“Skyline Pigeon” by Elton John, arranged with tab for fingerstyle guitar by Daryl Shawn.
“Skyline Pigeon” is a ballad composed and performed by English musician Elton John with lyrics by Bernie Taupin. It is the eighth track on his first album, Empty Sky. It was originally released by Guy Darrell and Roger James Cooke simultaneously as a single in August 1969.
The original recording from the Empty Sky album has Elton John on harpsichord and organ. It is the only song on the album with John without other musicians. He wrote the song in the style of a hymn. The lyrics of the song are metaphorical — describing a pigeon that is flying high and free having been released from a human hand, with the line in the second verse, but most of all please free me from this aching metal ring, possibly revealing a human longing to be released from a broken marriage and set free to pursue new, truer dreams and ambitions — a theme that would reappear in 1975’s Someone Saved My Life Tonight, using a similar metaphor of a butterfly flying free. Though there exists also the more literal interpretation of a war pigeon, as they were most commonly used to carry urgent messages in a small capsule affixed to the leg with metal bands, and carried on the backs of soldiers in small cages with a single wire door for the pigeon to look out of.
Turn me loose from your hands
Let me fly to distant lands
Over green fields, trees and mountains
Flowers and forest fountains
Home along the lanes of the skyway
For this dark and lonely room
Projects a shadow cast in gloom
And my eyes are mirrors
Of the world outside
Thinking of the ways
That the wind can turn the tide
And these shadows turn
From purple into grey
For just a skyline pigeon
Dreaming of the open
Waiting for the day
That he can spread his wings
And fly away again
Fly away, skyline pigeon fly
Towards the dreams
You’ve left so very far behind
Fly away, skyline pigeon fly
Towards the dreams
You’ve left so very far behind
Let me wake up in the morning
To the smell of new mowed hay
To laugh and cry, to live and die
In the brightness of my day
I wanna hear the pealing bells
Of distant churches sing
But most of all please free me from
This aching metal ring
And open out this cage towards the sun
For just this skyline pigeon
Dreaming of the open
Waiting for the day
That he can spread his wings
And fly away again
Fly away, skyline pigeon fly
Towards the dreams
You’ve left so very far behind
Fly away, skyline pigeon fly
Towards the dreams
You’ve left so very
So very far behind
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