Elton John - 11-17-70 (A&R Recording Studios, New York City, 11-17-1970) - Complete Version

There's surprisingly little officially released live music from Elton John's most acclaimed period, the early 1970s. The one that stands out as a classic, "11-17-70," is from very early in his music career, 1970. (It's named after the date it was recorded. In Britain, it's known as 17-11-70," because they have their dates and months backwards. ;) ) This album was released in early 1970, and was a critical and commercial success, helping to turn him into a superstar.

However, the original album is flawed. The concert, recorded in front of a crowd of only about 100 people in a New York City recording studio, was 80 minutes long. But the official record was only 48 minutes long, and the song order was jumbled. A more complete version was released for a limited time on Record Store Day in 2017. But this version was flawed too. While it had all the songs, the song order was still jumbled. So I set out to put them in the correct order.

I thought that would be an easy task, but boy, was I wrong. The record company doctored the recordings in order to make their jumbled song order not seem jumbled. They moved the between song banter around and manipulated the audience applause. For instance, they had the applause go over the start of a couple of songs when that hadn't happened in the actual concert.

I know this because the concert was broadcast live on the radio, and bootlegs of the full show in the correct order appeared almost immediately. But the sound quality on the 2017 official version was better than any of the bootlegs. So I kept that music, but used bits and pieces of the bootleg version to fix the banter and applause to how it actually sounded in the concert. The resulting combination is better than both versions, since there were some minor cuts and problems with the bootleg version too.

Here you can listen to the full concert, in the correct order, with the best sound. Elton John himself said this was the best concert he ever performed, so if you want a live album from him, it's hard to go wrong with this one. It's true that it doesn't have many of his huge hits, since most of them would come later. But I really like the sound. I'm not a fan of bombast and overproduction. Here, he keeps it simple, with just him on piano, plus a bassist and drummer. I much hearing him this way, when he was raw and hungry, than in later years when he sometimes played with a large band or even an orchestra.

01 talk (Elton John)
02 I Need You to Turn To (Elton John)
03 talk (Elton John)
04 Your Song (Elton John)
05 talk (Elton John)
06 Country Comfort (Elton John)
07 talk (Elton John)
08 Border Song (Elton John)
09 talk (Elton John)
10 Indian Sunset (Elton John)
11 Amoreena (Elton John)
12 Bad Side of the Moon (Elton John)
13 Take Me to the Pilot (Elton John)
14 Sixty Years On (Elton John)
15 Honky Tonk Women (Elton John)
16 Can I Put You On (Elton John)
17 Burn Down the Mission - My Baby Left Me - Get Back (Elton John)
18 talk (Elton John)
19 My Father's Gun (Elton John)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15835572/EltonJn_1970_111770_ARRecordngStudios__atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I considered just using the official cover. But I don't like that one. It's nearly entirely black, and not very fetching. Perhaps it was an attempt to look like the cheap bootlegs of that era. Instead, I went with a photo of Elton John playing on a German TV show in 1970. However, I took the exact same lettering from the official cover for his name and the album name.