Elton John - oh man, where do you start? The man more legend than person at this point.  From his elaborate stage costumes to his adidas tracksuits, I’m sure he occupies a larger space in this dimension than just his physical form would suggest.  Obviously everyone knows his hits, the Rocket Man’s, the Your Song’s, THAT moment in Almost Famous.  All strong choices no doubt.  But there’s one track on his ’72 album Honky Chateau that at some points I like more than all of his big crowd pleasers.

Susie (Dramas) precedes Rocket Man and that’s probably one of the reasons that it’s fallen by the wayside.  The other being that, Elton’s recorded over a million and a half songs by this point and no one can be expected to keep track of them all, let alone him.

Honky Chateau was the first album on which EJ had managed to circumvent the irritating record company and feature his full live band across all the tracks.  The way they blend, you can tell stage performance has honed these guys into a finely tuned machine.

Susie, lyrically, isn’t much to shout about.  It tells the story of a country woman leading her man along and by about a minute and a half in you’ve heard all the original lyrics your’e going to hear.  That said, it has some great turns of phrase from Bernie Taupin including ‘I’m an old hayseed harp player, I’m the hit of the county fair’, aided in fairness by Elton's delivery.

But it’s not the lyric you’re here for, it’s the sweet grove laid down by Nigel Olsson backed up by Dee Murray who locks this down on bass hooking nicely into Elton’s own bass part in his left hand.  Davey Johnstone adds a nifty backwards guitar solo. This is one to make you dance - if it doesn’t you definitely aren’t listening to it loud enough.