Elton John has released more than 30 studio albums across five decades – but there’s one that even he admits was a complete failure.
Despite a string of commercial successes in the early 1980s, 1986’s Leather Jackets was marred by personal turmoil, poor critical reception, and what Elton John later described as a chemically altered haze.
In his 2019 autobiography Me, Elton didn’t hold back: “It was about as unmitigated a disaster as anything I’ve ever released,” he wrote. “There was no getting around the fact that Leather Jackets had four legs and a tail and barked if a postman came to the door.”
At another point, he added: “It wasn’t an album so much as an exercise in trying to make music while taking so much cocaine you’ve essentially rendered yourself clinically insane.”
Leather Jackets was recorded between January 1985 and September 1986 at multiple studios, including Wisseloord Studios in the Netherlands, Sunset Sound in Los Angeles, and CTS Studios in London.
Gus Dudgeon returned as producer – a reunion that had begun with 1985’s Ice on Fire – but even that couldn’t save the project from its problems.
By this point in Elton’s career, his voice was showing signs of strain, partly due to years of touring and partly from excessive drug use. The sessions were unfocused, and the album lacks the polished production and memorable melodies that had defined his earlier work.
Despite working again with longtime lyricist Bernie Taupin, the songs came across as half-baked – with critics citing uninspired lyrics and overblown arrangements.
Released in October 1986, Leather Jackets was a commercial disappointment. It peaked at No. 26 on the UK Albums Chart and stalled at No. 91 in the US – Elton’s lowest-charting album in America since Empty Sky in 1969.
It failed to produce a major hit, although ‘Heartache All Over the World’ did reach the Top 40 in several countries and peaked at No. 45 in the UK.
The album’s flat reception prompted a brief break from Taupin, and Elton would not release another studio album until 1988’s Reg Strikes Back, which marked a return to form.
Critics were uniformly harsh. Rolling Stone dismissed the album as “uninspired,” while AllMusic retrospectively called it one of Elton’s weakest efforts. In Vulture’s comprehensive 2022 ranking of all 388 Elton John songs, Leather Jackets’ tracks occupied the 11 bottom slots, with the author quoting a lyric from each in lieu of detailed analysis – describing the album as one that had “not one redeeming track.”
Elton has been frank about what went wrong. In addition to his heavy cocaine use, he admitted to breaking his long-held rule of keeping drugs out of the studio. “I wasn’t functioning properly,” he told Rolling Stone in a 1992 interview. “And Leather Jackets is the evidence.”