"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:
“And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“In true friendship, in which I am expert, I give myself to my friend more than I draw him to me. I not only like doing him good better than having him do me good, but also would rather have him do good to himself than to me; he does me most good when he does himself good.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“Are we not also married to conscience which we would love to get rid of often enough since it is more bothersome than a man or a woman ever could become?”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.”
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)
“I saw a bleeding brownish boy. . . .
The lariat lynch-wish I deplored.
The loveliest lynchee was our Lord.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)