Levon

Bernie Taupin had never been to America when he wrote “Levon.” He’d seen it in movies, read about it in books, imagined it from his bedroom in rural England. And somehow that distance gave him clarity. He could see the myth without being blinded by it.

Levon sells cartoon balloons in a small town. He wears his war wound like a crown. His son wants to go to Venus. None of this makes literal sense. All of it makes complete emotional sense. Taupin understood that American dreams don’t have to be logical to be true.

The song is a generational tragedy compressed into five minutes. A father who fought in a war, made his money, did everything right by the rules he knew—and still somehow failed to understand his own child. A son reaching for the stars while his father stays earthbound, counting balloons. They love each other. They can’t connect.

Elton’s arrangement turns it into cinema. The piano opens quietly, almost tentative. Then the strings come in, and the horns, and suddenly you’re watching a Technicolor epic about people in a town that doesn’t exist, and you’re weeping anyway.

This is what the Elton-Bernie partnership did better than anyone: they made you feel things you couldn’t quite explain. The song never resolves its tensions. Levon never understands Jesus. Jesus never stops dreaming of escape. The balloon seller and the would-be astronaut, trapped in the same family, seeing different skies.

Some songs explain themselves. This one trusts you to fill in the blanks with your own father, your own impossible dreams, your own beautiful failures.