Spitball Army

One of the first, but not the first, Elton John albums I owned was Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player. I’d first encountered EJ one early ’70s Christmas when my oldest sister was given a copy of his Honky Chateau. In the cover photograph, his eyes are rolled halfway back in their sockets, peering over and beyond his spectacles, the eyeglasses themselves resting halfway down the bridge of his nose. Not knowing any differently, I assumed he was blind. This had me marveling at his prowess on the keyboard even more. I lumped him in with Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder, whose records already received considerable spin in our house.

Compared to the tinkly jauntiness of most of Honky Chateau, Don’t Shoot Me… sounded, at the time, like a murky swamp of sound. To this day, it has that Phil Spector wall-of-sound meets half-empty music hall echoblast, even on the few quiet moments. “Teenage Idol” follows the most audacious track on the album, “Have Mercy on the Criminal,” which opens the second side of the LP with an effective, if overblown, portrait of a felon on the run from the authorities. The authorities or, perhaps, the plight of the hunted, are represented in the song by a full orchestral roar (constructed by concertmaster Paul Buckmaster) that grows in intensity until it grinds to a crashing halt when, we assume, the criminal is apprehended. In a perfect segue, “Teenage Idol” begins with a burst of noirish brass, slinkily suggesting the titular rock star creeping across the boards.

All accounts suggest that Elton John and Bernie Taupin wrote “Teenage Idol” as a tribute to glam rocker Marc Bolan of the band T.Rex. It recounts the dreams of a young boy, filled with aspirations to swaggering rock stardom; these are either what lyricist Bernie imagined Bolan’s childhood thoughts to have been or what Bolan had shared with him about his youth. In any event, the music perfectly mirrors the stomping tempos of many T.Rex songs, making it a smart complement to the boy Bolan’s inner world.

When Elton sings, “If you’re gonna boogie, boy, you got to be tough,” he appropriately sings the word “BOOgie” much like Bolan does on his recordings (boo’ jee), instead of the Americanized buh’ghee.  (You notice these things when you listen to a lot of music.)  But the line resonates in the song’s last stanza, where we find the former teen idol trying to bust out a living playing dives night after night; at which point, the repeated final chorus of “A teenage idol – that’s what I’m gonna be!” takes on a very bittersweet quality.  Ah, the glamorous music business…

This song also provided one of the first (and one of my favorite) header tags for this website: “A motivated supersonic king of the scene.” As in the song, just a dream.

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“I’m Gonna Be a Teenage Idol” by Elton John, from Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only the Piano Player (1973)

Well, there’s slim times when my words won’t rhyme
and the hills I face are a long hard climb.
I just sit cross-legged with my old guitar:
it kind of makes me feel like a rock and roll star.

Well, it makes me laugh, Lord, it makes me cry,
and I think, for once, let me just get high.
Let me get electric, put a silk suit on;
turn my old guitar into a tommy gun;

and root-toot-shoot myself to fame.
Every kid alive’s gonna know my name,
an overnight phenomenon like there’s never been,
a motivated supersonic king of the scene!

I’ll be a teenage idol, just give me a break.
I’m gonna be a teenage idol, no matter how long it takes.
You can’t imagine what it means to me,
I’m gonna grab myself a place in history.
A teenage idol – that’s what I’m gonna be!

Well, life is short and the world is rough,
and if you’re gonna boogie, boy, you got to be tough.
Nobody knows if I’m dead or alive.
I just drink myself to sleep each night.

And so, I pray to the teenage god of rock:
if I make it big, let me stay on top.
You got to cut me loose from this one room dive:
put me on the ladder, keep this boy alive.