(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Sun 28 December 2025 13:00, UK
Elton John has written more than his share of timeless anthems – songs that are guaranteed to live on, etched into the history of music. They’ve earned a lasting legacy that most artists only dream of.
In the crowd during Elton John’s headline show at Glastonbury Festival in 2023, that point was clearer than ever. Performing what was billed as his last major appearance in the UK, although the man seems to find the concept of retirement pretty hard to stick to, the crowd couldn’t catch their breath.
Through a mammoth 21-track setlist, there wasn’t a second when the entire spanning field at the Pyramid Stage wasn’t singing along. Launching in with his cover of ‘Pinball Wizard’, the man had even had a way of taking another band’s song and making that a hit, as his version of The Who’s tune is just as big as the original, thanks to his flair.
Through ‘Bennie and the Jets’, ‘Are You Ready For Love’, ‘Your Song’, ‘Tiny Dancer’, ‘I’m Still Standing’ and many more before a massive finale of ‘Rocket Man’, it was laid out and obvious just how many broadly known and broadly beloved anthems Elton John is responsible for from his decade-spanning career. For a man who once went on a golden run of seven number one albums in a row, what else could be expected?
These are the type of songs that everyone simply seems to be born knowing. They seem to just be embedded into your soul, along with tracks like The Beatles’ ‘Hey Jude’ or Neil Diamond’s ‘Sweet Caroline’. They’ve all been so present in the world that it surely must be tough to find a single person who doesn’t at least know the melody or the refrain, just as how surely it’s a hard job to stumble across someone who couldn’t sing you one of John’s biggest choruses.
Elton John performing live in 1970. (Credits: Far Out / Heinrich Klaffs)
However, there are some parts of his discography he’d really rather the world forget. If he could, he’d wipe them from history, but unfortunately, art is immortal, and so his embarrassment about his earlier band, Bluesology, will live forever.
Launching in the early 1960s in London, Bluesology was the first proper band Elton John played in. However, back then, he was known by his birth name, Reginald Dwight; he was still refusing to accept his own sexuality, and he was busy playing in a group which was essentially a unit of glorified backing singers under the guise of a somewhat blues band.
Mostly, they made a little money by singing backup for American acts like The Isley Brothers or Patti LaBelle when they came to town. Although in 1965, they auditioned for Fontana Records and cut their first record, ‘Come Back Baby’, written and performed by Dwight or John.
It’s not bad, it’s just not inventive. It sounds like elevator music by now, but back then it just sounded like any other early unit inspired enough by blues but still trapped in the cookie-cutter, vanilla, radio-ready sound of white washed British rock and roll for the mainstream.
To John, though, it is bad. In fact, he called the track “beyond dreadful!”
It simply wasn’t the sort of thing he wanted to be doing. As quickly as Bluesology got any degree of minor success, doing a little European tour and working as session players for some marginally bigger names, John lost interest. By 1967, he met Bernie Taupin and the two had begun their history-making collaborator, straying further and further down a cabaret-type sound as if Taupin granted John permission to be more theatrical and have more fun with it.
So, in 1968, the band was over, and Elton John began. Casting aside his older days of simply singing “anything that was popular”. Instead, his own identity began to emerge and with it, so did a legacy he wants to be remembered for, while he’d rather Bluesology be lost to time.
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