The Talk

I knew the day was coming, but, like most fathers, I had no idea what I would say when it actually came. It was one of those innocent questions parents dread.

“Dad,” my old older son asked, “what is Bennie and the Jets about?”

He’s not ready yet, I thought. But you can’t say that to the kid’s face. I mumbled a bit, equivocated and dissembled, and ultimately sidestepped the question. “Um, I’m not sure, I guess it’s about a guy named Benny, and some jets or something…it’s an old song, but they do play it on the radio a lot.”

“Yeah,” he said, and moved on to other topics, as little boys will.

But he’ll ask again, and what will I say? That it is typical of the gimmicky stuff that otherwise credible British musicians were manufacturing for the U.S. market at that time? That it’s a commentary on the “weird and wonderful” glam rock bands of the 70s by the most commercially successful songwriters of the era? That it could be read as a closeted gay man’s celebration of camp culture, putting one over on a middlebrow audience that was mostly oblivious to the meaning of his flamboyance? That it succinctly summarizes the performer’s simultaneous need for attention and contempt for those who have paid money to provide it?

Should I try to place it in the context of Liberace and the B-52s?

And, as always with this body of work, whose voice are we hearing...Elton John's or Bernie Taupin's? Taupin says the song is meant to send up the music industry of the 70s:

Hey kids, shake it loose together
The spotlight's hitting something
That's been known to change the weather
We'll kill the fatted calf tonight
So stick around
You're gonna hear electric music
Solid walls of sound

Tough to say where to even start in this hall of mirrors.

I suppose I should point out that this is one of those times when the founding text is by no means a complete or honest representation of the original work. The first recording, the original hit record, is a fraud marred by an attempt at damage control. The musical performance (apart from John's lucid piano) lacks conviction - guitarist Davey Johnstone explains why: "Bennie and the Jets was one of the oddest songs we ever recorded. We just sat back and said, 'This is really odd.'" John, sure that it would fail, didn't want it released as a single. "I still to this day can't see it being a commercial hit," he said in 2005 (1:06 here). The engineering team then decided to fix it by reverbing it up and adding a tape loop of applause and cheering.

I propose as a starting text a slightly more honest version, this solo performance on Soul Train, sung live over a backing tape (with John pantomining the piano part). The vocals highlight his remarkable range and illustrate the immense interpretative force that he had already become. The fact that John seems to be enjoying himself strikes me as significant - he liked the song once, and not without reason. He seems to be genuinely comfortable with this simple, atonal, "really odd" tune. Yes it's weird and it's wonderful, and it's selling like hotcakes in America.

He was a very good sport about all this, as this hard-hitting interview with the Muppets demonstrates.

Kermit: "That song is tasteless...that song has no melody...isn't that the worst song you've ever heard Elton?"

Elton: "I didn't think so when I wrote it."

It has, of course, been a staple of his repertoire since that time, despite the diminishment of his vocal range. The wear and tear in his voice is already showing in the famous 1980 Central Park performance, which is otherwise wonderful in every way. No piano pantomine this time - he plays two fine solos. One is a relatively straightforward chorus (2:29), while the other (5:21) is an otherworldly excursion into boogie-woogie march dynamics that somehow finds its way home, just before curfew.

In all his performances, he gives special attention to the chorus, especially the vocal characterizations of the fans talking back and forth:

Say, Candy and Ronnie, have you seen them yet
But they're so spaced out, B-B-B-Bennie and the Jets
Oh but they're weird and they're wonderful
Oh Bennie she's really keen
She's got electric boots a mohair suit
You know I read it in a magazine
B-B-B-Bennie and the Jets

He still plays the song, with conviction and skill. As with many older performers we lose some of the sense of possibility - the idea that this guy might do anything, and of course after surgery his voice can no longer manage the falsetto part. Still, I like it better than the Central Park performance - maybe I'm getting old, too.

If it's spontaneity you're after, Biz Markie is your man. I'm not talking about the version he did with the Beastie Boys, in which they team up to assassinate the original, corrupt recording. Probably a worthwhile objective, but, you know, why bother.

But I'm not talking about that performance.

I'm talking about this one:

As a Youtube commenter says:

YOUR NOT REALLY SINGING UNLESS YOUR EYES ROLL BACK IN YOUR HEAD

What Biz Markie gets, and what Cher (don't click, it's unbearable) and that girl from American Idol don't, is that this song is not for singing pretty. Musically it has some of the same torch song march characteristics of The Beatles' Fixing a Hole, but there is a huge difference. Bennie and the Jets is a song that explicitly promises ("we'll kill the fatted calf tonight"), then delivers almost immediately, a Dionysian fit of ecstasy (in the hedonistic sense, not the cthonic). And it does so fully aware that the chips will fall where they may:

Hey kids, plug into the faithless
Maybe they're blinded
But Bennie makes them ageless
We shall survive, let us take ourselves along
Where we fight our parents out in the streets
To find who's right and who's wrong

I played that Soul Train performance at home tonight, and my son had another question:

"Dad, was he mentally ill?"

I told him I'd have to get back to him on that one, too.