Writers: Elton John and Bernie Taupin
Producer: Gus Dudgeon
Recorded: May 1973 at Strawberry Studios, France
Released: Fall 1973
| Players: | Elton John – vocals, piano Davey Johnstone – guitar, vocals Dee Murray – bass, vocals Nigel Olsson – drums, vocals David Hentschel – synthesizer |
| Album: | Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (MCA, 1973) |
Though never released as a proper single, the “Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” combination is one of Elton John's most popular album tracks. He's often used it to open his concerts.
Of “Funeral For A Friend,” John said, “(Producer) Gus Dudgeon had always said I should do an instrumental. One day I was feeling really down and said to myself, 'What kind of music would I like to hear at my own funeral?' I'd always liked funeral music anyway. I like very sad music of any kind.”
John and his band began recording the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album in Kingston, Jamaica, but were unhappy with the facilities and left after laying down an early take of “Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting.” John said, “We stayed at a hotel called the Pink Flamingo or something like that. I was afraid to go out of the room, because it was pretty funky in downtown Kingston.” Lyricist Bernie Taupin added, “If I remember rightly, the studio was surrounded by barbed wire, and there were guys with machine guns.”
John says that once back in France, the album was recorded in about 15 days — “The amount of work we did…We used to record three, four, five tracks a day.”