“Elton seemed to acknowledge Leon Russell as an influence,” said producer Joe Boyd, also in attendance at the show. “But Elton picked up and ran with that ball, and did way more with it, than Leon ever did. But then I think you can perceive a pattern here. The British approach to pop music is much more flamboyant and much more crowd-pleasing, if you will, and much more colorful than the U.S. approach. The British have that in their DNA, and that’s the way they’ve always been. And I think in a way the contrast between Leon and Elton was a classic example of that. Although Leon tried to be British with his Uncle Sam top hat and spangles and stuff like that, it didn’t really work. Whereas Elton just did it naturally, it was just the way he was. He didn’t have to try.”
Bob Dylan showed up backstage after the concert in a rumpled black raincoat. The reclusive poet complimented Elton on his muscular performing chops and Bernie on his pictographic lyrical abilities, giving particular praise to “Ballad of a Well-Known Gun.”
Unable to speak, Bernie merely nodded at Dylan.
“I was too overwhelmed,” he later acknowledged. “I just couldn’t take it in…I wasn’t ready for it. What can I say? I mean it was like, ‘Oh God,’ or ‘You’re God,’ or ‘My God.’”
“I thought Bernie was going to drop to his knees and bow down,” Eric Van Lustbader said, “because Dylan was his God. And to have Bob Dylan come to see them and come backstage was one of the most amazing things that I’m sure had ever happened to them. It was quite a sight.”
The iconic writer of “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Like a Rolling Stone” took his leave soon after. But he showed up the next night as well, this time bringing along his wife, Sarah, as well as Paul Simon, and the Mamas and the Papas’ John Phillips. Never to miss a scoop, Melody Maker proclaimed in their next issue, in a bold-faced headline: DYLAN DIGS ELTON!
“This was the first time Elton ever got a headline in a music paper,” Stuart Epps said. “So basically, with the reverberation of what was happening in the States…it just all took off. It was a bit of an explosion. Suddenly all the records are in the charts, and that was the beginning of it all, really.”
Elton opened for Derrick and the Dominoes in New York at the Syracuse War Memorial on December 4, just days after having brought the crowd at Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre to such a pitch that police were forced to lift him out of the crowd with ropes.
The War Memorial show was, significantly, one of only two dates that Duane Allman played with the Eric Clapton-led band. “Everyone was going crazy about this kid called Elton John,” Clapton said. “I was slightly threatened by all this. I did want to blow people off the stage, so I was working double hard, and to go on after Elton…was a big challenge.”
“At the near conclusion of his performance,” local reviewer Terry Lee noted, “[Elton] threw his bench to the side and played the piano standing, frantically dancing, rolling on the floor (still playing) and while jumping up in the air. The audience loved every second of it and went wild when he left.”
Elton made his U.S. television debut on the December 11 episode of the Andy Williams Show. Wearing a garish green suit, Williams officially introduced Elton to America at large. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “a few months ago a young man came over from England and he shot right to the top of the pop music field. His first album is a hit, his first single is a hit, and I hate him. No, I really like him. I mean, I really like him.”
The camera pushed past Williams to show Elton seated at a black Steinway grand as he played the introduction to “Your Song” beneath a crystal chandelier.
Williams was thoroughly impressed by the young Englishman. “He was terrific,” he later said. “He was terribly talented and very nice.”
A group performance with fellow guest stars Ray Charles and Mama Cass Elliot to close out the show proved problematic when Charles nixed one song after another. “[Ray Charles] didn’t want to sing ‘Love the One You’re With’,” Elton said, “so then it was gonna be ‘My Sweet Lord’, and he didn’t want to sing that [either]. They got down to ‘Heaven Help Us All’, and he didn’t want to sing that, but they said it was that or nothing.”
Brother Ray finally acquiesced, performing the song with Elton on matching black and white grands while Cass and Williams sang backup.
“It was the most frightening experience of my life,” Elton said. “I was petrified, but Ray Charles turned out to be very nice and we got on fine.”
The Brit also performed a brief song called “Goodbye” for the telecast, but the effort was cut from the final broadcast due to time constraints. “It was a real drag,” he said, “because I was quite good on it.”
While in L.A., Elton met with director Hal Ashby, who offered him a starring role in his upcoming film, Harold & Maude. A black comedy about a young man with a death fixation and a seventy-nine year old woman in love with life, Elton found the future cult classic to be “the best script.”
Still, he declined the offer so that he could concentrate on his fledgling music career. “We were just beginning to happen as a group,” he said, “and it would have meant six months of my life without the group.”
By the time Elton left America, radio stations from coast-to-coast were bombarding the airwaves with an endless selection of his deeper album tracks, from “The King Must Die” to “Love Song.” Yet back in the U.K., he was still barely better known than he had been before he’d departed for the Troubadour back in August. Even so, Elton was determined to keep his spirits positive—an endeavor greatly aided by John Reid’s Tamla Motown connections, which resulted in the pianist meeting several of his American R&B idols.
“I told Elton that Stevie Wonder and Martha and the Vandellas were coming into Britain for a tour,” Reid said. “I asked if I could borrow his car to meet them at the airport because mine was out of commission at that time, and Elton wound up coming to the airport with me to meet Stevie.”
“Are you the Elton John who sings ‘It’s a little bit funny…?’” Wonder asked, breaking into the song’s chorus.
“I’m to blame,” Elton replied sheepishly.
Both men fell against each other in laughter.
“That started off their relationship,” Reid said.
During the lead-up to the Christmas holidays, Reid presented Elton with an advanced test pressing of the Supremes’ new album, Touch. Elton’s enthusiasm for the record led him to volunteer to provide the liner notes; the Supremes unanimously agreed to this.
“I am probably their original British fan,” he wrote. “I bought their first single ‘Where Did Our Love Go’ in England in 1964…Since then, I have gotten every record they have ever made…Imagine my excitement when I not only received an advanced copy of this—their new album—but was also asked by Jean, Mary and Cindy to write the notes. (I felt as if I had really ‘made it.’).”
Elton wasn’t the only one who felt that way. In a year-end article entitled “Handstands and Fluent Fusion,” Time magazine’s William Bender called Elton a “one-man music factory” who “plays piano with the urbane primitivism of a Glenn Gould thumping out variations on Jerry Lee Lewis.” Bender went on to wonder if Elton might indeed be the “superman” that young music fans needed to save them from a desolately apocalyptic, post-Beatles landscape.
“Yes!” Dick James roared.
Elton merely shrugged.
“We shall see,” he said.
Elton closed out his breakthrough year with final studio and stage endeavors. First he record “Make No Mistake” at Sound Techniques in Chelsea, along with Dave Pegg on bass, Dave Mattacks on drums, and Jimmy Page on guitar. “Elton was one of the nicest and funniest guys I’d ever had the good fortune to come across,” Mattacks said. “I remember thinking, ‘This guy is terrific, and he’s great fun.’
Elton then played the “Implosion” Christmas charity show at the Roundhouse in London. Held on December 20, Elton opened for the Who—who were performing their rock-oper
a Tommy in its entirety for what would be the final time for a quarter-century.
The Who were so impressed with Elton’s performance, they decided on the spur of the moment to dedicate their entire set to him.
“The lad’s got a promising future,” Townsend told the crowd before launching into “Tommy Can You Hear Me?”
Elton would become good friends with the Who’s guitarist and creative leader in the coming years, as he would with another rocker he got to know that same weekend. Meeting at a Christmas party at Long John Baldry’s manager Billy Gaff’s cellar apartment in Pimlico, Elton was formerly introduced to Rod Stewart, who had been a nodding acquaintance since his days with Bluesology. Recognizing kindred spirits, the two began a laddish friendship that would last throughout the decade, and the century, and beyond.
“I loved his sense of humor,” Rod later said in Rod: The Autobiography. “Loved the fact that he was the kind of bloke who could see the comedy value in driving thirty times around the roundabout that surrounds the Marble Arch monument in the middle of London.”
The readers of Record World shared Rod’s appreciation for the bespectacled pianist, voting Elton the Top Male Vocalist of the year. The International Music Critics Awards, meanwhile, lauded him and Bernie as Best Composers of the Year.
By any measure, Elton’s star was clearly on the rise. In the U.K., he rated Number 5 on NME’s poll of Top Male Singers, behind the likes of Elvis Presley, Paul McCartney and Glen Campbell. He also fared well with Record Mirror’s Pop Poll Results for Most Promising Singer/Group, coming in ahead of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, David Bowie and Badfinger. Britain’s Disc and Music Echo magazine, meanwhile, noted that Elton had been voted the act that had made “the most impact in pop during 1970” by BBC Radio 1’s disc jockeys.
“Elton John will undoubtedly turn out to be the biggest discovery of 1970,” Rhapsody Packard rhapsodized prophetically in the December issue of Jazz & Pop magazine.
Every decade had a single artist who eventually stood head and shoulders above the rest.
The ‘40s had Sinatra.
The ‘50s had Elvis.
The ‘60s had the Beatles.
The ‘70s were wide-open. The decade was ready for a defining musical savior. For someone exactly like Elton John.
Chapter 7:
All the Nasties
The tumultuous momentum which ended Elton’s 1970 carried over into the new year with the U.S. release of Tumbleweed Connection on January 4. The album proved an early apex, entering the fray at Number 25 and hitting Number 5 within weeks. It would remain on the charts for over half a year.
American critics were as impressed with the disc as their English counterparts had been, with the Washington Post’s Tom Zito describing it as being “right out of the so-called new romanticism; love songs, songs about old soldiers and inherited guns. Yet beneath all this is a real feeling for the universal.” The Village Voice’s Robert Christgau called the album “a piece of plastic with good melodies and bad Westerns on it,” while the Saturday Review felt that the disc brimmed over with “music that is organic, intensely human, and capable of an elusively intimate effect.” Rolling Stone’s Jon Landau deemed Tumbleweed Connection “an exciting album, one that I have played endlessly for a week, but it is also something of a missed opportunity. Tumbleweed Connection is simpler than John’s last album and next time around I hope he goes all the way and gets down to nothing but the basics. He is one of the few who is good enough not to need anything else.” Writing in the L.A. Times, Robert Hilburn praised the LP as “that near-perfect album that artists often spend a whole career trying to produce.” Life’s Albert Goldman, however, was determinedly unimpressed. “Meretricious copycatting,” he sniffed, particularly put-off by what he felt were patently immature lyrics.
Annoyed by Goldman’s brickbats, Elton sprang to his partner’s defense. “People still tend to forget that Bernie’s not even twenty-one yet,” he said.
With his star on the rise, media publications began courting Elton for interviews and opinion pieces. Melody Maker was one of the first, asking the pianist to survey a recent batch of singles—sight unseen—for their “Blind Date” column. Correctly identifying ever track played for him, Elton provided his opinions with typical forthrightness. Of Van Morrison’s “Domino,” he noted, “You hear this on the radio every five minutes in the States. It’s the best track on the album, and it’s almost certain to be a Top Five single over here…Bernie says I sound like him, but I can’t see it.” In response to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Pagan Baby,” he noted that “Creedence are the best rock ‘n’ roll group in the world…Fogerty’s amazing. He’s so uncomplicated. It’s just simple, hard-driving rock ‘n’ roll with memorable melodies.” When played “Saturday Miles” by Miles Davis, the pianist admitted that he “liked Bitches Brew, but the whole thing seems to have got a bit out of hand. The trumpet is probably my least favorite instrument, along with the clarinet, and Miles is the only trumpeter I can listen to.”
Weeks later, Leon Russell would be asked to handle the “Blind Date” chores. After giving less than stellar reviews to such singles as the Allman Brothers Band’s ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’ and Neil Diamond’s ‘Sweet Caroline’, Leon shrugged and said, “What can I say? Play me an Elton John record, give me a chance to say something nice.
Elton kicked off a twenty-eight date tour of the U.K. in January at Mothers, a music ballroom in the Erdington district of Birmingham. Other early dates included the Pavilion at Hemel Hempstead and Winter Gardens at Cleethropes, where anarchy descended as fans stormed the stage during a particularly flammable “Burn Down the Mission.”
“Crazy times,” Dee said years later. “Real music, real fans.”
Two weeks in, the band detoured to France to attend MIDEM, an annual trade show gathering of music industry leaders held at Cannes. The stage seemed set for another triumph: a star-filled Sunday night on the French Riviera, rock ‘n’ roll beside the sparkling Mediterranean. Dick James had negotiated Elton’s appearance months earlier, hoping that the event—broadcast live on radio throughout Europe—would help launch his star pupil on the Continent much the same way that the Troubadour shows had set Elton’s star alight in America.
But it wasn’t to be.
The show started late and quickly fell behind schedule. Not helping matters, Eric Burdon and his band, War, launched into an extended solo-filled jam toward the end of their set. Easily exceeding their allotted 15-minute timeslot, the aggressive clock mismanagement was perhaps purposeful retaliation for a quote Elton had given Melody Maker a fortnight earlier: “Have you got Eric Burdon’s new [album], Black-Man’s Burdon? There’s one track I like, but he should have been born black and given us all a rest.”
Scheduled to go on directly after War, Elton paced restlessly backstage, furious at Burdon’s grandstanding, which had already run past the allocated radio time. No matter how well he performed now, only those in the hall would get to hear him.
“Eric Burdon, you’re a fuck-up!” he screamed. “Get off the fucking stage!”
“Eric just kept playing,” Eric Van Lustbader said. “He was a total shit.”
When Burdon showed no sign of stopping, Elton furiously stormed out of the theater. John Reid found the pianist sulking at a bar across the street, a glass of Kronenbourg 1664 before him.
“C’mon back,” Reid urged.
“Fuck it,” the pianist muttered.
After much cajoling, Reid finally managed to coax his charge back to the theater. Richie Havens came up to Elton backstage and agreed to give him his closing slot, but Elton wouldn’t hear of it. “I want you to close the show, Richie,” he said. “We all should hear ‘Freedom’ as the last song of the evening.”
Eric Burdon finally left the stage to a hearty chorus of boos. A red-faced Elton came on next and received a riotous ovation from the black-tie crowd before he’d even played a single note. But it was a short
-lived triumph at best—the curtain fell on him halfway through his set.
Elton was apoplectic.
“Whoever organized this fucking thing is a fucking idiot!” he yelled, ripping through the curtains and vowing to never play France again. “The French are just useless,” he later reflected. “The French can’t organize a piss-up in a brewery.”
“Your Song” was released in the U.K. on January 23, a true A-side this time. Backed with “Into the Old Man’s Shoes,” and fuelled by Elton’s ever-ascendant profile, the single quickly reached Number 7 in England, bettering its U.S. performance by a single position.
Equally as impressive, by early February the Elton John album had gone Gold in the British Isles. When it overtook All Things Must Pass in the charts, Elton received a laudatory telegram from George Harrison: “Well done, Elton. You’re doing great things. Congratulations.” The pianist was genuinely moved. “It was a very thoughtful thing for him to do, it meant the whole world to me. It kick-started what I already had in my tank, which was, ‘I’m having a ball here, I can compete with these guys.’”
Despite Elton’s enthusiasm and chart successes, his whirlwind touring schedule was beginning to have a wearing effect on him. Forced to cancel six February dates on doctor’s advice, he claimed, “My career is gonna be very short. One and a half years, that’s all. I want to quit while I’m at the top and then I’ll fade into obscurity. I’ve got lots of obligations for this year and next, and when they’re all done the group will split. Does it sound bad saying I want to quit while I’m at the top? I don’t mean it arrogantly, it’s just that so many artists never see the end, they never know when they’ve got that long slide ahead of them.”
Captain Fantastic: The Definitive Biography of Elton John in the '70s Page 16
