Trivia / Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

• Throw It In!: During one take of "Bennie and the Jets," Elton played a chord before the song started. This inspired Gud Dudgeon to make it into a pseudo-live recording, adding audience sounds, because it reminded him of what musicians do on stage before playing a song.
• Troubled Production: Elton, inspired by the news that The Rolling Stones recorded their as-yet unreleased 1973 album Goats Head Soup in Kingston, Jamaica ^note very likely using their high-tech Rolling Stones Mobile Studio truck, unbeknownst to Elton, set out with his band, lyricist Bernie Taupin, producer Gus Dudgeon and engineer David Hentschel to record the album in the city in January 1973. The studio they booked, however, was surrounded by armed guards and violent passers-by (it was at the same time Muhammad Ali fought George Foreman in the city during the "Rumble In The Jungle" match, and tensions were high), the studio's equipment and studio piano were substandard (the studio only had one microphone, to Dudgeon's annoyance) and terrible sounding, and the hotel was dilapidated and bug-infested. Only an early version of "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" was recorded, sounding according to Elton as if it were "recorded on the worst transistor radio". Elton and company left Jamaica in a sour mood after three weeks (including two-and-a-half weeks for writing), returned to the same 16-track Chateau D'Herouville studio in Nice, France where Elton's previous two albums were recorded in May, and recorded GYBR properly over a two week period. Their experience in the islands inspired the Take That! album track "Jamaica Jerk-Off".
• Referenced by...: The artwork for the song "I've Seen That Movie, Too," with two lovers silhouetted in the audience at a movie, inspired the look of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
• Write What You Know: "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" was inspired by the fistfights Bernie Taupin witnessed in a hometown pub.

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