Music Blogs

Elton John and Hostess Fruit Pies

1975 was a big year in my f****d up '70s life. It was the year my dad opened his store, The Famous Amos Chocolate Chip Cookie, and it was the year I discovered Elton John.

At the start of the year, my dad quit being a manager of forgettable music and TV talent (anyone remember Shadrack or "Mississippi" Charles Bevel?) and decided to open a store in Hollywood selling chocolate chip cookies. He got Marvin Gaye, Helen Reddy and her husband Jeff Wald, and a talent manager named Artie Mogul to invest: $25K total. You can barely buy a computer for $25K now. My dad had made his cookies for years as a hobby. He'd take them to TV soundstages, recording studios, and Hollywood pitch meetings. They were loved by stoned execs, musicians, and groupies. Everybody was stoned in the '70s, and everybody loved a dude who brought munchies. Plus, the cookies were good.

I had a clubhouse in the storage room of the cookie store. An Emerson hi-fi was wedged between 50-pound bags of flour and chocolate chips that sat on an empty milk crate, and I sat across from it on another milk crate listening to KMET - FM. I'd steal money from the petty cash box and go down to the liquor store at the end of the street to buy Hostess Fruit Pies. Yeah, my dad had a cookie store, and I ate Hostess Fruit Pies. The grass is always greener...

Summer rolled around and a box of vinyl arrived at the store. Elton John albums: Empty Sky, the self-titled Elton John,Tumbleweed Connection, Madman Across The Water, Honky Chateau, Don't Shoot Me I'm Only The Piano Player, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Caribou, and the new release Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy. This was when Elton John was cool. He was balding, drunk, high, angry, and making a brilliant album every year. I have no idea how these albums came to me. I don't remember asking for them. I don't remember knowing anything about Elton John before this day. I do remember not leaving that storage room for weeks. From open to close each day I sat on my milk crate memorizing every song, strung out on cookies and fruit pies.

The Captain Fantastic album cover was perfect for a sugar high. An insane, double gatefold collage of dudes carrying half-melted clocks on their backs and dudes taking turds in corners. It was a Dr. Seuss nightmare with lyrics to match. An eight-year-old kid sitting in a windowless room on the Sunset Strip surrounded by chocolate chips and flour listening to "Tower Of Babel" with lines like: "Have a ball y'all/See the letches crawl/With the call girls under the table." I knew call girls. They bought cookies at my dad's store. They stood on the corner of my street when my carpool dropped me off from school. I knew the words. I didn't know what they did. I had no idea what a "letch" was. It scared and fascinated me. Captain Fantastic sounded like my Hollywood world: full of glam and dope dealers and show biz hustlers and seedy romance. It was grand, operatic, yet ironically safe. No one got hurt in Hollywood in the ‘70s, and no one was getting hurt on this album.

Thirty-three years later, it's hard to remember when Elton was drunk, high, and writing badass music. It's hard to remember what a lemon Hostess Fruit Pie tastes like. But yesterday I played "Tower Of Babel" while driving my daughter to school. She'll be eight years old in January, so she's ahead of my childhood Elton curve. She has no idea what the lyrics mean, and the album cover is hard to detect on my iPhone. I'm not explaining any of it to her.

My daughter is a product of the suburbs. She's never walked home on a sleazy boulevard. She's never been face-to-face with drunken dudes looking for some free cookies & milk. She has no idea what it means to be a hooker or pimp. Most surprisingly of all, she's never had a Hostess Lemon Pie. That's the greatest victory.

The chorus of the title song "Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy" ends with the line "from the end of the world to your town."

...Or from the end of Hollywood to Encino. Same distance.

Drop by GetBack.com for your daily dose of pop culture pleasure -- music, movies, games, and more.