The Making of The Complete Thom Bell Sessions

Today we celebrate the Record Store Day 2022 release of “The Complete Thom Bell Sessions” on purple vinyl with a look at the 1977 recording sessions and the songs’ previous releases.

By John F. Higgins

Elton, having recently been appointed Chairman of the Watford FC, spent a week in October 1977, at the same time as his Greatest Hits Volume 2 was climbing the charts, recording with famed Philadelphia Soul writer/producer Thom Bell.

Elton was a massive fan of Thom’s work with The Delfonics, the Stylistics, the Spinners, MFSB (Mother Father Sister Brother), and other popular R&B and disco acts of the day.

A frequent visitor to the new discos that were popping up, like Studio 54 in New York, Elton had hoped to record at Sigma Studios in Philadelphia, but Thom had recently moved to Seattle, so the sessions took place there at Kaye-Smith Studios (fun fact: then-owned by comedian Danny Kaye).

During the week, Elton was presented with the key to the city by the band Heart, who later bought the facility and renamed it Bad Animals Studios.

Overdubs on The Complete Thom Bell Sessions, including orchestral arrangements and backing vocals, were recorded at Sigma Studios.

We did a lot of playing table tennis for the first day or so. We were…equal [laughing]. He and I are both tenacious and neither one of us wants to lose.
Thom Bell (BBC Radio 4 “Lost Albums”, May 2007)

After the six songs were written and recorded, and footage for promotional videos was shot (Bernie Taupin, who co-wrote one of the songs, can be seen for a moment in the background), they sat on the shelf for almost two years.

Three songs (Are You Ready For Love, Mama Can’t Buy You Love, and Three Way Love Affair) were issued on a 12” vinyl as The Thom Bell Sessions in 1979. These tracks had been remixed by Elton and Clive Franks in the meantime.

The record peaked at # 51 on the Billboard Top 200 and the single, an edit of Mama Can’t Buy You Love, went on to reach #9 on their Hot 100, #1 on Adult Contemporary, and #36 on the R&B chart.

In what was a first for one of his own albums, Elton only sang during these sessions – he did not play piano or any other instrument. This, along with co-writing just two of the songs, was part of Elton’s letting Thom oversee the sessions to a greater extent than the artist had been used to.

“I couldn’t believe it. I kept saying, ‘are you sure that you want to do this?’,” Thom explained in 2007. “Are you positive? Because we don’t want to get into midstream and all of a sudden we start ‘I hear it one way, you hear it the other way.’ He stuck to his word!”

Thom suggested to Elton that he explore the lower register of his voice more than he had previously…a technique that Elton continued to implement moving forward. “He was the first person that ever taught me about my voice. He said, ‘ You don’t use your lower register enough, and you don’t breathe properly’.”

Thom later explained, “I heard it in his voice. It tells me what to do…I don’t tell it what to do. And I heard melodies in my mind – the way he phrases. And also, being English, he says some words differently. When I heard his voice [in the studio]…it gives you the secret. A good artist can sing anything.”

Elton and Thom Bell converse amongst many of the musicians during a playback at Kaye-Smith Studios, Seattle, in October 1977.

All of the songs were finally released for the first time in 1989, as The Complete Thom Bell Sessions, on CD and vinyl in the US and Canada only (the album has since gone out of print). Record Store Day 2022 marks the first time the full LP has been available on vinyl outside of North America.

In addition to Country Love Song, Nice And Slow, and Shine On Through, the 1989 release featured the original Thom Bell mixes of Are You Ready For Love (with The Spinners’ John Edwards and Bobby Smith adding vocal ad-libs), Mama Can’t Buy You Love, and Three-Way Love Affair.

By the time The Thom Bell Sessions came out in 1979, the song Shine On Through was already known to Elton fans as the lead-off track to his 1978 album A Single Man. The Elton John/Gary Osborne song (their first-ever collaboration) was entirely rearranged and re-recorded during the sessions for that album.

Two years before the Seattle sessions, Elton had dipped his toe into the same sonic waters with Philadelphia Freedom. The non-album single was Elton’s fourth #1 in the US, spending three non-consecutive weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 in 1975. It also placed at #32 on the US R&B charts and reached #12 in the UK.

Ten or so years before that, Elton was in the band Bluesology, who were the backing band for the UK tours of American R&B acts like Patti Labelle and the Bluebells and Major Lance. A little later, Elton sang and played on “sound-alike” sessions for such soul hits as Young, Gifted And Black and Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours) on British discount albums (a lesser-known aspect of the budding superstar’s career).

I’m a huge Rhythm & Blues fan. I grew up in a band playing that kind of music…and like most musicians from England at that time, black music was our one love.
Elton John (BBC Radio 4 “Lost Albums”, May 2007)

Are You Ready For Love was issued as a single in August 2003 on Fatboy Slim’s Southern Fried Records in the UK and Ultra Records in the US.

It reached #1 in the UK after Elton performed the song on television to promote the 2003–2004 football season for Sky Sports. Thom Bell recalled, “Elton called me and told me [of its chart success]. He was elated. He said, ‘We were a little early, weren’t we?’”

The track inspired over a dozen remixes.

Fun facts: the bassist on The Complete Thom Bell Sessions was famed Motown “Funk Brother” Bob Babbitt, who you have heard a thousand times without realizing it. And uncredited synth player George Merrill went on to co-write two massive hits for Whitney Houston: How Will I Know and I Wanna Dance With Somebody.