed to be taken literally. That said, he does sing the heck out of it. “Healing Hands” was the attempted uplifting first single, though the choir on the choruses are a bit much, and prove that the song would be better served by someone singing with actual soul. The slower pace of “Whispers” is welcome, but the mix is just too ornate for something of this sentiment. While “Club At The End Of The Street” is sufficient on the album, its richly comic book-style animated video nicely fills in the details the track couldn’t convey on its own. The title track has a trashy guitar riff and overly popped bass, with something of a “Philadelphia Freedom” feel, and a lyric that could almost be gender-fluid.

“Stone’s Throw From Hurtin’” glues another tale of romantic woe to a catchphrase and a track that sounds like a demo, despite the ten people listed as contributors. But with “Sacrifice” we finally get a song that’s worthy of repeat listening and the “classic” label. Even that recurrent synth chime can’t kill this one. The story Bernie tells in “I Never Knew Her Name”—a narrative about a man falling in love with another man’s bride—might be more effective if we knew why the guy was attending the wedding in the first place. The horns sound canned, because they are. “Amazes Me” is another soul number with somebody wailing in the background, that in hindsight predicts Chris Stapleton. The unabashed love declared in the song is in direct odds with “Blue Avenue”, which compares a relationship to an addiction over an understated arrangement that almost recalls his first albums.

The videos for the singles got lots of play on VH-1, but while the album eventually went platinum, Sleeping With The Past just doesn’t deliver any more than his worse ‘80s albums did. Yet he gamely promoted it, raised money for AIDS charities with the proceeds, and went into rehab after the tour was over. (The remastered reissue, only nine years later, added the B-sides “Dancing In The End Zone” and “Love Is A Cannibal”, the latter of which had appeared on the previous summers Ghostbusters II soundtrack.)

Elton John Sleeping With The Past (1989)—2½
1998 CD reissue: same as 1989, plus 2 extra tracks

Ringo Starr 12: Time Takes Time

Not that anybody noticed, but Ringo Starr hadn’t put out a new album in over decade, give or take. But in the ‘90s he was freshly sober, playing sessions here and there, and had just come off a very successful tour with his All-Starr Band. (The final nights of the tour were even compiled onto a live album released by Rykodisc.) So when Private Music—yet another label that didn’t hold onto him, or last without him—signed him to do an album, he asked a few famous friends, including current hot producers Jeff Lynne and Don Was, to helm some sessions. The resultant Time Takes Time managed to sound cohesive, given the disparate players and songs contributed. What helped is that he wrote a few of them himself, and even played drums again.

With its chiming 12-string guitars, “Weight Of The World” is a comfortable opener and single, though Andy Sturmer and Roger Manning of Jellyfish are mixed a little too high in the backing vocals. (They also appeared prominently in the song’s video, which also featured Ringo’s trademark dance moves.) Along with two guys from the Knack, they also dominate “Don’t Know A Thing About Love”, co-written by Stan Lynch of the Heartbreakers, which has a very Harrisonian slide guitar part. “Don’t Go Where The Road Don’t Go” is one of the ones Ringo helped write, with a nice callback to “It Don’t Come Easy” and a pretty rockin’ cello throughout, but Jeff Lynne has once again turned one of the greatest drummers into a snare-heavy click track. Despite the Beatlesque title, “Golden Blunders” was borrowed from the first Posies album, and he does a nice job with it, but “All In The Name Of Love” is generic pop, mostly notable for the vocal arrangements by Mark Hudson, from whom we’ll hear a lot more soon.

“After All These Years” has some rockabilly touches as befits a sentimental look back, but it’s a one-man Jeff Lynne production but for Ringo. The Jellyfish boys contributed the Rubber Soul pastiche “I Don’t Believe You”, though it ends up sounding like the Rutles. Ringo’s not usually known for social commentary, but somehow he felt compelled to write about “Runaways”; unfortunately his delivery doesn’t have enough gravitas, and the audio-verité effects don’t help the cause any, making it seem like the theme song to a hit TV show popular with teens. It wouldn’t be the ‘90s unless Diane Warren contributed a song, and “In A Heartbeat” notable for Brian Wilson going “dit-dit-dit” among the Knack and Jellyfish singers. “What Goes Around” combines the best elements of all that’s gone before, and is somehow stretched to almost six minutes.

One really wants to like Time Takes Time, if only because Paul and George were having hits around the same time. But while it’s a competent album for the era, Ringo’s personality can’t quite carry the material. So he concentrated on further tours with incarnations of his All-Starr Band. (These would spawn even more live albums, which we will not be covering in this forum.)

Ringo Starr Time Takes Time (1992)—2½