Elton John is releasing an anniversary edition of Rock of the Westies

Elton John is reissuing his 1975 album Rock of the Westies in a special edition to mark its fiftieth anniversary. The anniversary edition arrives on November 20. It's the tenth studio record from the British singer and pianist, and it first came out in October 1975.

The album was recorded at Caribou Ranch in Colorado, with Gus Dudgeon producing, a mainstay of John's work in that period. Rock of the Westies came out five months after Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy and, like its predecessor, debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200. That made it his sixth consecutive number one album, and the last in that run from the seventies. The album includes the number one hit Island Girl, the double A side Grow Some Funk of Your Own and I Feel Like a Bullet (In the Gun of Robert Ford), and Street Kids.

The new edition comes in several formats: 2LP, 2CD, 1LP and digital. The expanded editions center on the 2017 remaster of the original album, along with previously unreleased Piano & Vocal Versions of every track, taken from the recording sessions in Colorado. Street Kids has been shared as the first taste. According to Far Out, the 2017 remaster is being made available on CD and digitally for the first time with this release. The 2LP comes on colored vinyl, pressed in Sea Blue and Electric Blue, in a gatefold sleeve with a sixteen page booklet featuring new liner notes and archive photos.

Elton John looks back on the album with satisfaction. He calls it "the most genuine rock and roll record that I've ever made" and says: "I had forgotten how good some of the tracks were and how good some of the piano playing was. It just rocks! I love it! It was a fun record to make." Of the stripped back piano versions, he says he listened to the whole album again this year, reduced to just piano and vocals. On Street Kids, he says, one long piano riff runs through the entire song without a single mistake. By his own account, after all these years he's still proud of the quality of the playing on this record.

The announcement fits into a year in which 1975 looms large in John's career. In that period he played Wembley Stadium, released two studio albums, and had his Dodger Stadium shows recorded. According to Clash, Rock of the Westies captures the band at its most inspired and tightly knit. Meanwhile, last week John played an exceptionally intimate show at the new Apple Music Hall in Battersea Power Station in London: a solo set of twelve greatest hits for just six hundred fans. For Dutch fans of classic seventies work, the anniversary edition is a chance to rediscover an album that sometimes sits a little in the shadow of Captain Fantastic in John's catalog.