Funeral For A Friend / Love Lies Bleeding

Elton wrote the music for this song after thinking about what he would want played at his funeral. Parts of it are very dirge-like.

Running 11:08, this opens with the "Funeral For A Friend" section, an instrumental that transitions into "Love Lies Bleeding," an angry song about a broken relationship with a lyric by Elton's songwriting partner, Bernie Taupin. They started as separate songs, but when producer Gus Dudgeon fused them together, Elton liked what he heard and made sure they stayed together. The "Funeral For A Friend" part contains lots of transitional segments that Elton came up with to assure a smooth segue.

This song starts the journey on Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, opening the double album. It's a slow build, fading up from silence with an ethereal soundscape that plays for 30 seconds before the synthesizer notes come in. It fades back down at 1:40, which is when Elton's piano arrives, soon joined by the drums (Nigel Olsson), guitar (Davey Johnstone), bass (Dee Murray), and more synth. Elton doesn't start singing until 5:49. It's a powerful introduction to a very substantial album. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is Elton's best-selling studio album and one that influenced generations of musicians - Brandi Carlile says she took it everywhere. The album has plenty of hits ("Bennie And The Jets," the title track, "Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting)"), but also a number of other tracks that endured as favorites in Elton's live shows and on rock radio: "All The Girls Love Alice," "Grey Seal" and "Candle In The Wind" (not released as a US single until 1987) among them.