Elton John
Seattle Center Coliseum
Seattle, WA
October 12, 1974
JEMS Full Track Mono Masters
1644 Edition

Recording Gear: Sony ECM-22P Microphone > Tandberg Model 11 Portable Reel to Reel

JEMS 2021 Transfer: Mono Master reels > Otari MX-5050 w/full track mono head stack > Sound Devices USBPre 2 capture (24/96) > iZotope RX and Ozone > Peak Pro 6 (post production) > xACT > FLAC

01 Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding
02 Candle In The Wind
03 Grimsby
04 Rocket Man
05 Take Me To The Pilot
06 Bennie And The Jets
07 Daniel
08 Grey Seal
09 Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
10 Burn Down The Mission
11 You're So Static
12 Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
13 Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me
14 Honky Cat
15 All The Girls Love Alice
16 Saturday Night's All Right For Fighting
17 Crocodile Rock
18 The Bitch Is Back
19 Your Song

Known Faults:
-None

Band Members:

Elton John - vocals, piano

Dee Murray - bass

Davey Johnstone - guitar, mandolin, banjo

Nigel Olsson - drums



Muscle Schoals Horns

Harvey Thompson - saxophone

Ronnie Eades - baritone saxophone

Harrison Calloway - trumpet

Charlie Rose - trombone

If you follow JEMS releases, you know we lost our founding partner Stan Gutoski early last year. Stan was to Seattle what Mike Millard was to Los Angeles--the guy who taped every important show.

Stan started recording a year before Mike did and both made a key decision to buy what they believed to be the best tape recorder available to do the job right. For Mike, that was the Nakamichi 550 in 1975. For Stan in 1972, it was a Tandberg Model 11 portable, full-track mono reel to reel. Both decks were capable of high quality recording, especially for the era, and were a step above the decks that were being used by many early tapers.

If you don’t know about the Tandberg, it was a remarkable piece of gear in its day, not only capable of recording at 3-3/4 and 7-1/2 IPS, but in full-track mono. I won’t do the math, but compared to a cassette, the surface area of tape capturing the music is orders of magnitude higher, which is why so many of Stan’s Tandberg masters from the likes of David Bowie, Elton John, Led Zeppelin and Bruce Springsteen are considered by some audience-recording classics. The Tandberg required 10(!) D-cel batteries to operate, is roughly the size of a compact typewriter and weighs around ten pounds. Imagine sneaking that into a show and your respect for what Stan accomplished only grows.

Stan's original Tandberg deck is still functioning, but after years of making transfers from it, I noticed that our Model 11 introduced a lot of noise in playback. Not surprising considering the age of the unit (closing in on 50 years old), but an issue just the same.

In recent years, I used software to help address the noise Tandberg playback introduced, but I wanted a better solution. The obvious answer would be to transfer the tapes on a different reel to reel deck. But because the Tandberg recorded in relatively uncommon full-track mono, transfers done on any standard deck, be it 1/4 or 1/2-track, would not capture the full fidelity of the master tapes.

As luck would have it, I was taking another reel to reel deck in for repair at the one place in Southern California that still specializes in them and has for decades, Adrian Proaudio Services in Canoga Park. I was talking to Adrian about the Tandberg issue and my primary reel to reel, which is an Otari MX-5050. He said, “Why don’t you get a full-track mono head stack for the Otari?” Before I even had a moment to ponder why I had never thought of that, Adrian pulled out a brand-new, dead-stock, full-track mono head unit which I could plug and play into my Otari. Needless to say I bought it on the spot.

The Otari full-track mono playback was a revelation. The noisiness I had come to expect from any Tandberg playback was gone. The fidelity was everything I had always hoped we could extract from Stan’s master recordings.

###

In the last couple of years, we've revisited some of Stan's greatest Seattle recordings by making new transfers from the master reels, shows like Led Zeppelin '73, George Harrison '74 and Pink Floyd '75. In the process, I did an audit of all Tandberg master reels released by JEMS on DIME and compared that to the tapes sitting on the shelf just above me as I type this, an exercise I had inexplicably never undertaken.

You can probably guess where this is going (because I seem to revisit this narrative thread often): turns out there are at least two dozen Tandberg masters that don't appear to have been torrented or posted. Several of these may not have circulated in any form, even in the analog trading era. I suspect some haven't been played since the day after the show--if at all.

Stan would have been the first to admit he devoted 95% of his energy to capturing these shows and only 5% to listening to them. His legacy of over 100 Tandberg recordings made between 1972-1979 is a truly remarkable archive that, delightfully, has not been fully tapped.

Which brings us to this special show pulled from the aforementioned shelf: Elton John, performing the first of two nights in Seattle on the Caribou tour, October 12, 1974. To the best of our knowledge this show has never been posted to DIME in any form and doesn't appear to be in wide circulation dating back to the analog days.

Why these reels weren't transferred when our other Tandberg Elton tapes were done is unclear, though I suspect these four reels (Stan also taped the second night on October 13) may have been separated from the rest of the Tandberg masters for decades and only reunited when we relocated and reorganized the complete JEMS Archive when it moved south a few years ago.

Best of all, this isn't just a new 1974 Elton recording, it is a very good one, right up there with Stan's best Tandberg tapes, offering full, up-close sound, no hiss and perfectly balanced audience, likely the result of Stan's practice of using a 25-foot cord to place his microphone on the edge of the seating scaffolding closest to the PA. That meant direct PA sound and no close audience noise. You'l even hear Stan's voice at the start of the show when he says, "Are you listening, Alan?" Samples provided.

The Seattle audience could not be more revved up for Elton's performance and he delivers a long, excellent set with terrific renditions of "Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding," "Rocket Man," "Take Me Toe The Pilot," "You're So Static" and "All The Girls Love Alice." Any fan of Elton John circa 1974 should enjoy this.

###

Stan was one of the kindest and humblest people I ever met. He took me on as an apprentice in the mid-'80s and taught me everything I know about taping. He also gave me access to his archive, and the act of doing so was in effect the beginning of JEMS, as we began to treat our collective recordings as a single entity.

This tribute video captures the sweetness of Stan and provides a glimpse of the great man I was fortunate enough to call my friend for 35 years. If you love this hobby and have ten minutes to spare, I'd strongly encourage you to watch it.

Stan video: https://vimeo.com/503750464/493aa4f757

Thanks this week to Professor Goody for providing pitch guidance and to mjk5510 who helped out with research and post-production.

BK

Images for all shows as well as full size images for this show.

Images for this show: