Captain Fantastic: The Definitive Biography of Elton John in the '70s

by David DeCouto

  After the session, Elton was visibly brought down.

  “So what do you think?” Brown asked, playing the song back over the studio monitor system at full volume.

  The pianist shrugged. “As a producer, you probably make a very good manager.”

  Brown nodded. “We thought [“Lady Samantha”] probably shouldn’t be released,” he said.

  After repeated playbacks, however, Elton had a change of heart.

  “Okay, release it,” he said with a fateful sigh. “You know, it can’t do me any harm.”

  To help generate publicity for his new single, Elton performed live before a panel of BBC judges. At stake was a decision on whether his music was “professional enough” to be broadcast over Radio 1, the BBC’s fledgling pop network. Backed by Caleb Quaye on guitar, Boots Slade on bass and Malcolm Tomlinson on drums, Elton ignored a blinding migraine to sing energetic renditions of “Lady Samantha,” “Skyline Pigeon,” and “All Across the Havens.”

  BBC producer Aidan Day was impressed with the performance, calling Elton’s material “highly original and inventive.” Other judges, however, weren’t quite as dazzled. “Writes dreary songs and sounds like a one-key singer,” one anonymous judge proclaimed, while another opined that Elton was a “wonky singer” who possessed a “thin, piercing voice with no emotional appeal.”

  The six-judge panel split their vote on Elton three-to-three, which allowed his performance to be later broadcast on the November 3 edition of the Stuart Henry Show.

  Weeks after his BBC panel appearance, Elton would also appear on John Peel’s Night Ride. Recorded at Maida Vale Studios in London, the pianist delivered a four-song set that included the as-yet-unrecorded “First Episode at Hienton” and the never-released “Digging My Grave.”

  “Stuff the showbiz bollocks,” Peel said enthusiastically after the performance’s conclusion. “Elton John’s a man to watch.”

  “Lady Samantha” was released on the Philips label on January 17, 1969, backed with the folksy white-soul balladry of “All Across the Havens.” Reviews for the gothic track were fairly positive. NME noted that the song was “typically professional and musicianly,” with lyrics that were “sensible and worthwhile…A promising talent.” Disc & Music Echo, meanwhile, declared that “Elton John’s ‘Lady Samantha’ is nice though it’s much as we’ve heard before. Semi-Elizabethan feel, but lyrically interesting.” Melody Maker, Great Britain’s premier music paper, judged the song “an interesting guitar-ridden sound that could well create waves of interest. Very good, and a gold star.”

  To help leverage these notices, Elton appeared with Caleb Quaye, Roger Pope and bassist Dave Glover on the BBC’s Symonds on Sunday radio program, performing energetic renditions of “Lady Samantha,” “Son of Your Father” and “Sails.”

  “Any plans for personal appearances?” host David Symonds asked after Elton’s brief but dynamic set.

  “I’m getting a band together at the moment,” he replied. “I’ve got a partner who writes the lyrics to my songs. I’ve been very lucky. Well, I haven’t had a hit yet, but I’ve still been lucky.”

  Ultimately becoming a turntable hit, “Lady Samantha” received substantial airplay on the BBC while only managing to sell 3,000 units. An import copy caught the ear of Three Dog Night’s lead vocalist, Danny Hutton, however. Hutton was impressed enough by the tune to decide that he and his band should record a cover of it. Their version would appear the following June as the second cut on their U.S. Top 10 album, Suitable for Framing. “Lady Samantha” would also be covered by the New Zealand band Shane, with their version quickly shooting to Number 3 on their national chart. This moderate attention proved enough for Dick James to greenlight a full album for his struggling songwriting duo.

  “We just couldn’t believe it,” Elton said. “An album all to ourselves.”

  To help raise the pianist’s profile, a DJM publicity press release was issued. “He is very adamant about how much talent he and other pop writers have,” the one-page handout stated, “and about how seriously they should take themselves.” Elton was characteristically straightforward about his career. “I’m glad things haven’t gone too smoothly,” he said. “If I had had a hit straight after leaving [Bluesology], I’d be unbearable now. As it is, having to work for success is bringing valuable experience. I get one hell of a kick just from hearing one of our songs on the radio, and that’s the way it should be.”

  Elton gave his first full print interview days later, to the music trade magazine Jackie. Admitting that he’d always wanted to be famous—“the old ego bit”—he went on to clarify that he “never wanted to be a movie star, because in fifty years’ time if you mention an old film stars’ name they’ll just say ‘Who?’ But they’ll still be playing Gershwin.” On the subject of his increasingly bespoke wardrobe, he conceded that he enjoyed buying clothes, though due to monetary necessities, he didn’t indulge his desires often. “I’ve got some Noddy shirts [however],” he conceded. “They’re made out of nursery curtain material. A neighbor made them for me.”

  With Dick James’ blessing—and a bit of press coverage under his belt—Elton headed back into the tiny studio at DJM to record his first proper album, which were again helmed by Steve Brown. Caleb Quaye, Roger Pope and Tony Murray were also back on board to lend their skills, while studio engineer Clive Franks worked diligently setting up microphones and marking tape changes as they occurred.

  The sessions kicked off with “Empty Sky,” an insistent, Stones-influenced rocker which opened with Caleb banging away on conga drums. The strident, eight-and-a-half-minute track—about a prisoner who longs for a freedom he knows will never come—ultimately dissolved into an extended jam, with Elton doing his best breathy Jagger imitation over bluesy harmonic flourishes courtesy of Graham Vickery.

  To get Caleb to play like Mick Taylor, the pianist coaxed him with Jimi Hendrix records. “We were copying the Stones on the title track,” the guitarist said. “Making it a ‘Gimme Shelter’-type thing, with a little ‘Going Home’—off the Stones’ Aftermath album—thrown in when he goes into those hushed vocals.”

  “A great rock ‘n’ roll track,” Elton later told Cameron Crowe. “I love it to death. I remember doing the vocal in the stairwell to get that echo…the guitar solo was done in the stairwell as well…‘Empty Sky’ has something magical about it. It came together so brilliantly…It’s hard for a piano player to write a good rock ‘n’ roll song. It sounded like a Stones song. I thought, ‘I can do this.’”

  Elton’s chameleonic artistry was well on display on the next song attempted as well. “Lady What’s Tomorrow,” an environmentally-themed track influenced by American folk musician Tim Hardin, was notable for featuring a one-off performance by Plastic Penny drummer Nigel Olsson, who would soon come to play a much more significant role in Elton’s career.

  Next came “Valhalla,” a harpsichord-accented tune steeped in Norse mythology. “‘Valhalla’ is Leonard Cohen,” Elton later admitted. “It’s real easy to spot, and I think that’s great. We always were—and still are—fans.”

  Elton entered blues-romper territory with “Sails,” a jaunty tale of dockside debauchery with a lusty lass named Lucy, while “The Scaffold” continued Bernie’s obtuse lyrical inclinations. The songs all came out effortlessly, and with a growing sense of camaraderie. “The sessions…were good fun,” Caleb said. “We were never sure what we were doing was going to be a hit in the commercial sense, but we knew that what we were doing was musically very interesting and relatively new for the time.”

  One track that did prove a bit of a challenge was “Western Ford Gateway,” a tuneful slice of psychedelia that—on the face of it—seemed straightforward enough. Yet because of the limited number of tracks available, Elton was forced to sing live harmony vocals overtop previously recorded band/lead vocal tracks, as a final mix was created. “So if he messed up,” Steve Brown said, “or we got the levels wrong, he would have to
go back into the studio and sing live again.”

  Next came the flute-laced Jethro Tull-styled “Hymn 2000.” A futuristic tale of murder and mayhem, the song was lyrically a “Glass Onion”-like collection of quasi-religious images which told the tale of a psycho killer. Elton was ultimately less than enthused about the finished track. “It’s Bernie and I at our worst,” he lamented soon after. “Bernie’s lyrics were psychedelic rubbish and my song was a sort of painful type Dylan thing. It was awful.”

  Each night when sessions ended, usually around four A.M., the entire group would walk over to the Salvation Army headquarters on Oxford Street. “Steve Brown’s dad used to run the place, and he used to live above it,” Elton said. “I used to sleep on the sofa. It’s difficult to explain the amazement we felt as the album began to take shape.”

  The true standout track of the sessions came in the guise of “Skyline Pigeon,” a pleading hymn to freedom and release. In an effort to infuse an almost palpable sense of loneliness into the recording, Clive suggested that Elton record his vocals out on the fire escape. Elton agreed, singing the pleading lyric in the chill winter starlight, his distinctive voice echoing off concrete and steel. The tactic lent “Skyline Pigeon” an otherworldly air which melded perfectly with its aching melody.

  The sessions then ended—much as the album itself would—with “Gulliver,” a heartfelt paean to a deceased farm dog. At its emotional height, the song gave way to a jazzy piano-and-sax jam called “Hay Chewed”—a pun on “Hey Jude”—which itself faded into an über-stereophonic montage of the entire album, before closing out with the reverb-soaked screams which ended “Gulliver” proper.

  “[The album sessions] really blew our minds,” Bernie later told Rolling Stone’s Bob Chorush. “We thought, ‘Now we’ve done it. We’ve come up with a solution. This is what rock ‘n’ roll needs.’ I remember…we thought: ‘Watch out Rolling Stones, we’re coming to get you.’ Nobody else thought so.”

  For the briefest of moments, it seemed as if success might actually be within Elton and Bernie’s grasp. As their album sessions were concluding, ebullient Scots pop star Lulu—who’d recently topped the American charts with “To Sir With Love”—sang one of their songs, “I Can’t Go On Living Without You,” on the February 8 edition of her weekly variety TV show, Happening for Lulu. The song was one of six British submissions for the vaunted Eurovision Song Contest, in which viewers voted for their favorite tune by postcard. The winning British would then compete against the top contenders from a host of other nations in Madrid on a live inter-European television broadcast on March 29.

  “‘I Can’t Go On Living Without You’ was a fluke,” Elton said. “It was one of our old songs that was lying around the office, and Dick entered it…I wrote all the lyrics for it, which Bernie has never forgiven me for. The same as ‘I’ve Been Loving You’. They’re entirely my lyrics, and it’s credited to ‘Elton John and Bernie Taupin.’ But the lyrics are so fucking awful you can spot them a mile away.”

  Top Pops magazine was similarly unimpressed, noting that “it would be hard to get this title on a postcard when voting. A very unimaginative title for what is just a dull and uninteresting song.” Songwriter Bill Martin concurred, expressing in the Daily Express how “after a promising introduction, I strained my ears to hear a nonexistent melody coupled with a pathetic lyric which consisted of the title phrase and very little else.”

  Ultimately “I Can’t Go On Living Without You” would come in sixth out of the six British entries, receiving only 5,087 votes.

  “Luckily it came last,” Elton said. “My mother was very annoyed, though. She sent in reams of postcards.”

  The undaunted pianist headed to Olympic Studios in Barnes on April 10 to record a new single, “It’s Me That You Need.” An esoteric, electric-folk hybrid stylistically reminiscent of the Moody Blues, Caleb’s wailing guitar battled a cresting wave of cellos and violas over a lushly emotive chorus. The B-side, a Traffic-inspired slice of acid-pop called “Just Like Strange Rain,” was also recorded at the same session.

  Elton and Bernie didn’t apologize for their musical mimicry; it was simply part of the learning process, as they moved toward a more wholly original style.

  “We were like magnets,” the lyricist said. “If there were things we liked, we tried to emulate them. And I think we emulated them without realizing it.”

  Blaming the failure of “Lady Samantha” on a lack of proper promotion, Dick James decided to start his own record label as a platform for any and all future Elton John releases. “It’s Me That You Need” was the first beneficiary of this decision. Released on May 16 under the DJM imprimatur—and backed with “Just Like Strange Rain”—the single unfortunately proved as commercially limited as its predecessors.

  Elton and Bernie were thus apprehensive when their first long-player, Empty Sky, was released in the U.K. weeks later, on June 3. Graphic designer David Larkham’s album cover, a pen-and-ink rendering of Elton plunking out chords on an upright piano while floating through a haze of kaleidoscopic clouds, didn’t do the disc’s commercial prospects any favors.

  “The cover’s dreadful,” Elton said.

  The equally uninspiring back cover, meanwhile, featured a pair of endorsements from local music critics Tony Brandon and David Symonds, the latter presciently writing: “Elton John plays and pleases on this album…I too want to hear the pealing bells of distant churches sing. When it does happen, it will be a sign of tomorrow. And Elton will have a song about that as well.”

  Melody Maker gave the album—which toggled between pub-house rock and glitteringly confessional folk-pop—a solid review. “When I first saw it, before I heard it,” the nameless reviewer wrote, “I couldn’t believe that the record could be as bad as the cover design, and I was right. The record is excellent. All the numbers are original and make very pleasant listening. If you have an hour to spare, give the album a spin and ‘turn on’.” The London Evening Standard was slightly less taken with the disc, however, calling it “nicely recorded though…unadventurous,” concluding that “we’d do well to watch out for Elton John. He has talent. When he gets less fanciful and less pretentious he will, I’m sure, have a worthwhile contribution to make.”

  The LP—which cost nearly £400 to record—only moved 4,000 copies, despite Dick James having sunk an additional £300 in an ad campaign which saw the back of three-dozen London Transport buses plastered with psychedelic posters proclaiming: Elton Who? Elton John!

  Elton was cynically pragmatic about the whole mad endeavor. “Basically, I’m a writer,” he said. “The solo performing and recording is really only to provide a showcase for my material, to get the songs more widely known. I’m sure the solo work won’t last forever and I don’t really care if it does fall through, as long as the songwriting survives. But unless something really amazing happens, I can’t see much future for myself as a solo performer.”

  Elton was in an understandably downcast mood when he ran into session-fixer Barbara Moore at Olympic Studios one rainy week later. Moore was overseeing the recording of a soundtrack album for the new Michael Winner film, The Games—starring Ryan O’Neil and Michael Crawford as a pair of Olympic hopefuls—when she crossed paths with Elton, who was playing a piano in an adjacent room, in Studio 2.

  “I heard this piano going,” Moore said, “and this wailing voice. I thought, ‘God, I like that.’ And I poked my nose in and he stopped. And I said, ‘Don’t stop. Go on, it sounds really good’.”

  “Come sit then,” Elton said, inviting Moore to perch beside him on the piano bench as he worked his way through a new composition called “Border Song.”

  “That has a great gospel-ish feel,” Moore said when the song ended.

  “I’ve brought all my songs here today to meet up with the studio owner, a man named Cliff Adamas,” Elton told her, “to see if he will give me a recording contract. That’s what I’m looking for.”

  Moore laughed. “
My God, if he doesn’t, he’s a madman.”

  Moore then wished Elton the best of luck and headed out to a nearby pub to meet up with her choir before their afternoon recording session.

  “So I go over the road to the pub,” she said, “where I see panic and also an ambulance leaving as I am going into the main entrance. So I said, ‘What’s happening? Who’s in the ambulance?’ And they said, ‘It’s Jim.’ He was one of our tenors. So I said, ‘Oh dear God, we’re on again in three-quarters of an hour’. Then I said, ‘I know how to fill the gap. At least I’ll try.”

  Dropping everything, Moore shot back to the studio. “It must’ve taken me a quarter of an hour,” she said. “And by the time I get there, there’s this dejected little figure standing there with his briefcase full of songs—apparently he’d written fifty-odd songs—and I said, ‘What’s happened?’ And he said, ‘Cliff Adams didn’t think that the songs he heard had any commercial value whatsoever, including ‘Border Song.’ I said, ‘I think the man’s mad. But meanwhile, do you want to help me out? One of my singers is ill. He said, ‘No, no, I can’t really read at sight.’ And I said, ‘You don’t really need to. Come with me.’”

  An hour later, Elton was laying lead vocals on the proposed lead single from the soundtrack—a marimba-and horn-fueled rocker called “From Denver to L.A.” The session took less than an hour to complete, and earned Elton all of £9.

  With all of Elton’s releases having died a proverbial death, he attempted to earn extra money by selling some of his tunes to music publisher David Platz, who ran Essex Music on Wardour Street. Platz was a forward-thinking businessman who uniquely offered to purchase the publishing rights to songs outright for £50 each, with an eye toward selling them as radio jingles or placing them in films.