Australian singles charts:
Daniel entered the Kent charts on 30 April 1973 and peaked at #7. The song was #53 on the Top 100 of 1973.
Album:
The song is on Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player which entered the Kent album charts on 5 March 1973. It reached #1 on 30 April 1973 where it sat for 3 weeks.
Songwriters:
Elton John, Bernie Taupin
Producer:
Gus Dudgeon
Record label of Australian release:
DJM
Wikipedia:
Lyricist Bernie Taupin said: “Daniel had been the most misinterpreted song that we’d ever written. The story was about a guy that went back to a small town in Texas, returning from the Vietnam War. They’d lauded him when he came home and treated him like a hero. But he just wanted to go home, go back to the farm, and try to get back to the life that he’d led before. I wanted to write something that was sympathetic to the people that came home.”
Read more: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_(Elton_John_song)
Songfacts:
When Elton wrote the music for this song, he chopped off the last verse because he thought the song was already too long. The deleted verse explained that “Daniel” was a Vietnam vet who returned home to the farm after the war, couldn’t find peace, and decided to leave America and go to Spain. With the last verse chopped off, it became a fairly vague story of two brothers who part ways, although Bernie Taupin says that losing the verse wasn’t a big deal.
Read more: www.songfacts.com/facts/elton-john/daniel
This song is also on our Spotify playlist Bang a Gong – the 70s
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