"Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding" is a medley of two songs written by English musician Elton John and songwriter Bernie Taupin, and performed by John. It is the opening track of the 1973 double album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.
The…
"Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding" is a medley of two songs written by English musician Elton John and songwriter Bernie Taupin, and performed by John. It is the opening track of the 1973 double album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.
The first part, "Funeral for a Friend", is an instrumental created by John while thinking of what kind of music he would like at his funeral. This first half segues into "Love Lies Bleeding".
In the 2001 Eagle Vision documentary, Classic Albums: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, John said the two songs were not written as one piece, but fit together since "Funeral for a Friend" ends in the key of A, and "Love Lies Bleeding" opens in A, and the two were played as one elongated piece when recorded. (However, the songs are published and copyrighted individually and remain separate entities with separate sheet music.) With lyrics like "And love lies bleeding in my hand/Oh, it kills me to think of you with another man", lyricist Bernie Taupin uses death symbolism as an angry take on a break-up song.
The grandiose introduction to "Funeral for a Friend" and additional synthesizer parts in "Love Lies Bleeding, were performed during final overdubs and mixing at Trident Studios on an ARP 2500 synthesizer (erroneously credited as A.R.P.) by the album's engineer, David Hentschel, who, John recalled, overdubbed track after track of music and synthetic atmospheric effects until the mini-opus was complete. In an interview for John's official website, Hentschel recalled that he used melodies from "The Ballad of Danny Bailey (1909–1934)", "I’ve Seen That Movie, Too", "Candle in the Wind" and others in creating the track.
