Elton John - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1968-1970

There's some good news for Elton John fans. He's releasing an archival box set in November 2020 called "Elton: Jewel Box." This eight CD collection will include three CDs of previously unreleased early demos from 1967 to 1971, and two more CDs of hard-to-find B-sides. But unfortunately what won't be included at all is any of his BBC performances. 

So I'm going to try to make up for that by posting a series of BBC albums. I've found seven albums of BBC material just for the years 1968 to 1976, with four of them being full concerts. I have to admit I'm still not a huge Elton John fan, although I've been getting into his stuff more lately. But I'm particularly impressed by his BBC performances. I think they're often better than the studio versions.

John performed for the BBC twice in 1968 and three times in 1969, playing 18 songs (some of them repeats). This is surprising, because he wouldn't make it to any charts until 1970. Unfortunately, nearly all of these early performances are lost, or at least not currently publicly available. Only two songs are known, a version of "Lady Samantha" from 1968 and a version of "Sails" from 1969. I like both of these performances a lot more than the studio versions.

He played for the BBC even more in 1970, appearing six different times and playing multiple songs each time. Unfortunately, most of those performances are lost or unavailable too. But one show that exists in full is his appearance on May 22, 1970. I've included all of it, including the talking between songs.

With Elton John and his early BBC performances, it's either feast or famine. Meaning, either the recording isn't available at all, or it is available and sounds great. I think that's because these particular performances on this album were all replayed by the BBC many years later. So these aren't copies of copies of copies recorded off the radio back in 1970.

About 30 seconds of instrumental music at the start of "Lady Samantha" was missing due to a BBC DJ talking over it. But I was able to find that section from a podcast, with the rest of the song missing or talked over! I put the two parts together to have the full song. "Sails" also had DJ chatter over the intro, but I was able to wipe that out using X-Minus sound editing software.

This album is rather short, at only 34 minutes. But hopefully it'll grow longer if and when more of his early BBC appearances emerge.

01 Lady Samantha [Edit] (Elton John)
02 Sails [Edit] (Elton John)
03 Your Song (Elton John)
04 Border Song [Holy Moses] (Elton John)
05 talk (Elton John)
06 Sixty Years On (Elton John)
07 Take Me to the Pilot (Elton John)
08 talk (Elton John)
09 The Greatest Discovery (Elton John)
10 I Need You to Turn To (Elton John)
11 talk (Elton John)
12 Burn Down the Mission (Elton John)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15904970/EltonJn_1968-1970_BBSessionsVolume1_atse.zip.html

Videos for all of the songs from the 1970 show here are available on YouTube. I took a screenshot from one of them for the cover art photo.