In a poll in British music weekly Record Mirror in 1970, Elton John was voted the fifth-most promising pop act in the UK. However, at first even this minimal promise looked set to go unfulfilled. His singles failed in the charts, and his first album, Empty Sky, had made very little impression. And while his self-titled second fared much better, reaching UK No.5, he was playing gigs mostly in universities and small clubs.
Even more discouraging, given that his singing voice was, to say the least, mid-Atlantic, all but one US label passed on signing him. Interest in Elton was so low that MCA subsidiary UNI Records, the home of Neil Diamond and not much else, was able to snap him up for an advance of precisely zero.
