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List Price: $6.98 | | Label: Polygram Records
Salesrank: 1049317
Released: February 20, 1996 |
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| Used Price: $2.95 |
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| Media: Audio Cassette |
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Empty Sky Track Listing:
1. Empty Sky
2. Val-Hala
3. Western Ford Gateway
4. Hymn 2000
5. Lady What's Tomorrow
6. Sails
7. The Scaffold
8. Skyline Pigeon
9. Gulliver/It's Hay Chewed/Reprise
10. Lady Samantha
11. All Across the Havens
12. It's Me That You Need
13. Just Like Strange Rain
Empty Sky Reviews:
First Effort 
2008-04-06 - For Elton's first effort, it's great. From the rockin' title track, which is worth the whole album, to "It's Me That You Need" the single. There's a few duds but all in all, I was impressed. Stand out tracks are "Lady Samantha" "Western Ford Gateway" which sounds like a preview of "Tumbleweed Connection" and "Sails". A lot of great music came out in 1969, too bad this album slipped through the cracks back then.
(3.5 stars) The Great Lost EJ Album
2007-11-22 - Much better than you've heard, assuming that you've heard of it at all - with a couple exceptions, anyway (the jam-till-you-drop title track; the closing medley; weak Beatles imitations "Hymn 2000" and "Western Ford Gateway"). And there's only one truly excellent song: the dramatic hard rocker "Sails". Still, there's a lot of solid music here, like the dreamy love song "Lady What's Tomorrow"; the wistful "Skyline Pigeon", with a tinkly harpsichord introduction that almost ruins it; "The Scaffold", one of the John/Taupin duo's handful of genuinely frightening songs (also see "Madman Across the Water" and "Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding"); and the Viking themed "Valhalla", which predates hair-metal and such by a decade or so. And Taupin stays away from misogyny for a change. So cool.
An overlooked gem
2006-11-11 - Just got this recently and I have to tell you that is one of the best Elton John albums I own. Anybody familiar with his 90's post output may be put off by this one, but anyone who loves his work from the 70's should definitely check this one out. Personally I don't think there is a weak track on here. Highly recommended for someone looking to dig deeper than just the hits.
Empty Sky-- A Singular Record 
2006-08-06 - Empty Sky, Elton John's real first record, is truly one of a kind. While there is plenty of '70s Elton, also known as 'The Classic Years,' starting with his self-titled American debut (technically a transitional record, but one that later became very much identified with the '70s), and ending in 1976 with either Here and There or Blue Moves (depending on your perspective); transitional Elton, when he experimented with collaborators other than stalwart Bernie Taupin, beginning with A Single Man and ending with 1982's Jump Up!; true '80s Elton, from '83's Too Low For Zero through Sleeping With the Past in '89; and the current era of his work, following a nearly three-year lull in which Elton got his life in order and acquired his current full head of hair, beginning with The One in '92 and containing a string of successfull stage productions and excellent records (most notably '95's Made In England and '04's Peachtree Road). But Empty Sky stands alone in its category: it is the only '60s Elton John album.
And a product of the '60s it most certainly is. From the evocative, Olde English style of Elton's harpsichord (which dominates this record) to the literate, often Dylanesque, mythological psychedelia of the lyrics, to the experimental production by Steve Brown and the definite aura of Swinging London Hippidom that permeates the record, there can be no doubt as to when and where Empty Sky was made. It comes out of the gate proclaiming the finer ideals of the age, with the somewhat Stonesy title track about a fellow seeking freedom from imprisonment of some kind, as so many were then. 'Val-Hala' follows, a pretty, poetic number about going to Viking heaven with a very traditional, harpsichord-driven English melody. This is followed by the English blues tune 'Western Ford Gateway,' a great song about. . .well, I don't know what it's about, actually, but it makes the only kind of sense that music needs to: the kind that gets stuck in your head for days. The same can be said for most of this record, on which Bernie Taupin is at his most poetically obtuse. The next several tracks, 'Hymn 2000,' 'Lady What's Tomorrow,' 'Sails,' and 'The Scaffold,' continue in this obscure-in-a-meaningful-way fashion, but for the last two with lyrics: the legendary 'Skyline Pigeon,' in its original Harpsichord-based incarnation, is another tale of a gaoled soul seeking freedom, and 'Gulliver' is a probably autobiographical tale of the death of a farm-boy's beloved dog, phrased in Taupin's inimitable style. But for the most part, these are songs that speak the language of soul, of feelings, hunches and instincts rather than that of intellect, ideas and theories. They all tell good stories, linear or not, and they all stay with you when the music's over; this is even true of the instrumental that is the final new song on the original album, a blues jam punningly titled 'Hay Chewed,' and the summation of the whole thing, an odd collage of all the preceding tracks simply called 'Reprise.' The bonus tracks on the CD, while not exactly fitting the tone of the preceding album completely, do serve to show the transition from this style to that of the Elton John album, and they do tell their own tales in the same spiritual language. Much of the '60s best music worked this way, as did many of that decades best chemicals. Now, of course, the Golden Age of Better Living Through Chemistry is passed, but we still have the music, and it still works the same magic: it still takes the listener to a different and better world than the one we spend most of our waking hours in, either then or (most certainly!) now. And as much of a mess as that once great generation has made of the world since their idealistic youth, we need that magic, and the magicians who can still make it, more than ever.
Well...it's a start 
2006-06-09 - After a number of years with Bluesology and some moderately successful singles with lyricist Bernie Taupin, Dick James Music decided to give Elton the chance to record his own album.
Because it was 1969, this album is fraught with needless elements of psychadelia and overt experimentation. Moroever, even the remastered version of the album is incapable of covering up the poor production quality of this "master work".
"Empty Sky" plods along for well over 8 minutes until it ends with this silly fade-out and fade-in during which Elton provides some "grooooovy" overdubs. You really have to LOVE the harpsichord to like "Val Hala". Beyond that, the album reads as an instruction manual on how to play the recorder. "Skyline Pigeon" is the great song of this album, and even so, this version if far inferior to the versions on "Rare Masters" or "Here or There". Elton's voice is whiney and nasal; the harpsichord, omnipresent. I will give an honorable mention here to "Western Ford Gateway" which is a really good, catchy tune which struggles to get noticed amidst all the experimental debris surrouding it.
Just when you think Elton is going to put out a good song with the grave and serious "Gulliver", it suddenly jettisons into come fruity jazz number "It's Hay Chewed". Then, the "Reprise" is nothing more than a fragment of each song on the album meshed into a minute...blah! The bonus tracks like "Lady Samantha" and "It's Me That You Need" are mere footnotes in Elton's catalog and provide the listener with little consolation after having endured an otherwise dreadful album.
I would seriously skip this album.
