Behind the Song: “Someone Saved My Life Tonight”

“Someone Saved My Life Tonight” was released on the 23rd of June in 1975 as a part of the album “Captin Fantastic And The Dirty Brown Cowboy.”  

I hadn’t really realized the lyrics much when I first heard it, nor the story behind it. I simply liked the way it sounded. But the song is so much more than something lovely. 

Elton John was allegedly soon to marry Linda Woodrow, whom he had known for two years. Even though he felt trapped in the relationship, they were to get married, even Woodrow’s family was expecting it. Sometime in 1968 (before he had been famous), Elton, Linda, and Bernie Taupin were sharing a flat in Furlong Road in Highbury, London. The opening lyrics (written by Taupin) refer to this, “When I see those East End lights.” The wedding was less than a month away.

“We went, and we found a flat in Mill Hill. We bought furniture for it,” Linda said in 2019, just a while after the movie Rocket Man was released. “I went off to the antique store and bought myself an engagement ring because neither he nor Bernie [Taupin] had any money. So I was kind of having to support them.” 

After a long night of drinking with blues singer Long John Baldry and Bernie, they had convinced him not to go through with it. The relationship was dry and loveless, leaving Elton feeling incredibly trapped and confused. He came home around four o’clock in the morning, quite intoxicated, and called the whole thing off. 

Leaving Linda didn’t only take a dangerous toll on Elton but also on Linda herself. “Yes. I was kind of devastated because we’d planned so much for the wedding, and then suddenly he comes in and says, ‘sorry it’s all over,'” she said in an interview. 

Linda had also said she was upset she wasn’t in the movie and, “I hope he hasn’t forgotten about me.” 

In the lyrics, Bernie wrote, “And someone saved my life tonight, sugar bear (sugar bear) / You almost had your hooks in me, didn’t you, dear?” quite literally set out Elton’s emotions into the open. 

However, the lyrics, “Someone saved my life tonight,” refer to his suicide attempt. “I never realized the passin’ hours of evening showers / A slip noose hangin’ in my darkest dreams / I’m strangled by your haunted social scene.“

Elton tried to kill himself (i imagine before he had come clean and ended things) with a gas oven. Bernie had found him lying on the floor after he allegedly stuck his head into it.  

“I really had staged a completely ridiculous suicide bid that involved sticking my head in a gas oven. Rather than tell my fiancée I’d made a mistake, that was my brilliant plan to try and get out of the wedding,” Elton wrote for a piece in The Guardian.

“For the most part, most of the things I write are an amalgam of several subjects or feelings that I then cut and paste to create one entity,” Taupin once stated. “Not always, but a lot of the time, I guess you could even say that with this song, the crux of its meaning is sort of surrounded with visual props that are intended to help set the scene for the main event.” 

The emotional single was published in 1975, recorded in 1974, and rose to number 4 on Billboard Hot 100. The song is a rollercoaster of emotions, the situation casting shadows on both Elton and Linda (though she went on to say in 2019, “I mean, it was a long time ago and he’s such a superstar now, I was way, way back in his past.”)