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Hello Andrea, hello Luca, you released your book Goodbye Yellow Brick Road – The Making Of An Epic Album at the end of August. Thank you for agreeing to this short interview.

Ralf: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road – The Making Of An Epic Album is your first book. How did the idea come about and how did you implement it?

Andrea: first of all, I  knew Luca in 2012, since when he released his first book "Paul McCartney: Recording Sessions". Being also a Beatles/McCartney fan, I immediately bought it and from then on I stayed in touch with him and got his other McCartney books. Then in mid-2024 he announced on his Facebook that he was launching with his own publishing company the Milestones series with albums by other artists, so I just contacted him to see if by chance he was interested in collaborating for a book about an Elton album, and he agreed. We both immediately thought that the album to work upon should have been GYBR...

Luca: I’m an author and music journalist, as well as running a publishing company. For the Milestones series, I thought GYBR was an absolute must. We started working on it in spring/summer 2024, and it took us about a year to complete it.

Ralf: This year marks the 50th anniversary of the release of Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy, which is also an epic album. Why the album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road?

Luca: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is undoubtedly the album that everyone associates with Elton, myself included. The double album has always been a challenging format, and I consider this one to be a showcase of genres and styles that perfectly represents his skills as a composer, musician, vocalist and bandleader. This doesn’t rule out other albums to be treated in the future!

Ralf: I've only flicked through the book so far because I haven't had time to read it yet. Can you briefly describe what the reader can expect?

Luca: It’s a complete account of how the album came about, with a song-by-song description and anecdotes from the studio. It also explores how the album's legacy has evolved over the decades. We conducted extensive research to compile the material, sourcing rare quotes and incorporating new insights from a couple of interviews Andrea conducted. We also were able to include in the volume the exact recording dates of each song, and some information taken from the studio track sheets, so gold for Elton fans! The book is firmly grounded in music, with no room for personal opinions or gossip, only facts. The book takes a historical approach.

Ralf: The album is now more than 50 years old. I can imagine that it's difficult to research. How did you obtain information about it? Do you have any contact with any band members or other people involved in the creation of "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road"?

Andrea: Luckily, since I started to became interested in Elton, I also collected articles (both from paper magazines and online) about him, so through the years I was able to collect a very huge archive of articles and interviews, to Elton and also to band members and the rest of the staff; same with video-interviews found on DVDs and YouTube. So yes, it was a long work of research, but I had already the material, it was only a matter of finding all the pieces. A few things I missed were also supplied by other fans, and Luca also has access to a digital archive of newspapers and magazines.

I tried also to contact the band members (the ones that are still alive of course!) to obtain some exclusive interviews, but unfortunately all of them gave me the same answer, that they stopped giving  interviews (probably due to their age). But, as you know, Ian Beck was available and he very nicely told me his story about how he went to design the cover.

Ralf: Will the book also be published in German?

Luca: we don’t have plans for translations in other languages at the moment.

Ralf: Are there any more books planned?

Andrea: me and Luca have already in the plans another Milestones to write together, but it will be about an album of another artist. But if you want to know about another Elton John book, it’s too early to say. If this one will have a fair amount of success, we can certainly consider another one about the second most-famous Elton John album. I have a clue about which album this would be, but your readers can contact us to make suggestions!

Ralf: How long have you been Elton fans, and what prompted you to become one?

Luca: I remember that for some reason the first album I owned was Live in Australia that I bought in 1989, after having heard it by some friends. I already knew Elton’s music since the early Eighties, and I thought it was time to start collecting his records!

Andrea: I have first “met” Elton during an Italian TV show in 1988, Telemike, with Mike Bongiorno; I used to watch it every Thursday with my parents and until that day I had no idea of who Elton John was (I was 11 and I wasn’t interested in music by then). He played A Word in Spanish and I Don’t Wanna Go On and did a short interview with Mike, so in that occasion I just knew who he was (but still not interested in his music or in music in general). In the same period I’ve also heard incidentally Town of plenty, who was very popular in Italy since the videoclip was used as the end credits for a kids TV show called BIG. And the funny thing is that I didn’t use to watch that show, maybe it just happened a few times to catch the end credits while zapping through the TV channels.

Anyway I started listening to Elton in 1992 because when The One was released, a couple of school classmates started talking about this album and exchanging it, so I became curious and I asked for it too (borrowed, of course); and when they lent me The One they also lent me The Very Best, which I liked much more than The One album, so I was actually hooked by The Very Best, but thanks to The One!

And then I immediately fell in love with The Very Best, with all of it, so I started searching for the whole albums. And believe me, in 1992 it was very hard to find old Elton records in the shops, but in a couple of years I was able to have almost all the standard albums (the collection was completed in 1995 when The Classic Years remasters were released).

Ralf: Have you seen him live on stage, and if so, how often?

Andrea: Elton did many shows in Italy, but usually in the North area (Milan) or at least no further south than Rome; I always lived in Sicily, so going to Milan or Rome to see him was an expensive travel. The first attempt was for the 1994 Rome shows he did with Ray, but at the time I was underage and couldn’t travel alone so in the end I didn’t attend because I could not find anyone else interested to come along with me. So the first time was in Pesaro in 1998 and from then to 2019 (my last one) I saw 17 shows, all in Italy. For sure I would have liked to see him more times, but unfortunately the geographic distance was always a huge issue.

Luca: yes, I saw Elton in concert several times in my area (Milan), and every time it was exciting and Elton is a consummate professional when it comes to playing live.

Raöf: And now, in a few short sentences: Why is your book a must-buy?

Andrea: I know that Elton fans (as with every other artist’s fans) are knowledgeable to various degrees; I think this book will please to all of them: the “new” fan, or the fan who never went to much in deep about the history of the sessions of this album, will discover many facts and anecdotes about its making , and likely they will see the album in a new light; but I’m sure that even the old, most-experienced fans that think they already know everything about this album, will find something new or at least that they could not remember; and anyway, even if they already know every fact, it’s easier to have them all in one place rather than spread in a huge archive like mine, isn’t it?

Luca: it fills an incredible gap in Elton John’s bibliography. Over the years, I’m sure many fans and music lovers have asked themselves, “Why is there no book on GYBR?” Well, here it finally is! 

Vielen lieben Dank an Luca und Andrea für dieses tolle Interview.