Club At The End Of The Street

This is a fun song about a fictional hangout where they play the soul music Elton and his writing partner Bernie Taupin have always loved. Elton mentions Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye in the lyrics. Explaining the inspiration in a 1989 interview with Music Connection, Taupin said: "What I would do is I'd take a song like a Drifters song and I'd try to write a Drifters-type lyric. There's a song on the album called 'Club At The End Of The Street,' which is probably the straightest emulation of one of those songs. When you hear it, it has the feel of a song like 'Under The Boardwalk.' It's a real Drifters-style song. So what I would do is I'd make notes for Elton at the bottom of the lyric sheet, like 'Think Drifters, think this or think that.'" The Drifters had their own song about a special nightspot: in 1965 they released a song called "At The Club."

The video is animated, which freed up Elton for other commitments. It was directed by Derek Hayes, a British animator whose work can be seen in the 1979 film The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle. He also directed the videos for Rod Stewart's "The Motown Song" and Madonna's "Dear Jessie." Note that the club in Elton's video is called "Club EJ."

Elton says that he loves this song. He told Rolling Stone in 2013: "We wanted to write a song like the Drifters would record, one of those Goffin-King, Brill Building songs. It's the closest we ever got to one."