Will there ever be an official release of Elton John's Dick James Demos?

There are a ton of early demos by Elton, many not released on the bootleg collections. Do we have to wait till Elton is "gone" to have quality releases of this material. I wonder if anyone has ever asked Elton about this issue. His fans would love to have this material.

 

Will there ever be any decent Elton reissues again? It's not looking promising so far.

 

Captain Fantastic was the first LP I ever bought and just today I learned of the song Scarecrow, its connection to Curtains and the early unpublished Elton Bernie demos. listening to them on youtube right now.
I'd love to see this stuff available.

 

After the Deluxe Cpt Fantastic/Elton John/Tumbleweed/Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (with the idiotic cover versions no one cares about as bonus) the deluxes stopped.
Perhaps it's lack of sales, perhaps it's something else. I would have enjoyed a "Madman across the Water" deluxe with the Friends soundtrack as bonus, as well as "Empty Sky" with 2 discs filled with demos.

 

Here are a few song titles (listen in the back of Philip Norman's biography of Elton John) that have yet to appear on any bootlegs from the 1967-1968 Dick James demos period:

Swan Queen Of The Laughing Lake
Year Of The Teddy Bear
Mirrors Of My Mind
Lemonade Lake
You're My Woman
Watching the Planes Go By
Chinese Lady
Child

Have they been lost? Who knows. What is known is that a couple of lines of another Dick James demo entitled "Girl On Angel Pavement" surfaced at the beginning of this documentary, so presumably it exists in it's entirety somewhere:

 

The Friends soundtrack is on the Rare Masters set. Do we really need this again...?
But definitely two thumbs up for the demos being released, further deluxe versions, a compilation of non-CD B-sides, BBC performances,... Still many options with the EJ catalog !

 

I did a double take on the thread title and burst out laughing!!!

 

What about this?
Elton John - The Legendary Covers Album 1969-70
Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00R3TFLD...TF8&colid=3F6EONN1XQVVH&coliid=I1I46K6OT398ND

 

The Dick James Demos are entirely different. The Legendary Covers are songs he sang and/or played piano on for low priced releases of the hits of the day in the late 60s and early 70s, some of them quite fun. The Dick James Demos are almost entirely Elton John compositions with varying levels of studio polish, and most of the songs entirely unreleased by anyone. Again, some of them are quite good.

 

Well, perhaps we can get a remastered stand alone release of the Friends Soundtrack?

 

For those of you who seem to be a bit confused regarding what this thread is about, all of this stuff is available for your listening pleasure on YouTube:

1. The Tide Will Turn For Rebecca
2. Sitting Doing Nothing
3. When The First Tear Shows
4. Thank You For Your Loving
5. Get Out (Of This Town)
6. Tartan Coloured Lady
7. Angel Tree
8. Turn To Me
9. I Can't Go On Living Without You
10. 71-75 New Oxford Street
11. When I Was Tealby Abbey
12. And The Clock Goes Round
13. Regimental Sergeant Zippo
14. A Dandelion Dies In The Wind
15. You'll Be Sorry To See Me Go
16. Come Down In Time [demo]

1. When The First Tear Shows
2. Thank You For Your Loving
3. Sitting Doing Nothing
4. Turn To Me
5. Angel Tree
6. Sixty Years On [demo]
7. The Flowers Will Never Die
8. Sing Me No Sad Songs
9. In The Morning
10. Where It's At
11. I Get A Little Bit Lonely
12. A Dandelion Dies In The Wind
13. You'll Be Sorry To See Me Go
14. Tartan Coloured Lady
15. Hour Glass
16. Taking The Sun From My Eyes

1. Annabella Umbrella
2. Reminds Me Of You
3. I Love You And That's All That Matters
4. Last To Arrive
5. There Is Still A Little Love
6. There's Still Time For Me
7. Sara's Coming Back
8. Lady What's Tomorrow [demo]
9. I Need You To Turn To [demo]
10. Son Of Your Father [demo]
11. The Tide Will Turn For Rebecca
12. Rock And Roll Madonna [demo]
13. Grey Seal [demo]
14. The Cage [demo]
15. Rock Me When He's Gone [demo]
16. Holiday Inn [demo]
17. I Get A Little Bit Lonely
18. Scarecrow [partial demo]
19. Velvet Fountain [partial demo]
    
    
    

 

The weird part is that 3 of them were actually released on a Portuguese Ep that goes for hundreds of dollars for a crappy sounding copy.

I like the songs for the most part, a few are very twee and simplistic. But For Rebecca and Angel Tree are really great songs.

For the most part, I noticed that many of the unreleased bonus tracks were songs that he gave away or alternate recordings of a song he issued (like Slave). It has been suggested here that there are no (or few) outtakes from the albums, only demos, but regardless, I think Elton has a pattern established of 'no unreleased songs'.

 

They really need to be officially released as I would think the sound quality would be much better than with the bootlegs. Plus there are a lot more demos than what's listed above.

 

Well, here's at least one early John/Taupin composition of which, to the best of my knowledge, no Elton John demo has yet to emerge:

 

I am rather late to this thread but I agree these demos need to be released.

In order for them to retain ownership these do need to be released over the next year or so based on the 50 year copyright law in Europe.

Even if they don't do this you can be sure other record companies will release them as is their right as they will be in the public domain.

 

As big as Elton fan that I think I am, I have never seen some of these. Thank you for posting.

 

About a year ago, I stumbled on an archived EBAY listing for the long rumored Elton John Philips LP. It looked pretty legitimate. The disk (or disks) were from the estate of fairly successful British film director (Sorry I can't recall his name) to whom Elton had given him the copy to at some point.
The funny thing was that the auction (which had a base price of 15000 pounds) was withdrawn by either EBAY or the listing seller, but obviously hung around long enough to get cached by another site. The tracks on the lp were as follows:
Side 1
1 When I Was Tealby Abbey
2 And the Clock Goes Round
3 Sitting Doing Nothing
4 Turn To Me
5 Angel Tree
6 The Regimental Sgt Zippo
Side 2
7 A Dandelion Dies in the Wind
8 You’ll Be Sorry to See Me Go
9 You’re My Woman (aka Nina)
10 Tartan Coloured Lady
11 Hour Glass
12 Watching the Planes Go By

The listing seller embedded a java-based mp3 player featuring 30-45 second clips of all of the tracks, except for two. You're My Woman and Watching the Planes Go By were included as 2 minute clips. Enough so that I could get most of the lyrics to Planes down (You're My Woman was pretty awful and I never got around to transcribing that one). My big regret was that I did not record the cuts, as I had no facility (or knowledge of any software out there) to rip the audio off a streaming site. The tracks were on the site until they mysteriously disappeared about mid March 2017. When I went to search for the site this morning (after reading this post), I realized I could no longer find the Japanese web posting with the cached EBAY page on it. So, you are welcome to flame me for that oversight :-/. By the way, the recording is a full arrangement with horns and strings, guitar, bass, an EJ on piano and vocal. The arrangement is even more lush than the Tide Will Turn for Rebecca and in my opinion, the performance was the most spot on of any of the EJ's unreleased demos. THIS ONE SHOULD HAVE BEEN RELEASED!

I did manage to post (most of ) the lyrics (with some errors, I am certain - I corrected a couple here but I am certain there are more)

WATCHING THE PLANES GO BY (E. John/B Taupin):
================================
Look up in the sky,
There's a dust speck(?) flying by.
I Look up, and I don't know why,
Seems that I spend most of my time,
Watching The Planes Go By.

The windows open and the curtains blow,
Around my room where the lights are low.
I've been to Bournemouth(?) and watched the stars,
Wondering just how far away you are from me.

I've been out of here. You're somewhere.
Somewhere out there too far from me.
And I want it to be,
Like it was when the summer was here.
Instead of just sitting here,
Watching the planes go by.
--------------------------------------------------------------

 

Thanks for the great info. I remember reading about the rumoured LP in one of the paper back biography's about Elton way back in the 70's. All this early material needs to be released!

 

It's been said before, I'll say it again: if Elton and Universal don't release this material soon, the 50 year copyright protection will end and someone will release it in much poorer sound than it undoubtedly exists in in the vaults. Sure hope Elton and Universal come to their senses and put out a nice package.

I'm sure someone here or at one of the respected reissue sites (SDE, theseconddisc, etc.) would love to curate it.

 

Thanks for the nice comment, Daleyguy! BTW, Chinese Lady (or at least part of it) is available on YouTube



Several posters contest as to whether or not it is really Elton singing and playing on it or someone's attempt at a cover. While the arrangement is totally unlike any of EJ's 67-69 work, the voice is too distinctive to be anyone but EJ.

L.

 

Just for the record, he made two different demos of "The Tide Will Turn For Rebecca." One a simple voice & piano recording and the other, the one you speak of. Here's the voice & piano version:

 

And of course, there was this legitimately released version:

 

Interesting. This one that doesn't entirely convince THIS long-term Elton fan that it's him (thanks for posting, regardless)...

What say others in this thread?

 

I agree. The voice sounds nothing like Elton. The composition, the piano...possibly.

 

I think there are a good number of decent songs on these releases, but the sound quality is miserable, with tons of unpleasant wow/flutter. A legit release from either tape or else professionally dubbed from acetates would be much appreciated.