"Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding" is the opening track on the double album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John. The first part, "Funeral for a Friend", is an instrumental created by John while thinking of what kind of music he would like at his funeral. This first half segues into "Love Lies Bleeding." In the Eagle Vision documentary, "Classic Albums: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road", John said the two songs weren't written as one piece, but fit together since "Funeral For A Friend" ends in the key of A, and "Love Lies Bleeding" opens in A, and the two were played as one elongated piece when recorded.
The grandiose introduction to "Funeral For A Friend" was performed on A.R.P. synthesizer by the album's engineer, David Hentschel, who Elton recalled overdubbed track after track of music and synthetic atmospheric effects until the mini-opus was complete.
"Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding" was too long for a single release, but got plenty of airplay on FM stations that were predisposed toward rock epics. The whole piece together is just over 11 minutes long. A fan favourite, it became a staple part of many an Elton John tour set list.
The atmospheric opening to the track was used in the final scene of Blackadder II as the camera pans across the dead bodies of the main cast.
Read more about Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding: Covers
Famous quotes containing the words funeral, friend, love, lies and/or bleeding:
“A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy devices, coming now too late, now too early, by which Society would register the quick motions of man.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“... a friend told me that she had read of a woman who had knitted a wash rag for President Wilson. She was eighty years old and her friends thought it remarkable that she could knit a wash rag! I thought that if a woman of eighty could knit a wash rage for a Democratic President it behooved one of ninety-six to make something more than a wash rag for a Republican President.”
—Maria D. Brown (1827–1927)
“I turn my head to sky rains falling,
wash the wounds of numbness from my soul.
Turn my heart in tides of fierce renewal,
where love and rage run whole.
Come drink deep.”
—Carolyn McDade (20th century)
“Where lies the Land to which yon Ship must go?”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“I saw a bleeding brownish boy. . . .
The lariat lynch-wish I deplored.
The loveliest lynchee was our Lord.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)