John Hendow

On Saturday 10/27 The Dudley Manlove Quartet performed our annual “Halloween Spooktacular” show. This year’s performance was at the Sunset Tavern in Ballard, one of our favorite local venues. For the Halloween show we perform our usual three-set show, but for the middle set we pay tribute to some other band by dressing up as them and playing a dozen or so of their songs. In past years we’ve been the B52’s, Talking Heads, David Bowie, Spinal Tap and so on. This year we were Elton John, so each member of the band took a look from Sir Elton’s historic career. My costume was based on his “Rocket Man” era, and I seized the opportunity to wear 4-inch platform shoes; as a guy who is 5’6″, that makes quite a difference in my perspective on the world!

I have always love Elton John’s music and own nearly all of his albums. By far, my favorite of his albums is “Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy”, and I was delighted that the band agreed to add the title track from this album to our tribute set. We also performed a bunch of of his better-known hits including Crocodile Rock, Rocket Man, Philadelphia Freedom, I’m Still Standing and Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting. I put a lot of work into transcribing the guitar parts for these songs, including the stylistic idiosyncrasies of guitarist Davey Johnstone. Davey was one of my strong influences as I was developing my guitar playing, and I have always wanted to let him know how much I appreciate his tone, phrasing and general approach to the instrument. I was backstage once at an Elton John concert and he was really the person I hoped to say hello to… he seemed busy and disinterested so I didn’t bother him. So, DJ, if you’re out there on the interwebs, I tip my fez to you.

Also in the Halloween set were the usual thematic hits such as “Ghostbusters” and “Werewolves of London”, the latter being one of the few times in this band when I get the opportunity to play slide. Because this song is in the key of G, it’s kind of a softball for playing slide on a guitar in standard tuning… but I do my best to come up with something fun and different on it. We also played “Piano Man” so I brought along my harmonicas.

As always, there was an abundance of clever and creative costumes in the audience. This is absolutely my favorite holiday of the year and it’s always a fun show.