I love this song....shocker, right?  Steve never love's songs by Elton John, and he never loves the songs that he covers for YouTube!  I know...that part of this post is pretty predictable...but I have more to say about it (also a shocker, I'm sure).

Interestingly enough, the first time I heard this song was not the original recording...it was on a live concert broadcast on PBS in 1992 of a performance Elton and his band delivered in Barcelona, Spain near the time of the Summer Olympics there.  It had such an infectious beat and groove, and Elton just looked like he was IN LOVE with playing and singing it.  He did this really fun bluesy intro on his keyboard before the band came in with the signature string chops letting the audience know what song it was.  I was hooked.  I love the original recording, but it doesn't have the same punch and electricity of his live performances, so I have come to associate it more with his concert recordings than the actual record captured for posterity.

This song hit #1 in both the US and Canada, and was released ONLY as a single in 1975 during breaks in recording sessions for the then upcoming album "Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy".  It wouldn't appear on an album of any kind until the 1977 compilation record "Elton John's Greatest Hits Volume II".  

This song was actually written as a tribute to someone who had become a good friend of Elton's, and someone he had come to greatly admire...tennis icon Billie Jean King.  She was touring the country on an exhibition tennis team called the "Philadelphia Freedoms", and wondered if Elton could write a song for them.  He asked his lyricist writing partner Bernie Taupin to do it as a favor, and Taupin delivered the lyrics we know today.  They have nothing to do with tennis, nor American patriotism...like most Taupin lyrics, they are somewhat esoteric and abstract....however, they contain the magic words "Philadelphia Freedom", and that was all the job required.  Elton wrote a catchy melody, and he and the band knocked out an earworm that spread like wildfire around the country.  It also just happened to line up with an American public preparing to celebrate its bicentennial and resonated beautifully.

After researching the song though, my favorite part of the story really isn't musical or lyrical.  It's the special friendship between Elton and Billie Jean King.  They became very close friends and even more, became very solid partners in humanitarian and philanthropic causes.  They have raised HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of dollars together to promote and protect human rights and to combat HIV/AIDS around the world.  What a meaningful thing to build a great friendship around!

It got me thinking about how impactful your circle of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances is in your life experience.  They can't do your work for you, but they make up so much of the set of conditions with which you are navigating your life.  Some make it much easier to be productive than others.  Some make it much easier to laugh than others.  Some make it much easier to feel stressed and anxious than others.  But the point is, your circle is making it easier for you to do something....it's worth asking what that is.  And is it what you want to be doing?  Because it is really difficult to buck the current of your peers and interpersonal culture....not impossible, but difficult.

I've been living an interesting example of this.  I was reasonably productive for many years, but felt like I was still wasting a lot of time....I would get sucked into rabbit holes of nonsense, not just by my algorithms, but by conversations initiated by certain people in my life,and then I would look up and feel like I lost a good portion of my day.  And there's nothing wrong with a good conversation, but I went to sleep most nights feeling fairly dissatisfied with what I had accomplished that day, pledging to "do better" the following day....only to find that the same set of circumstances, resistance barriers, and social interactions were just waiting for me to give me the same experience all over again.

About six months ago I began trying to assess what was going on in my environment that was making it so difficult for me to focus and produce the content that I wanted.  I started making some changes to my office, which helped a bit....I started to do the very difficult work of retraining my algorithms to stop sending me certain kinds of suggested content (this was brutal....you can get pretty addicted to certain kinds of social media posts and videos) and that helped even more.  But then, as if through providence, I made a new friend...a very special friend. 

We connected instantly over all manner of things....music and performance art, culture and politics, philosophy and values....it was like, "where have you been hiding my whole life?"  Interestingly enough, we didn't meet in person....we met through my work on YouTube and just clicked enough through some back and forth in comments that we started chatting and emailing.  Here's the part that really changed my life though....she is off the charts productive....she can squeeze 48 hours into a day, and somehow still have time to chat periodically with me while she's doing it.  And it changed my personal culture.

Gradually, I found myself making the best use of ten minutes when I had it....I found it to be fun and satisfying rather than a chore to focus on my work.  And while we aren't really "accountability partners" because there's no consequence to a lazy day....it just makes it more fun to talk throughout the day if we're both busy doing the things that fuel our lives.  I've dropped more quality content in the last 3 months than the previous 12....I also have a cleaner house, my bed is always made, my laundry is never behind, I find time to cook and eat well at home rather than relying exclusively on take out and garbage convenience food, and I go to sleep every night feeling great about what I did with myself that day....and I wake up in the morning eager for what I'm going to do today.

The point is, this isn't because of this one friend.....this is because by making a series of changes, this new friend was a tipping point that changed my personal culture so that the conditions I was living in made it more easy to be productive than to waste time.  And that's the power of friendships, partnerships, and networks.....if there's something you want to do or be in life, it's going to require some consistency.  Some folks are wired in such a way that they can do that no matter what...but most of us will struggle unless we build a circle around us that makes consistency the most natural practice.  

So....don't fire all of your friends, but do consider whether your current social circle is helping you be what you want to be, and if not, at least try to expand it to include some people who will be supportive and practitioners of what you want to be or do....it is literally the equivalent of trying to drive 75 miles per hour and then realizing that you have the parking brake engaged...surrounding yourself with people and an environment conducive to what you want releases the brake and you'll be stunned by what can happen quickly.

In Elton's case, it was saving and improving the quality of hundreds of thousands of lives.  What might it be for you?

Enjoy my cover of this song from a livestream show I did on July 5, 2020 during the COVID-19 Pandemic, and then check out the performance by Elton himself from the concert in Barcelona in 1992 that I mentioned.

If you'd like to explore my piano method more deeply, my best students use my video courses and join me for conversation and twice monthly Q&A Livestreams in my private community...you can find it all HERE. Thanks.

If the video doesn't show above, use THIS LINK to see it on YouTube

If the video doesn't show above, use THIS LINK to see it on YouTube