A final collection of songs dedicated to the wonder of nature that is the Elephant.
“The Elephants Graveyard (Guilty)” is a track from ‘Mondo Bongo’ The Boomtown Rats’ fourth album which was released in December 1980. This was the band’s last album to be recorded as six-piece band, as the guitarist Gerry Cott was left the band shortly after the album’s release. “The Elephants Graveyard (Guilty)” was released a the second single from album and made No. 26 in January 1981.
“17 Pink Sugar Elephants” is a song by Vashti Bunyan which appeared on her 2004 album ‘Some Things Just Stick in the Mind’. Written in 1963 when she was eighteen, there is an interesting overlap with imagination and mental illness, the song seems to be about psychedelics, considering the decade written and that pink elephants could refer to the “Pink Elephants On Parade” scene in Dumbo. Seventeen fits the syllables required and is prime. Prime numbers are “weird” due to their lack of factors and, except for two, are odd in the mathematical sense. The only factors of seventeen are one and seventeen, the way that only the one narrator sees the seventeen elephants.
“Elephant Man” is a song by Bo Diddley taken from his album ‘The Black Gladiator’ which was released in 1970. The album is, by and large, a radical departure for one of the preeminent bluesmen of the classic ’50s Chicago scene. But that’s not to say that Bo has given up some of his trademarks. The opening track, “Elephant Man”, which is surely one of his finest songs ever, in which he explains in detail how he made the titular animal. Bo Diddley is such a egotist that he claims that he actually invented the elephant.
“Me And The Elephants” is a single by Bobby Goldsboro’ released in 1977. It was cover of the 1976 version by Gene Cotton. The song which was originally written by Benny Whitehead become something of a standard at the time with artists as diverse as Cilla Black, Val Doonican, and Terry Wogan issuing their own recordings. It was minor hit for Goldsboro, Tony Blackburn used to dedicate the song to his wife Tessa while their divorce was going through.
“Elephant Stone” is a song by the English band the Stone Roses. It was the third single released by the group and their first release on Silvertone Records. Originally released in October 1988, it showcases the group’s growing confidence and incorporation of dance rhythms. The song was written by singer Ian Brown and guitarist John Squire. It was inserted as an additional track into the tracklisting of U.S. pressings of the band’s debut album in 1989. John Squire said about the meaning of “Elephant Stone”, “What is it about? Love and Death… War and Peace… Morecambe and Wise…” Squire also said about “Elephant Stone”, “It’s about a girl… who I don’t see any more.”
