‘It’s not at all grubby and Yankified’ – The Making of Come Down In Time by Elton John

“Tumbleweed Connection came about because we heard The Band’s Music From Big Pink, which changed our lives,” Elton John tells Uncut as he reflects on the genesis of his third studio album, October 1970’s Tumbleweed Connection. “It changed the way we wrote songs, the way we listened to songs. We’ve always loved Americana, but The Band gave Americana a new twist; it was like Bob Dylan with funky soul….Big Pink was just an amazing record.”

“Come Down In Time” was a highlight of Tumbleweed Connection – although its airy, jazzy feel is a stark contrast to the dusty songs that made up the rest of the record. Fifty years after the record’s release, a previously unheard jazz version of the song has just appeared as one side of a limited 10″, finding John and his musicians extending the song into a riotous jam even as producer Gus Dudgeon tries to call a halt, presumably in an effort not to waste either tape or time.

“I was blown away when I heard it recently,” says John, who’s also readying the release of a rarities boxset, Jewel Box.

“I honestly can’t remember it at all – I’m not like Neil Young, I don’t go through everything with a finetooth comb and listen to my own stuff, I just don’t do that – but I love it.”

“When we wrote ‘Come Down In Time’ we would probably still have been sharing an apartment with Elton’s mother at Frome Court in Northwood Hills,” recalls lyricist Bernie Taupin. “That’s where we were writing all our material. We were basically a little factory – I would be in the bedroom at one end of the apartment scribbling out ideas and he’d be in the living room at the other end. I’d take in my ideas and then go back and continue working, while he worked on the melodic side of things on his old standup piano. That’s how all of those early songs were created. Frome Court was our Brill Building, I guess!”

The original recording featured bassist Herbie Flowers, Blue Mink drummer Barry Morgan and oboist Karl Jenkins, along with two old acquaintances from John’s teenage years as a ‘junior exhibitor’ at London’s Royal Academy Of Music: arranger Paul Buckmaster and harpist Skaila Kanga.

“I’ve known Elton, or Reg as he was known then, since I was about 13,” says Kanga. “We didn’t really become friends then, because he was quite shy and wasn’t so much into the classical scenario as some of us were at the time. But he was in the same harmony and counterpoint class as me. He always sat at the back, out of the way. He was so shy!”

“We did so many things so quickly back then,” says John. “Elton John and Tumbleweed… were recorded fairly close to each other. I don’t really know where this song came out of – I haven’t written many like it in my career.”

Key Players
Elton John	Vocals, songwriting
Bernie Taupin	Songwriting
Skaila Kanga	Harp
Karl Jenkins	Oboe

ELTON JOHN: Late 1969 and early 1970 was a very exciting time for me. We made an album, [1969’s] Empty Sky, our first record. It was a very naive little record.

Then we took a gigantic leap forward as songwriters with the Elton John album.

When I was going to make that, [Empty Sky producer] Steve Brown said, “Who would you like to produce it?” and I said, “Well, whoever produced Bowie’s Space Oddity‘ and whoever did the arrangement, that’s who I want…” So I got Gus Dudgeon producing and Paul Buckmaster arranging. Hucked out!

BERNIE TAUPIN: We were a couple of sponges; we were soaking up information from everywhere and inspiration from everywhere. Whatever was coming out of my head was whatever was in my head that day. We both write fairly rapidly – I wouldn’t say that Elton would do anything faster than me. We were just like little machines back then – our writing encompassed our complete existence. At first, when we were jobbing songwriters, there was pressure to write MOR material, but it wasn’t the path we imagined for ourselves. Initially, I took my inspiration from what was in vogue, sort of purloining without plagiarising. Then things evolved.

We were free to go for more interesting artists and Elton was becoming a fledgling artist in his own right.

JOHN: I’m inspired by lyrics. I thought “Come Down In Time” was a very wistful lyric. There’s a song on (1976’s) Blue Moves called “Idol”, which is a sort of similar thing, a very gentle song.

TAUPIN: When you look at the lyric, it’s very folksy and polite. It’s almost Elizabethan in a way, so the first thing that comes to mind is that the melody is going to be relatively genteel. When you read the lyrics, you might think of things like harpsichord and lute, which were not necessarily instruments that were in my wheelhouse then!

JOHN: As soon as I got the lyric, my hands went on the keyboard – I don’t know how it works – and the song came about. It just didn’t lend itself to being a funky song. It was a very romantic song.

TAUPIN: Empty Sky wasn’t a grown-up recording experience like Elton John and Tumbleweed Connection, but with those we were definitely walking with the big boys.

“as soon as i got the lyric, my hands went on the keyboard – i don’t know how it works”

Elton John

SKAILA KANGA: The first time I recorded for Elton was for the Elton John album – a decade after we’d met. My name must have come up and Paul Buckmaster immediately knew me. So did Elton.

TAUPIN: Studio life was infinitely different back then. It was very comfortable and a virgin experience for us, but it was also really regimented and mapped out. So the stretching out was unusual because we would definitely be watching the clock in those days. We were very much on Dick’s James’, [publisher] dime, so to speak.

JOHN: John Peel played Music From Big Pink on his show. The next day, I was at Musicland in Berwick Street with Bernie, getting a copy on import. There are lots of songs on Tumbleweed Connection like “Ballad Of A Well-Known Gun”, “Son Of Your Father”, “Burn Down The Mission”, “Amoreena” that were very much influenced by Music From Big Pink. In many ways, Tumbleweed Connection is a totally different record to the Elton John record, even though it’s also got a lot of orchestration on it.

TAUPIN: I don’t think “Come Down In Time” was necessarily left over from the Elton John album, but I think it was a bit of a hangover from it. Tumbleweed Connection stands out simply because it was sort of my passport to freedom lyrically. Up to that point, I was drawing inspiration from things that the music scene in London was swimming in. There were references to Tolkien and CS Lewis, Mervyn Peake – a lot of fantasy! – and on “The King Must Die” and “Sixty Years On”, I was drawing from people like Mary Renault and her Greek historical novels, things like that. It’s interesting how it morphed from that kind of material into the material that ultimately we did on Tumbleweed Connection.

JOHN: Trident Studio was right in the midst of Soho down a little alleyway – the studio was downstairs, and the control room was upstairs. Between David Bowie and myself we were in there all the time with Tony Visconti and Gus Dudgeon, and it was wonderful. I love Trident. In fact, I have the original Trident speakers – when the studio closed I bought the original BLs because they were so fantastic. The sound there was so great.

KANGA: There were about 50 studios in London at the time, from Abbey Road and Air to Pye, and Trident was one of the difficult studios. It was in the basement, and the harp had to be carried down.

“It’s really the odd man out on Tumbleweed…it’s not at all grubby and yankified”

Bernie Taupin

JOHN: I was so excited to be there. In those days we had to record pretty quickly because we had budgets, of course.

Tumbleweed Connection was done in about five days. The self-titled album was recorded in three days live with the orchestra, then I did the vocals the same day, then overdubs like backing vocals.

But it cost about £5,000, which was an enormous amount of money in those days.

TAUPIN: Paul Buckmaster was an extraordinary musician, and a totally groundbreaking arranger too. “Come Down In Time” is one of the most unclassifiable tracks from that time, I guess. It’s kind of ahead of its time really.

It sounded like it belonged on a Fairport Convention album, but it was on an album that was supposed to be about the mythical American West!

KARL JENKINS: I overdubbed my part. I’d have been booked for one session of three hours. I only played on one song, so I probably wasn’t there for long.

KANGA: We must have done two or three or four tracks in one session. Paul Buckmaster always overwrote the parts, so I would sift as I went. For “Your Song”, I remember he really overwrote; I had to rearrange it quite a bit – on paper it looked like Rachmaninoff to me! There’s a limit to what you can sight-read on the harp!

JENKINS: I wasn’t given any direction, really. I still don’t know if I was booked as an oboist or as ‘Karl Jenkins on oboe’, since I was around the jazz scene then so was not only a classical player. The part was all written down, I remember. I slightly embellished the odd moment, but everyone seemed to like it.

JOHN: Speed was the essence. When you have that much energy and that much adrenaline and excitement, you could produce so much music in three hours.

Look at all the great Atlantic, Stax and Motown records that were made on the spot and sounded great. I’m afraid that the more money you have to spend, the less the records are ‘in the moment’, because you had more money to spend in the studio and more time to hang around… though I never hang around much as I’m a quick writer and a recorder. But with the advances in technology, you have more time to waste. Still, if you had to make an edit in those days, you had to do a bloody tape edit. If they said, “We’ll have to do an edit on that track”, everyone would be, ‘Oh fuck… the razorblade’s gotta come out, and we’re stuck for an hour and a half while we do the edit…’ But they were wonderful days to record in.

KANGA: Elton came down the stairs from the control room at the end of the session. He said, “Do you remember me, Skaila?” I said, “Yeah, course I do!” I remember him being so shy and reticent to push himself forward at the Saturday-morning classes.

JOHN: I have no recollection of the “jazz version’ whatsoever! Strange how things evolve. Everything was arranged down to the final thing. No, there’s no piano on the original. Someone must have said, “Let’s hear a version without piano.” Playing with the musicians on that version – Caleb Quaye and Roger Pope – it was Hookfoot, basically. Caleb was always a wonderful funky guitarist and played on a lot of my early records. We played it on the spur of the moment and carried on at the end of the song, it was a jam. You can hear Gus breaking in a couple of times saying, “That’s great!” – and we still keep going!

KANGA: We did a couple of concerts with Elton as well. One was broadcast by the BBC from Lime Grove Studios in 1970 – there were wires all over the floor, no set, just a stage and an audience. We turned up, sat on the stage, and we were introduced and played.

JENKINS: The song sounds great all over today – Elton, the arrangement, my part. I later joined Soft Machine, replacing Elton Dean, a sax player who played with Elton in Bluesology. The story I was told is that he appropriated Elton Dean’s Christian name.

TAUPIN: I always thought that “Come Down In Time” was on the Elton John album, and in retrospect it’s really the odd man out on Tumbleweed Connection.

It’s not at all grubby and Yankified like most of the material on that album.

JOHN: It’s stayed in the repertoire for a long time, so it must mean it’s OK. We recorded so many things and so quickly in those days that I don’t think we can remember everything. But I’m so pleased this jazz version has come to the surface, because I really, really love it. I love the song anyway, it’s always been one of my favourites. I was sitting there going,

“Blimey, that’s all right, that’s not bad!”