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List Price: $39.98 | | Label: Island
Salesrank: 81433
Released: November 25, 2003 |
| Our Price: $19.99 |
| Used Price: $15.94 |
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| Media: Audio CD |
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Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (w/ Bonus DVD) Track Listing:
Disc 1:
1. Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding
2. Candle in the Wind
3. Bennie and the Jets
4. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
5. This Song Has No Title
6. Grey Seal
7. Jamaica Jerk Off
8. I've Seen That Movie Too
Disc 2:
1. Sweet Painted Lady
2. The Ballad of Danny Bailey (1909-1934)
3. Dirty Little Girl
4. All the Girls Love Alice
5. Your Sister Can't Twist (But She Can Rock 'N Roll)
6. Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting
7. Roy Rogers
8. Social Diseases
9. Harmony
10. Whenever You're Ready (We'll Go Steady Again)
11. Jack Rabbit
12. Screw You (Young Man's Blues)
13. Candle in the Wind
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (w/ Bonus DVD) Reviews:
The best, even better! 
2007-02-19 - This is a celebration for music fans. The best CD by Elton John, even better. One of the best albums of all times and among my Top 20 favorite albums of all time. The album hit #1 in the Billboard Pop List in 1973. This is the Deluxe edition on SACD Surround Sound. The remaster of the audio is outstanding and will blow you away! This edition comes with a DVD (The Making of GYBR) that lasts about 50 minutes. This is the film that was previously published on DVD in the collection Classic Albums. If you already have this DVD, you can buy the CD SACD separately for $29,00. If you don't, I strongly recommend you to get the "whole package." The film tells the inside story of the making of this classic album with archive footage and interviews from Elton John, Bernie Taupin, Davey Johnstone, Nigel Olsson, Gus Dudgeon (producer of the original album), etc. The documentary has many terrific moments. To me, the best one is when Elton John is singing Candle in the Wind in honor of the Princess Diana. GYBR was released as a double album. CD1 contains the first 8 songs of LP1. CD2 contains the other 9, plus 4 bonus tracks, one of them Candle in the Wind acoustic, previously unreleased. The packaging is gorgeous with a booklet that contains a presentation by John Tobler, the original art work with lyrics, and some drafts of some lyrics. I had the original album on CD already, but went ahead and bought this edition and I am completely and absolutely satisfied. No regrets! The only problem is that this is expensive. But honestly, I am a collector and I appreciate the record company for releasing this so beautifully. If we don't buy this gems, record companies will stop doing this and then we'll go back to the complaints that the music industry sucks today. This is how CD's should be. Great music, great lyrics, great art work, packaging and sound! This is a MUST for any collector. 5 Stars, 10 over 10!
P.S. If you like my review vote YES. You can read all my other reviews if you wish to. I modestly write them to help people form an opinion about movies, music and books, but if nobody reads them (if you don't vote I do not know if you did) there is no point in writing them.
Unbelievable!!
2004-04-10 - This album is one of the all-time favorites and the new technology showcased here will bring you to your knees. I've listened to all of these songs for over thirty years, but the sound quality displayed is beyond awesome, it's like listening to the record for the very first time. I almost had tears in my eyes when I heard the remixed (and improved) version of "All the Young Girls Love Alice," one of Elton's all-time greatest underrated songs.
I bought this album when I was 10 years old, the day it was released. I have listened to it thousands of times since then and never get sick of it. This is Elton at his creative apex, and Bernie's lyrics are magical. There are many underrated gems on this album: "All the Young Girls Love Alice" (this rocks!), "Danny Bailey" (great piano work here) and "Your Sister Can't Rock but she can Rock and Roll."
For everyone born between 1960-1965, this was *the* album of our generation and it's held up beautifully. Elton never was as good as this again and this was his shining, brilliant moment. The sound here goes above and beyond what you've heard on the original vinyl or CD versions. Highly recommended.
Benchmark 5.1 SACD
2004-04-04 - This was the first album I bought when I was 8 years old, and started me on a 30 year journey of music exploration. Amazingly, this album has stayed with me all these years, through worn-out vinyl to target double-CD to remastered CD to MFSL Cd and now, finally, to hybrid SACD. I say finally, because without a doubt this is the definitive version of this classic. To my ears, this is a benchmark multichannel SACD to which all others should be compared.
I'll skip right over the CD and SACD stereo layers and move right to a review of the 5.1 mix. This is an extraordinary mix. EJ's vocal is anchored in the center channel, with some bleed into the FL and FR, and unlike a lot of the early 5.1 mixes I've heard, his voice isn't overwelmed by the other speakers, but instead stands at the front of the mix just as it should. Davey Johnstone's legendary guitar sound is given a lot of space through the fronts and surrounds, Nigel Olsson's drums are more distinct and real than previous releases and the late, great Dee Murray gives the LFE channel a work out with his fluid bass lines. Add to that the ambient crowd noise on Bennie & the Jets and the until now indecipherable Jamaican dialogue on Jamaican Jerk-Off, and all-in-all you have a magnificent example of what 5.1 SACD can bring to the table.
I use this disc to show off my 5.1 system, especially for folks who are familiar with the album, and I have yet to find anyone who isn't impressed with the sound of the SACD. Buy it!!!
p.s. I have the version with the bonus DVD. It's interesting, but not worth the extra [money]. Only for the real EJ freaks like me.
Outstanding Remastering Job
2004-02-22 - This is a great album, which now sounds even better. Even on my regular CD player (this is a hybrid and plays on both regular and SACD players), it sounds much better than the 1996 remastered CD. My only complaint is that many of this "Deluxe" series don't need to be 2-CD sets (the double album would fit on one CD, and the bonus tracks are unecessary since 3 of the 4 are already on the 1996 remastered "Don't Shoot Me" CD).
Just when you thought it couldn't get any better ...
2004-01-26 - In a conversation about music with a friend, I once jokingly referred to Elton John's long career as being divided into his 'Beatles' years (everything up until 'Blue Moves' in 1976) and then his 'Wings' years (everything after that, starting with the 'A Single Man' album in 1978). I had to explain that I was referring to my view of the music he did in the early years (albums like Honky Chateau, Don't Shoot Me, Tumbleweed Connection and of course Goodbye Yellow Brick Road) being of such a standard, quality, and even timelessness, in contrast to later years (i.e. Ice on Fire, Leather Jackets, Victim of Love, even The One, and Made in England) that it reminded me of the the progression one might follow from the Beatles' start to finish, then go from that to McCartney & Wings' entire career, and you may get the idea of my off-the-cuff comment, I hope. This is not to say that I dislike the post 1977 era Elton John, just that I very much favor what his label refers to as the 'classic years' and no doubt many of his fans feel the same way.
The new SACD/CD hybrid + DVD 'making of GYBR' deluxe edition just further cements in place my thinking of that early period of Elton John, and in particular this album. They did a wonderful mastering job, and the sonic improvement I noticed the most was the bass guitar. The clarity of the voices, string arrangements also benefitted from the new re-mastering. (This is having heard the stereo CD version, not yet the multi-channel SACD).
The 'making of GYBR' DVD was a treat to watch -- you get more of an appreciation for the band, the producer, any and everything involved in the making of this great album.
