Elton John’s presentation started getting more showbiz-zy on 1973′s Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only the Piano Player with results that emphasized his and collaborator Bernie Taupin’s simultaneous infatuation with popular culture and blindness to its limitations. Recorded and released later that same year, this filler-free double-album plays like one long, knowing, love letter to bygone Hollywood that’s as flashy as it is passionate: Even the songs that aren’t expressly about Marilyn Monroe and Roy Rogers feel as though they’re presented in Technicolor and Cinemascope. As such, it’s his most fully-realized record: This is Elton John at his Elton John-ny-est, a quintessential ’70s tour de force that hasn’t lost its luster.

As announced by the virtuosic 11-minute opener “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding,” the singer and his touring ensemble now roar like a genuine rock band. Elton goes glam and it suits him: Most Americans didn’t know Slade, England’s biggest band of 1973, but he makes their sound his own on “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” as nimbly as he draws from Alice Cooper (“All the Young Girls Love Alice”), the Stones (“Dirty Little Girl”), and other platform-booted peers, spectacularly summarized by “Bennie and the Jets,” a pop chart-topper and… read more »