Flashback: Elton John Performs the Nostalgic ‘We All Fall in Love Sometimes’ in 2005
Elton John fans woke up this morning to the news that he was releasing an enormous box set, Elton: Jewel Box, packed with rarities from his long career. There’s a particular focus on his pre-fame days in the late Sixties where he churned out songs like “Hourglass,” “The Witch’s House,” and “Year of the Teddy Bear” with lyricist Bernie Taupin to complete public indifference. Many of the songs have never been officially released.
“Hearing these long lost tracks again, I find it hard to comprehend just how prolific Bernie and I were during the early days,” John said in a statement. “The songs just poured out of us, and the band were just unbelievable in the studio. I always want to push forward with everything I do and look to the future, but having time during lockdown to take stock and pull these moments from my memory from each era has been a joy.”
Elton’s career exploded in 1970 when “Your Song” became a hit all over the world, but he’s always looked back at the time period before that with incredible fondness and nostalgia. In 1975, he teamed up with Taupin to chronicle it in the autobiographical LP Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. The album’s 10 songs trace their lives from their initial meeting in 1967 right up until just before their breakthrough three years later.
It ends with “We All Fall in Love Sometimes” where Taupin sums up the magic of their bond. “We wrote it and I played it,” he wrote for his partner to sing. “Something happened/It’s so strange this feeling/Naive notions that were childish/Simple tunes that tried to hide it/But when it comes/We all fall in love sometimes.”
“I cry when I sing this song, because I was in love with Bernie, not in a sexual way, but because he was the person I was looking for my entire life, my little soulmate,” John told Rolling Stone in 2013. “We’d come so far, and we were still very naive.”
The song wasn’t a single and it hasn’t been done live since 2005 when John celebrated the 30th anniversary of Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy by playing the album straight through at a handful of arena dates. Here’s a video of him playing it at a Madison Square Garden gig that year.
“We All Fall in Love Sometimes” appears on the first disc of Elton: Jewel Box. The pre-fame rarities come on discs 3, 4 and 5, meaning that that fans can finally hear the “naive notions” and “simple tunes” that “We All Fall in Love” celebrates.