Elton John "Leather Jackets"

Leather Jackets, released in 1986, is the twentieth official album release for Elton John. Recorded at Sol Studios in England and Wisseloord Studios in the Netherlands, it was his first album not to have any top 40 singles in either the US or the UK since 1970's Tumbleweed Connection, which had no singles released from it. It is also the poorest-charting album of his career.

In 2001 Elton regarded "Heartache All Over the World" as the worst song he'd ever recorded, calling it "pretty insubstantial"; in 2006, he would declare Jackets his least favourite of all his albums, saying "Gus Dudgeon did his best but you can't work with a loony." He would also call its biker-inspired cover "very butch but a total disaster. I was not a well budgie, I was married and it was just one bag of coke after another." (In spite of this, lyricist Bernie Taupin believes The Big Picture deserves the honour of worst album.)

In 2000, Gus Dudgeon said: "There was a chance he could polish himself off. He'd go out and do some coke and it'd be all over his mouth, his nose would be running and I'd go: 'Oh God, this is just awful'."

"Heartache All Over the World" was the only single to achieve chart success in the US, though it failed to crack the top 50. "Slow Rivers" is a collaboration with Cliff Richard that was released as a single in the UK. Cher collaborated with "Lady Choc Ice" (actually John himself) to write "Don't Trust That Woman". Roger Taylor and John Deacon of Queen play drums and bass guitar respectively on the track "Angeline".

John played "Paris" during his 1986 US tour. He included "Heartache All Over the World" and "Slow Rivers" on his 1986 Australian tour with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, which would eventually yield John's live album Live in Australia with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. "Heartache" was included in the band portion of the show (John opted not to play piano for that number) while "Slow Rivers" was played during the second half of the show with the orchestra. Due to contractual constraints, "Slow Rivers" was not included on Live in Australia, despite the fact that it was from the orchestral portion of the show, which was the basis for the album. Though not released as a single, "Paris" also became a minor FM hit for some jazz stations that programmed the track.


This is John's only studio album (from the pre-1993 period) that has yet to be remastered as of February 2016; it last appeared on compact disc in the early 1990s. However, in 2008, it would become available for digital download.

The majority of the tracks from the album were recorded during the Ice on Fire sessions in 1985.


This was John's last studio release to be produced by Gus Dudgeon and his last in which he played a grand piano before switching to the Roland RD-1000 digital piano for Reg Strikes Back and the two albums following that. After his throat surgery in 1987, Chris Thomas would be rehired as producer. For the first time in John's career, no songs on this album are longer than five minutes.