This “Perfect” Elton John Album From 1970 Was Heavily Influenced by The Band’s ‘Big Pink’ Album

Elton John might be best known for post-1971 hits like “Tiny Dancer”, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”, and “Rocket Man”, but for John and his longtime collaborator Bernie Taupin, the most “perfect” album they ever made was John’s third, Tumbleweed Connection. The 1970 album was a follow-up to his eponymous sophomore release, which featured the chart-topping hit “Your Song”.

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Generally speaking, most of the songs on Tumbleweed Connection lacked the same staying power as some of his later works, with the possible exception of “Come Down In Time”. Nevertheless, John and Taupin have both praised the album’s cohesion. In this regard, John once said it was “probably one of our most perfect albums. I don’t think there’s any song on there that didn’t melodically fit the lyric.”

Taupin added of his and John’s Western concept album, “I always loved Americana, and I loved American Westerns. I’ve always said that ‘El Paso’ [by Marty Robbins] was the song that made me want to write songs. It was the perfect meshing of melody and storyline, and I thought that here was something that married rhythm and written word perfectly.” Besides Robbins, Taupin and John credit one band and album in particular for inspiring Tumbleweed Connection.

The Band’s ‘Music From Big Pink’ Helped Inspire ‘Tumbleweed Connection’

Speaking to Uncut in 2026, Elton John and Bernie Taupin both cite The Band’s debut studio album, Music From Big Pink, as the driving impetus behind them writing Tumbleweed Connection. John said Big Pink “changed our lives,” adding, “It changed the way we wrote songs, the way we listened to songs. We’ve always loved Americana, but The Band gave Americana a new twist. It was like Bob Dylan with funky soul. Big Pink was just an amazing record.”

In the liner notes for Tumbleweed Connection, Taupin said, “Everybody thinks that I was influenced by Americana and by coming here, seeing America firsthand. But we wrote and recorded the albums before we’d ever been to the States.” Taupin said that Robbie Robertson’s songs, specifically, were of great inspiration to him. These include “To Kingdom Come”, “The Weight”, and “Chest Fever”, among others.

Though later albums would ultimately overshadow Tumbleweed Connection, it was still a great success in 1970. John’s third album peaked at No. 2 in his native U.K. and No. 5 on the Billboard 200. Tumbleweed has a platinum certification in the States, which is a higher rating than the album that inspired it, Music From Big Pink.

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