On Music

Elton John is not only “still standing,” he is a living superlative, the ultimate record-breaking, award-winning survivor of the great era of pop and rock music that he helped to shape during his six decades in the music industry. Yet few of his numerous biographies and song guides take him as a historical subject worthy of study.

In contrast, On Elton John approaches the artist seriously and analytically, while still couched in a highly accessible style. Author Matthew Restall offers a new way to explore John’s career and music within the contexts of other artists and of sweeping shifts in popular culture during his lifetime. Each of the ten chapters is anchored to an Elton song, rooted in its pop culture history, and advances our understanding of his artistry by pairing him with figures ranging from his lyricist Bernie Taupin to Bennie (of the Jets), from “frenemy” David Bowie to artists like Rod Stewart, Aretha Franklin, and Dua Lipa, and from Princess Diana to Jesus. Restall contends that John’s career offers us a novel way to see and understand the last half century of pop music and culture history—whether we call the era that of the album, of rock, or of postmodernism. The yellow brick road of John’s career has been long, winding, and bumpy, but, as Restall argues, his success has come not just despite but because of those challenges. John’s transformations from Reg to Elton to Sir Elton to Uncle Elton, from ugly duckling to bedazzled swan, from the world’s biggest rock star to creator of the world’s largest AIDS fundraising organization, from tabloid punching bag to pop royalty, have all served as survival strategies that illuminate the era he has thereby navigated.

From The Publisher

Journeys to Post-pop

Three music-obsessed, suburban London teenagers set out to make their own kind of pop music: after years of struggle, success came to David Sylvian (and Japan) and to Mark Hollis (and Talk Talk); Kate Bush became an overnight star. But when their unique talents brought them international acclaim, they turned their backs on stardom. ‘Just when I think I’m winning’, sang Sylvian on ‘Ghosts’, a 1982 Japan hit, ‘when my chance came to be king, the ghosts of my life grew wilder than the wind’. Haunted by doubt, spooked by fame and shocked by the industry’s sexism and rapacity, Sylvian, Hollis and Bush were driven to brave new destinations. Inspired by artists from every genre, and by their own creative originality and inner psychological struggles, they forged something new, changing how we hear pop music and the role of its creators in modern society.

According to this review, the subtitle to Restall’s book—How David Sylvian, Mark Hollis and Kate Bush Reinvented Pop Music—is “a bold claim, but one that the Penn State professor maintains has been made before. And even if he isn’t the first scholar to connect those particular dots, you still might find yourself wondering while you stare at the cover if there’s something to his hypothesis . . . If the book at times tumbles a touch too far towards the academic, once you pry apart the seams you’ll find Restall approaches his material in the kind of thoughtful way that ultimately sends you back to the music.”

From The Publisher