Welcome to our Elton John Quiz
Elton John is one of the most popular and respected musicians of the past 50 years. How much do you know about the legend himself?
Do you know his real name?
And the name of his songwriting partner?
Test your knowledge with this Elton John Quiz and let’s find out!
Only a handful of musicians have actually made the right to be called a “legend,” and one of them is Elton John. His tunes have become legends of their own, especially hits like “Rocket Man” and “Tiny Dancer.
Here’s what influenced this well-known Elton John hit. A fan favorite from Elton John’s 1971 album Madman Across the Water, “Tiny Dancer” was a small hit upon preliminary release and didn’t really become one of the singer’s finest understood songs until its inclusion in Cameron Crowe’s early ’70s period piece Almost Famous, where a bus full of rock musicians triumphantly sings the tune.
It’s not about a real-life ballerina that fit in John’s pocket, nor is it about Tony Danza, as a famous mishearing of the tune would recommend. It’s the tune’s lyricist and veteran Elton John collaborator, Bernie Taupin, who has actually shed some light on this one.
He’s stated it’s a reflection of the time they invested in sunny California, and the females they fulfilled there. “We pertained to California in the fall of 1970, and sunlight radiated from the people.
I was trying to record the spirit of that time, encapsulated by the ladies we fulfilled. Taupin chalked that up to a little bit of poetic license.
Elton John’s 1973 hit “Daniel” isn’t a romantic love song or an allegorical tale. The titular fellow is a Vietnam War veteran struggling to readjust to his routine, civilian life after withstanding some dreadful combat experiences, a period made harder by Americans’ polarized mindsets about that conflict.
Taupin discussed: “I’d seen this […] story about how many of the soldiers that were coming back from ‘Nam were this basic sort of down-home country people who were normally humiliated by both the adulation and, depending on what part of the country you came from, the displeasure that they were greeted by.
For the most part, they just wished to get back to typical life, however discovered it hard.” All that is made generously clear with the song’s last verse, which eventually got cut from the tune completely.
I would frequently overwrite, and Elton felt it required to edit rather. Lennon didn’t think the song would go over that well, however, John thought he understood a # 1 hit when he heard one.
The Beatle put a friendly wager with the “Benny and the Jets” songwriter: If the song topped the charts, Lennon would have to join him onstage at a future performance. In November 1974, “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night” struck # 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and Lennon, real to his word, signed up with John onstage at a show at Madison Square Garden.
Taupin has actually talked about how he does not actually keep in mind composing it and says that the song simply kind of occurred. Elton John had a similar experience composing the music, saying, “It stated everything I desired to say without sounding too coy”.
I thought it was so perfect for me that I simply took a seat and wrote the tune right away.” “Candle in the Wind” was Elton John’s tune about the short, vulnerable nature of life, and although it initially appeared on his 1973 album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, it didn’t strike the top 10 until John launched a live variation in 1987. Both variations discuss the life and tragic end of screen legend Marilyn Monroe, who died at age 36 in 1962. In 1997, John and Bernie Taupin modified the tune into a homage to Princess Diana, who died, like Monroe, at age 36.
Lyrics were changed from “Norma Jean” to “English Rose”, and John sang it at the cherished royal’s telecasted funeral. A recording of that performance was launched under the title “Candle in the Wind 1997,” where it went on to end up being the very best selling single in UK history and topped the U.S. pop chart for 14 weeks, with the earnings benefiting a few of Diana’s preferred causes. And yet the sentiment and sensation behind the initiative aren’t absolutely about simply Monroe.
Taupin has actually said: “It’s not that I didn’t have a respect for her. It’s simply that the tune could just as quickly have actually had to do with James Dean or Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain. I mean, it might have had to do with Sylvia Plath or Virginia Woolf.
I mean, essentially, anybody, any writer, artist, star, or actress who passed away young.” “Border Song,” the very first Elton John tune to hit the charts in the U.S., stalled at # 92 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1970.
A choir-driven, gospel-tinged tune that showcases John’s vocals range and piano work, the track from Elton John made quite the auspicious little direct exposure for the legendary entertainer. It’s such a legitimate piece of music that Aretha Franklin covered it later on in 1970, and she took it into the top 40.
So what’s it about? Taupin does not claim the song has to do with anything or anyone in particular, while John thinks a few of the most powerful lyrics recommend that it’s about the alienation and outsiderness Taupin felt when he moved from his home in rural England into huge, busy, foggy London Town in the late 1960s.
Among the very best and most popular professional athletes on the planet in the mid-1970s was tennis superstar Billie Jean King. The highest-ranked gamer worldwide at one point, by 1975, she’d amassed 12 Grand Slam singles competition wins and 12 doubles champions.
That does not even count her most popular match, the 1973 “Battle of the Sexes” exhibit, in which she peacefully beat a male rival, Bobby Riggs. In 1975, King momentarily refocused her energies on developing a brand-new sports league she’d assisted found: World TeamTennis.
King also coached the member franchise Philadelphia Freedoms in 1974, and around that time, Elton John was so enamored with her and such a fan of King’s brand-new endeavor that he asked Bernie Taupin to write some lyrics.
Rather, the tune “Philadelphia Freedom” constructs on referrals to classic Philadelphia soul music and taps into the growing “Bicentennial Fever” gripping the US in the lead-up to 1976. Motivated by the amazing human accomplishment of space travel and particularly by NASA successfully landing men on the Moon in 1969, the late ’60s and early ’70s were a fruitful time for songwriters writing songs about space.
Together with David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” in this mini-genre is Elton John’s “Rocket Man,” a meditation on the ho-hum, humdrum life of an astronaut. “That’s very nice making, Dave I believe you’ve added a lot.”
Bernie Taupin states understood for 1972 single while driving one night throughout in the peaceful English countryside and searching for at the sky. He saw either a shooting star or airplane streak throughout the sky, and it made him think about astronauts.
By the early ’70s, NASA had launched half a dozen manned flights into the area, which, to Taupin, turned the as soon as unthinkably remarkable occupation into a practically “everyday profession.” As Taupin kept driving, the tune’s opening lyrics popped into his head, totally formed.
School and public shootings happen with disconcerting regularity in the U.S. these days, and place names like “Parkland,” “Aurora,” and “Sandy Hook” work as shorthand for the awful disasters that happened in those locations.
When it happened on American soil for one of the first times, in the ’60s, it was sad, dreadful, and also entirely unanticipated. On August 1, 1966, Charles Whitman walked up to the observation deck of Austin’s University of Texas Tower and began shooting seemingly at random.
Over the course of 90 minutes, Whitman eliminated 17 people and injured more than 30, up until he was eliminated by cops. That dreadful event resulted in a growing culture of violence and fear. It also led to the Elton John/Bernie Taupin partnership “Ticking,” a cutoff Elton John’s 1974 album Caribou.
When Elton played the tune at a concert in England in July 2003, he stated, “It’s a tune that deals with violence in America in about the year 1973.
Well, here we are 30 years on, down the line, and things have gotten worse. Therefore the song is more relevant than when it was written.” The 1983 album Too Low for Zero is credited to Elton John, however, he let his loyal lyricist Bernie Taupin have the devotion: “Hey Toni, this one’s from me to you.
Love, Bernie.” Toni is Toni Russo, a design, a sibling of actress Rene Russo, and Taupin’s second life partner. Toni Russo is also the main motivation for the record’s catchy-but-maudlin breakout hit “I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues.