Someone Saved My Life Tonight

"Someone Saved My Life Tonight" was written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin in 1974 and is the fifth track off of John's LP...Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy...released the following year. The LP hit the No. 1 spot in the United States and No. 2 in the U.K. while "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" made its way to No. 4. Captain Fantastic is a concept album that gives an autobiographical glimpse at the struggles John (Captain Fantastic) and Taupin (the Brown Dirt Cowboy) had in the early years of their musical careers in London from 1967 to 1969.

"Someone Saved My Life Tonight" is a story about John's disastrous engagement to Linda Woodrow and his related 1969 suicide attempt. The "Someone" refers to Long John Baldry,an English musician that sang with John and Rod Stewart, who convinced him to break off the engagement rather than ruin his music career for an unhappy marriage. The song's setting is when John and Woodrow were sharing a flat with Taupin in the East End of London...thus the opening line "When I think of those East End lights". While having serious doubts about the looming marriage, John contemplated suicide..."I never realized the passing hours of evening showers,A slip noose hanging in my darkest dreams".Being a homo-sexual male,it is believed that John felt that this relationship would place him in a powerless world..."I'm strangled by your haunted social scene,Just a pawn out-played by a dominating queen".That "Dominating Queen" is Woodrow.Woodrow is also the "Princess perched in her electric chair".In the line, "Paying your H.P. demands forever" the H.P. stands for "hire-purchase" payments...that is to say buying things on an installment plan. Elton is referring to the payments he would have to make if he were to have married a woman and spent his life disguising his identity as a gay man. In the end, John left Woodrow and continued in his musical career..."Saved in time, thank God my music's still alive". It most likely was not an easy decision for John because at that time homosexuality was not as open as it is today. He probably entered into this relationship as a way to create a more favorable public image of himself. Either way, John took refuge in his friends, especially Long John Baldry, who convinced him to abandon his plans to marry in order to salvage and maintain his musical career as well as making John comfortable with his sexuality. As a sign of his respect and gratitude for Baldry, Taupin wrote him into the song as the "Someone" in the title and also as "Sugar Bear". In 2005, Baldry died in Vancouver,Canada at the age of 64.Since John walked out of Woodrow's life four decades ago,he has not had any communication with her.

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