When I saw the theme this week, so many songs came to mind, but so many of them were ones I thought others might choose, so I went to lyrics.com and put all three search terms in. There were a plethora of new tunes I came across that were good as I built a list of possibilities. When I saw this one, I knew it was the one. I loved listening to it again as it had deep impact on me during the days of its radio play. Elton John was one I could count on to get me in the feels. I remember when his, “Candle in the Wind” played to Marilyn Monroe, and then later, when John Lennon was murdered. The song I chose today had significance for the teenager me as I struggled through horrifically dysfunctional family, school, and street lives. I wonder how many teenagers clung to it back then?

As I learned more about how the song came about, the brilliance of how Bernie shaped it into sacred poetry astounds me. How Elton fashioned his piano around the words is as astounding. Listening to it again today, it is startling in its power and its sincerity. I need to quit now as tears are blurring my vision.

“Someone Saved My Life Tonight” is a song with music by British musician Elton John and lyrics by Bernie Taupin, from John’s 1975 album, “Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy.” It was released as a single on June 20, 1975, the only single released from the album. Like the rest of the album, the song is autobiographical, and addresses an attempted suicide by John. The song concludes side one of the album’s narrative, chronicling the early history of John and Bernie Taupin and their struggles to find their place within the music industry.

Mike DeGagne from Allmusic said it was, “the only song from the album to make the charts [as it was the only single released from it.] The single only made it to the twenty-two spot in his homeland, but the album itself made it to number two. In the US it became the first album to make its debut at number one, resting there for seven consecutive weeks. Even though John made his mark with earlier ballads like ‘Levon,‘‘Rocket Man,‘ and ‘Daniel,‘ it was the overall desperation of ‘Someone Saved My Life Tonight‘ that struck a chord with his fans, and a blatant cry for help from John himself.“

At six minutes and forty-five seconds, “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” was twice as long as a typical single, but owing to the highly personal nature of the lyrics, John refused to let it be edited down to a more suitable length for radio airplay. Despite the length, the song peaked on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart at No. four and in Canada on the RPM Top Singles chart at No. two. It would be John’s last single for eight years to feature the original Elton John Band.

Taupin’s lyric refers to a time in 1968, before John was popular as a musician, when John was engaged to be married to girlfriend Linda Woodrow. John and Woodrow were sharing a flat with Taupin in Furlong Road in Highbury, London, hence the opening line ‘When I think of those East End lights.’ John did not love his girlfriend, and felt trapped by the relationship. Feeling desperate, John contemplated suicide, and even made a half-hearted attempt at asphyxiating himself with a gas oven in his home. He took refuge in his friends, especially Long John Baldry, who convinced John to abandon his plans to marry, in order to salvage and maintain his musical career. His parents arrived the next day, in a van, to take him home. As a sign of respect and gratitude to Baldry, Taupin wrote him into the song as the “someone” in the title, and also as, ‘Sugar Bear.’

The lyric “And butterflies are free to fly” is a reference to a famous quote from Dickens’ Bleak House:

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies. 

The song has been covered by:
Walter Jackson
Mumford & Sons
Men’s Gay Choir in the film, Hamlet 2

Personnel:
Elton John – acoustic piano, Fender Rhodes piano, ARP String Ensemble synthesizer, vocals
Davey Johnston — Leslied electric guitar, acoustic guitar, backing vocals
Dee Murray — bass, backing vocals
Nigel Olsson — drums, backing vocals
Ray Cooper — tambourine, shaker, cymbal

Here’s a re-mastered version from 2016:

Here’s a lovely live performance at the Playhouse Theater, London 1976 :

BONUS

Sugar Bear

In my search for more info on the song, I came across a very interesting article about “Sugar Bear,” aka Long John Baldry, in Three Dollar Bill, a journal that is described as being written “by award-winning journalist Richard “Bugs” Burnett [and] is the only syndicated LGBTQ column in Canadian publishing history.” Dated July 20, 2012, it is a re-post of an original first published in 2007.

 “SUGAR BEAR” – ROD AND ELTON REMEMBER MENTOR,
GAY BLUES ICON LONG JOHN BALDRY

In the article, a book is mentioned, _It Ain’t Easy: Long John Baldry and the Birth of British Blues_, written by Paul Myers [brother of Mike Myers.] In it they talk about Baldry’s support and/or mentorship of a lot of very well-known names:

Baldry was the man who brought Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon to Britain. He earned the respect of John Lee Hooker and B.B. King. And even John Mayall admits that, before The Bluesbreakers, Baldry was already the father of the British blues. Jimmy Page, Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts all flourished under Baldry’s tutelage, and he was a hero to Pete Townshend of The Who and Ray and Dave Davies (with whom Baldry also made out) of The Kinks.

Further in the article, the song is mentioned specifically:

When Elton – then named Reginald Dwight – left Baldry’s band in May 1968, he renamed himself after Baldry’s saxophonist Elton Dean, and got “John” after Long John himself. When Elton tried to commit suicide in 1968 because he was supposed to marry a woman he did not love, Baldry told him it was okay to be gay, a moment immortalized in Elton’s 1975 hit Someone Saved My Life Tonight. The lyrics “Sugar Bear” refer to Baldry.

“That song is about John Baldry at the Bag O’ Nails [nightclub] saying, ‘You’ve got to call the wedding off,’” Elton recounts in Myers’ book. “Without that it could have been an entirely different story. He really did change the course of my life, bless his heart.”

One of the best known Long John Baldry songs in the US, as I know it got radio play here:

Sources:
wikipedia
Allmusic
Three Dollar Bill

Jim Adams is the host of Song Lyric Sunday. This week, Jim wants us to find a song that mentions candy, honey, sugar or sweet.