Someone Saved My Life Tonight

From Wikipedia:

Taupin's lyric refers to the time in 1969, before John was a popular musician, when Elton was considering marriage to his girlfriend, Linda Woodrow. Elton and Linda were sharing a flat with Bernie on Furlong Road in London’s East End, hence the opening line “When I think of those East End lights.” While having serious doubts about the looming marriage, John contemplated suicide. He took refuge in his friends, especially Long John Baldry, who convinced Elton to abandon his plans to marry in order to salvage and maintain his musical career. As a sign of his respect and gratitude for Baldry, Taupin wrote him into the song as the "someone" in the title.

I lvoe the imagery of this song. its very dark, but at the same time very pretty and beautiful.

People always mention Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone" as being one of the most hateful outpourings commited to record, but I think this ranks up there with that. This is a really nasty lyric targeted at a woman Elton was due to marry. A close friend, the "Sugar Bear" of the song, convinced him not to. Despite it's cutting harshness, the song maintains optimism and beauty. I am especially taken with the line about the woman being a "slip noose in his darkest dreams." This is some of the darkest imagery I have ever heard, and it conveys his feelings perfectly.

When he went on to marry Renata Blauel on Valentines Day 1984, I was very surprised that the newspapers didn't headline with "No-one Saved His Life Last Night" the morning after the marriage. Fancy The Sun missing that one ! Anyway, great song, love the way it builds, and I think we can all identify with the line "thank God my music's still alive".

hey motorbar:

i have a stupid question: "HP Demands" -- ?? (Taxes?) I just don't know what that refers to. thanks.....

no such thing as a stupid question! HP stands for Hire Purchase. see an explanation of that here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hire_purchase.

basically it's like a layaway plan. in the moldy goldy oldy days in the UK, when people mostly didn't buy things they can afford, this was a crude form of buying stuff on credit before there were credit cards. while these days you own whatever you buy with a credit card and pay the dough back to your back, HP meant you had possession and use of the item without ownership. sorry to be so boring about it, i'm actually feeling quite nostalgic for Olde Englande.

in this gorgeous song i love the juxtaposition of "stocks and bonds" and "HP demands". stocks and bonds in those days were the trappings of wealth and privilege, while HP was a solidly working class option. in the context of the rest of the song this paints a picture of a low class woman with pretensions of upward mobility. poor ol Reg just wanted to make music, and saw his future life with her as driven by a particular kind of material slavery: that desperate and never-ending pursuit of possessions that some underprivileged people are sometimes victim to.

i just love those two lines. they say it all.

...and then he became a complete homosexual! (from comments below)

Elton John is one of my favorites, and this song in particular. I enjoy it more for the melodic range than anything else. The lyrics do account for a fabulous composition all around.

One of the great things about this song is how the chorus continues to reach for musical resolution reflecting the difficulty of the decission he had to make, Bernie Taupin wrote the lyrics but Elton John ,as always, gave them life with the clever musical drama.

'Sugar Bear' was actually not his songwriter, but a fellow by the name of John Baldry, who was the one to convince not to marry.

Prophet... no. Don't soil Jesus. Don't make stuff up.

motorbar I think the H.P. means "High Price", just my opinion. I LOVE the this song's lyrics!