Neil's In The Mix | There's Still Time For Me

0:00Radio, Elton John, I'll retain that world. Now on Radio Elton John, it's over to Neal's in the mix, presented by Neal Barrett. Welcome back to Neal's In the Mix, a deep dive into a single song from the Elton John catalogue. The lyrics, the music, and everything in between. We've been doing the return leg over the last couple of episodes from this train don't stop there anymore where the creative engine was spottering out, via better off dead, where it was firing on all cylinders. Today we stay with that thought and locate the song that is the present tense version of better off dead. Elton and Bernie's live experience of Soho in the swinging 60s.

1:01Today's song is There's Still Time for Me from October 1968. Let's try to place it properly in context first. In the spring of 1968, Elton and Bernie were making some headway with songs like Skyline Pigeon, Cry Willow Cry, and there is still a little love. But then after Dick James's rejection of the Zippo material, everything seems to stall. Elton's wedding to Linda Woodrow was in the air with Linda living with Elton and Bernie in the basement flat in Islington. And Elton has since said that he and Bernie wrote absolutely nothing during this period. The song registrations seemed to back that up as well after May, nothing appears until August. And when the songs do return, they show Elton and Bernie drifting backwards into commerciality, almost all the way back

2:03to Eurovision territory with songs like Two of a Kind. These must have been dire times with the pair becoming increasingly lost musically. Maybe their music was still alive, but it required medical intervention. In September, 1968, Steve Brown joined DJM and became their musical midwife. He took stock, questioned the direction they were taking with the big dumb numbers they were recording at the time, and told them to write songs that really meant something to them. After that, things started to get back on track. The next registrations being Baby I Miss You in September, then in October, in the morning, all across the Havens, Bonnie's gone away, just an ordinary man, Lady Watts tomorrow, and today's song, there's still time for me. This is, tell me when the whistle blows,

3:04era Bernie, shuttling between King's Cross and Lincolnshire, trying to keep everything alive at once, his family relationships, the nights out drinking with his friends, and his innocent dreams under the angel tree, and from the top of the church roof, along with his new life in the city as a musician and as a brother to Elton. We can hear his empty sky voice and themes starting to emerge in this batch, religion and mythology in all across the Havens, and in the morning, countryside and family in Lady Watts tomorrow, and daydreams at the harbourside in just an ordinary man. There's still time for me, so it's apart from all of that. It's a song that's explicitly set in the city, probably in Soho. Bernie wearing his invisibility cloak, observing the madness, while feeling optimism about his future there, alongside Elton.

4:07He turns towards the neon light, and he notices the synthetic sounds. He says that the mist of the city has soaked right through his coat, so he's starting to absorb the ambience, and he's finding the lights and the noise of London fascinating. It's uneasy for him, he's got specter of the night time, he's got killing times, so this almost a horror vibe to what he's saying, but he just can't look away. There are strong links to better off dead here. It's so direct that I honestly think this lyric must of cross-burne his mind almost six years later when he put pen to paper. The basic sentiment, feeling positive, while silently observing the craziness of the city,

5:08is exactly the same. The neon lights are present in both, as are the bus cues, although Elton scrubbed that verse from better off dead as we discovered last time. Here the bus cues are moaning as one, and they're described as all alone, probably Bernie's referring to that city phenomenon, people being in close proximity without directly acknowledging each other's presence, something that would have been quite odd to see for a country boy. The line, the people who were there before were only there to gloat is a bit of a headscratcher. Bernie could be referring here to the DJM lifers, the ones who'd sneered at their attempts at writing commercial music, and who'd presumably rejoiced when Dick James rejected their contemporary work. If this is so, he's talking here about the laughing die-hards of Denmark Street,

6:10and it's another secret passage into the Captain Fantastic album. There are young people in that bus cue as well, the ones who are going home, not the ones going to work, and it's those people, that Elton and Bernie's futures would depend on. When we get to the chorus, there's still time for me with just a little help from you. We're getting a sense of brotherhood between Elton and Bernie, and of cautious optimism. If we asked Bernie how he was, he probably wouldn't go so far as to say inspired, but this is surely the ancestor of that feeling. Elton's work here is not especially inspired, but it's functional. The verse is built from very basic materials, guitar chords, D, A, and G, and it trotges around like Bernie walking the city. The most interesting moment is the big transition via C into the key of F for the chorus, modulating up a minor third,

7:11just as Bernie moves from uneasy observation into the cautious optimism. That's the moment where the music seems to understand the lyric. The chorus itself is still very straightforward. F, A minor, B flat, C, a bit of D minor, and then B flat to A. And the melody mostly picks out the notes you'd expect over these chords. Nothing truly notable here. And the melody mostly picks out the notes you'd expect over these chords. Nothing truly notable here. Outside of the fact that it doesn't feel overworked, it feels natural. It's one of the rockiest demos that Elton had recorded up to that point, and you could imagine with some electric guitars and drums the song having a kind of Saturday nights or right for fighting kind of vibe to it. The piano interlude, alternating between C and B flat,

8:12and the simple A chord to fade outro, both give the thing a restless, unresolved quality. The song's got energy, but it doesn't seem to have anywhere definite to put it. The music's not really memorable in itself. There's no killer hook. There's no melodic leaps, no big surprise or flourish, and it's sympathetic to Bernice's sentiment, and you could see why they recorded it, but you can also see why it didn't end up featuring in their upcoming plans. The arrangement of the demo, just piano, Caleb's acoustic, tambourine, and vocals, some double tracking and harmonies here and there. It's modest.

9:13There's still time for me. There's still time for me. There's still time for me. There's still time for me. The fidelity on the dual box release doesn't do it many favours either. It is what it is. A working sketch from a pair of writers who'd got themselves a new licence to stop writing to order, and who'd started to gently write themselves into the music. Before the dual box, we'd heard another version of the song on bootlegs that had this odd pitch shift effect during the introduction. This unusual touch is present on some of the acetate, so it's definitely a deliberate move on someone's part.

10:14Perhaps it's meant to be the sound of the Elton and Bernie machine rebooting under Steve Brown. I found it quite nauseating, but not anywhere near as bad as the ending of Good Luck Babe by Chapel Rone. While it might seem a slight effort this one, and while it might slide by uncontroversially on the dual box, there's still time for me. It's an important lyric from Bernie. It's the opening page of his and Elton's autobiography in music. It's Bernie and Elton finding strength in each other, looking out together at the future, and it's all told in real time the next phase of their long and lonely climb had begun. I hope you're enjoying these. Drop me an email, Eltonpodcastatgmail.com, and let me know if you want more or less of something or other. I'm enjoying picking the path and finding the connections

11:16that link these seemingly disparate songs in the catalogue, like this little run we've been through on the last three episodes. Next up, and it's the second Friday of the month, we visit another song that has its first in D, where it's sort of stuck in limbo, not really going anywhere, before the chorus lifts to F and starts dreaming of somewhere brighter. Can you work out where we're going? See you there. This episode of Niels in the Mix was presented by Niels Barrett. Executive producer was Niels Barrett, for Radio Elton John, All Rights Reserved.