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

by David DeCouto

  While the live tracks were being mastered, the title track from the Friends soundtrack was released in the U.S. Backed with “Honey Roll,” the single peaked at Number 34 on Billboard’s Top 100 chart, and at Number 17 on the magazine’s Adult Contemporary chart.

  Impressed with the relatively strong showings, Dick James decided to capitalize on Elton’s stature by releasing a pair of instrumental demoes that he had recorded back in 1969. On May 7, 1971, DJM issued a press release entitled: Mr. Bloe meets Elton John, dubiously announcing that the artists were teaming up “on Mr. Bloe’s latest single ‘71-75 New Oxford Street’,” despite the fact that “Mr. Bloe” was in reality the band Hookfoot.

  “On this occasion Elton has left lyricist Bernie Taupin out of the picture,” the release claimed, “for although there have been many singles using Elton John’s songs this is the first one to feature one of Elton’s instrumental compositions.”

  Produced by Zack Laurence, a staff producer and arranger at DJM, the single, and its fervent, organ-heavy B-side, “Get Out (Of This Town)”—another Elton-penned instrumental—failed to chart.

  The Mr. Bloe stunt angered Elton supremely. But he had little time to stew, for days later, on May 10, 11/17/70 was hitting record store shelves, a month after its U.K. release. Initially planning on issuing the disc as part of a double album in the States, along with the as-yet-unreleased Empty Sky, Elton was voted down by his record company. “I wanted the live album to be a free album...you know, and, of course, all the hierarchy that I’m concerned with said, ‘No’. And I get so pissed-off with fighting…So we settled for Empty Sky not to come out [in America] yet, which is all right. They say that it’s better for my ‘mystique’ that it should remain on import.”

  Free disc or no, Rolling Stone was unimpressed with the idea of a live Elton John radio album. “I mean who else could ever do it in a million years but the master of preciousness?” reviewer R. Meltzer grumbled. “Like he couldn’t have done it on AM, it had to be FM. At least it wasn’t a live concert on WNEW-FM, that might have been unbearable.”

  Despite any critical misgivings, the album perfectly captured the raw energy of an Elton John performance. As did the moody, monochromatic sleeve design, which featured photographs that had been taken during Elton’s stand at the Troubadour show three months prior to the recording itself.

  Perhaps more importantly, the album finally gave Nigel and Dee a bit of the vinyl attention they so richly deserved. The two sidemen were appreciative. Seared into Nigel’s memory banks, in fact, was the afternoon that his wife put the record on for him, mere minutes after having just returned from Elton’s latest tour, jet-lagged out of his mind.

  “You’ve got to listen to this,” she said.

  “Later, Luv.”

  “No, really, Nige. Listen…”

  She put the record on full-blast; Nigel was blown away by what he heard.

  “That is an outstanding record for me,” the drummer said. “I think it’s a fucking good live album in that most live albums are the result of, say, six days’ recording. If you’re gonna make a live recording, you get a truck to come down to two or three performances and you choose the best ones, so it really isn’t a live album. It’s like doing a session album. ‘Which take is the best over three nights?’ Ours was just totally live, we didn’t know anything about it.”

  11/17/70 quickly shot into the American Top 10, giving Elton four albums simultaneously in the Top 40—a feat not accomplished since the Beatles. While some complained of an excess of Elton John material flooding the market, Russ Regan felt differently. “I had two words for them: Fuck ‘em. I heard those criticisms. To some people, maybe there was a glut. But it was a damn good glut.”

  That June, Elton’s mentor, Long John Baldry, released It Ain’t Easy, an album which had been recorded the winter before.

  “I was on tour in New York,” Elton said, “and Long John Baldry rang me up from London and told me that Warner Brothers wanted him to do an album, and he had this idea for Rod [Stewart] to produce one side, and for me to do the other side. I hadn’t ever done any producing, and the idea gave me the horrors, but nevertheless I said yes…John is one of those people I’d swim a lake full of piranha fish for, because he was great to me.”

  Rod was of a similar mind. “[Baldry’s] done a lot for us, so why shouldn’t we help him now?”

  The Elton-helmed sessions took place at I.B.C. Studios. He played piano on all the tracks he produced, alongside Caleb Quaye, Roger Pope, Dave Glover and guitarist Joshua M’Bopo. Eschewing Baldry’s suggestion to record banal tracks along the lines of Peggy Lee’s “Is That All There Is?,” Elton instead had the bluesman work on more challenging material, including Leslie Duncan’s “Mr. Rubin,” Randy Newman’s “Let’s Burn Down the Cornfield,” and an original song which he and Bernie had written specifically for him—an adrenaline-fueled blast called “Rock Me When He’s Gone.”

  Baldry adapted well to the song selection, as did the band. “You had to adapt to whatever musical paradigm you were given, and so we did,” Caleb Quaye said. “I had worked with Elton since 1967 so I felt comfortable with this, and besides it was an honor to have been asked to work with Long John Baldry, as he was such a respected man, and deservedly so, in the U.K. R&B scene.”

  Baldry, for his part, was amused by the very different working methods his two star pupils utilized. “Rod loved to record well after midnight and very loosely. Elton’s work ethic was to start at eight o’clock in the morning.”

  “Rod’s side turned out raucous, with drums sounding like kettles,” Elton said. “Rod’s side sounds very much like Gasoline Alley, and my side sounds like Mantovani. I’m on that sort of thing. I’m more into choirs and things like that. It’s good, because both sides of the album are different. My side is very polished and Rod’s side is very raucous, and probably how John should sound. I’ll probably get attacked for it.”

  Despite such misgivings, the bipolar It Ain’t Easy would go on to become Baldry’s biggest-selling album in the U.S., selling over a 100,000 copies—the absolute high-water mark of his career.

  Elton had only the briefest moment to celebrate Baldry’s triumph before having to turn his focus back to the road. On June 10 and 11, he was scheduled to appear at the famed Carnegie Hall for a pair of much-anticipated concerts. Being true status shows, tensions ran higher than normal backstage.

  “Christ,” Elton muttered as he paced like a caged Bengal in a red, white and blue T-shirt and stone-washed jeans.

  The shows began with the pianist alone at his black grand, his rich tenor belting out reflective numbers like “Skyline Pigeon” and “Talking Old Soldiers.” Halfway through the set, he was joined by Nigel and Dee for caustically urgent renditions of tunes such as “Honky Tonk Women” and “Can I Put You On.” “I don’t want to sit down and do slow things all night,” Elton explained. “I’d go to sleep. I’ve been a rock ‘n’ roll freak for a long time, but people seem to think that I have to do rock ‘n’ roll just to prove that I’m a hip young man. Well…I was brought up on rock ‘n’ roll. I’ve always been into rock ‘n’ roll. That’s my favorite sort of music. The Rolling Stones are my idols and that’s it.”

  Significantly, the first Carnegie Hall performance featured the world premiere of an intimate ballad called “Tiny Dancer.” The song proved challenging for Elton, who had only set the lyrics to music the day before. “I had to ring up Bernie this afternoon for the words,” he admitted to the audience as he launched into the C-major plaint.

  “It was just amazing to stand in the wings,” said Eric Van Lustbader, “and see the tears of the people standing there watching the show. It was pretty unusual at that point to play Carnegie Hall, and I thought it was a brilliant move, because it took Elton out of the realm of what everyone else was doing. The mood in-house was absolutely electric from the moment people started filing into the auditorium. I would say that seventy-five to eighty percent of the kids w
ho were there had never been to Carnegie Hall before, and they felt that it was slightly transgressive for them to be there in a stately kind of place, coming to hear a guy who wasn’t the least bit stately. So It hink of all the places Elton played, to me that was the most special venue.” Adding to the uniqueness of the event were the incredible acoustics that the hall boasted. “Of all the places that they’d played, Carnegie Hall was by far the best. Everyone wants to play Madison Square Garden, but the acoustics are terrible. It wasn’t made for music, particularly. It was made for sporting events. But Carnegie Hall was designed and built for concerts. So the sound for Elton was the most exquisite and very, very special. And I think the band picked up on that almost immediately, and played at their highest level all the way through.”

  Backstage after the show, Elton was awarded his third U.S. Gold album, for the Friends soundtrack. “It’s amusing,” he told Mike McGrath and Mike McQuigley from Georgia Straight magazine, a towel draped around his shoulders. “I’m knocked out, I’m very glad that it’s a Gold record. But it’s not an Elton John album.”

  The pianist was more genuinely pleased by the New York Times review of his most recent performances. “Elton John appeared Thursday and again last night before an impassioned audience at Carnegie Hall, in what must be the best-produced rock concert there in a great long while,” critic Mike Jahn noted. “Never have I heard such good sound from a rock band in Carnegie Hall. Mr. Olsson’s drums were amplified perfectly, and he gave a performance that was often beyond breathtaking. Elton John and his lyricist, Bernie Taupin, clearly are deserving of their popularity.”

  After Elton’s Sunday night performance, a celebratory party was scheduled at the Essex House on Central Park South. Journalist Henry Edwards escorted Bette Midler to the soirée, which was held in a suite that had been turned into a nineteenth century carnival.

  Elton and the Divine Miss M embraced warmly in the center of the room as people applauded around them.

  “I want to be you,” Midler said.

  “You already are,” Elton cheerfully replied.

  While both crowds and critics were cheering Elton in Midtown Manhattan, he was making an even bigger splash nationally, appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone for the first time. Pictured sitting on the floor in aluminum-colored boots and a Bernie Taupin T-shirt, the magazine promised: “Kent State One Year After. Elton John: One Year On.”

  During the interview, Elton dished about hangers-on. “I don’t have any trouble with groupies,” he told journalist David Felton. “I couldn’t stand that sort of thing. Nigel has a groupie in every town, but there’s no sort of plague. Anyway, they seem to be more sophisticated now. They’ve become—how should I put it?—they’ve become less sluttish.” He chuckled. “Bernie and I do seem to attract weirdos [though]. I don’t know why, because we’re not really weird ourselves. People give me pineapples, and some girl gave me her knickers. Yeah, in Scotland, some girl took off her knickers and threw them on stage—along with a bowler hat. Can you get that one together?” More annoying were the spaced-out stage-monkey freaks who seemed to follow the band from town to town. “Last night there was this guy, as we were driving out he was clinging onto the car, going, ‘I must go home with you! Let me be a person!’ What can you do, you know?...We left him sobbing on the ground. That really disturbs me.”

  The interview concluded with Elton reflecting on his career. “Realistically, I don’t think I can be any more popular than I am now…Who knows? When I’m forty-five years old there might be an Elton John renaissance, and I can come around doing the Hoagie Carmichael bit.”

  DJM struck a deal with MCA Records that summer, guaranteeing Elton a million-dollar advance, with a second million to follow the May after. For all the lucre, Elton merely had to come up with seven albums of best-selling, generation-defining music in the coming five years. The pianist felt the deal more than fair. “Dick is a straight, right-down-the-middle...publisher,” he said. “To me he’s been like a father. If there’s any problem, Dick will sort it out for me.”

  Elton headlined an outdoor gig at London’s Crystal Palace on Saturday, July 31. The show was an all-star affair of sorts, the bill including Yes, Fairport Convention, Hookfoot, Tir Na Nog and blues prodigy Rory Gallagher.

  “How can I follow the blues?” Elton brooded backstage. “Look! They’re leaving! They only came to see him [Gallagher].”

  Despite any worries, an “absolutely terrified” Elton went down well with an eight-song set which featured rarities like “Rock Me When He’s Gone,” “I Need You to Turn To” and “Razor Face.” The clear highlight of his performance, however, was a maniacal set-closing version of Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On.”

  One of the screaming voices in attendance that afternoon belonged to actress Barbara Windsor, who later recalled, “Yes were on the bill, but nothing could compete with Elton. I sat on the grass and got totally lost in the music.”

  A bootleg LP of the pianist’s appearance, entitled Live in London, hit the streets days later.

  John Reid was asked to officially become Elton’s full-time manager one week on. At first, the twenty-one-year-old Scotsman was reluctant to leave EMI. “I was terrified of telling them I was leaving,” Reid said. But after increased pressure from Elton, leave he did. His bosses “went bananas, saying, ‘How can you do this, we were getting you ready for great things?’ So I withdrew my notice…Then after a month I thought, ‘Oh shit! I really should do it.’ [But] I was pretty scared because I’d no management experience, no legal experience, no financial experience.”

  Figuring Dick James would balk if he asked for an extravagant salary—thus providing Reid with a legitimate “out” of his quandary—he asked James for an annual salary of £6,000, nearly four times his current salary. Much to his surprise, James acquiesced. “From that experience,” Reid said, “I learnt that you could never start negotiations too high.”

  To his credit, Dick James had no issue with the arrangement. “If he’s living with his manager,” the publisher reasoned, “at least he’ll have someone to get him up in the morning.”

  John Reid quickly became a buffer for Elton. If you wanted to get to him, you had to go through Reid. Even Nigel and Dee. This didn’t sit well with Elton’s longtime sidemen.

  “We’d always been on equal terms,” Dee Murray said. “But then it all changed. Now, Elton was the star, and Nigel and I were sort of pushed to the background. We couldn’t go to him like we had in the past. Now, John Reid was in the way. And he made it clear that he didn’t rate us very highly. At press conferences, [Nigel and I] would just be sitting there, not saying a word. And I once said to John, ‘Do we really even need to be here at all?’ And he just said, ‘Don’t be so pedantic, Dee.’ That was John. And that’s how it was from that point on.”

  Eighteen hours after playing the International Song Festival of Vilar de Mouros in Portugal, Elton headed back into Trident Studios—on August 9—to record the bulk of his next album, his fourth studio effort in the last nineteen months.

  “At this point it looked like Elton was putting out an album once every two months, which is ridiculous,” Gus said. “So with [the new sessions], I decided that we ought to go back to a formula similar to when we did the first album. I wanted to make it clear to the fans that some of the things which had come in-between, such as Friends and 11-17-70, were not part of the official situation.”

  “Holiday Inn” was the first song attempted. A waltz in 6/8 time, “Holiday Inn” took a less-than-glamorous look at life on the road in America. When Dick James’ legal advisors suggested cutting the final verse—which they felt could be misconstrued as libelous—“motel prison” was changed to “motel, baby.” Additionally, the song lost its final, caviling verse, which complained about broken televisions and cold room service French-fries.

  “The lawyers made us take it out,” John Reid later told Rockline.

  The string player on t
he track was a rangy, blond-tressed musician whom Gus had worked with before—Davey Johnstone from Edinburgh, Scotland. Gus had, in fact, produced a pair of albums for Davey’s band, Magna Carta—Seasons and Songs from Wasties Orchard—and knew that the guitarist’s tasteful sense of harmonics and exquisite acoustic double-track work would perfectly complement Elton’s new songs.

  Though Davey preferred folk music to rock ‘n’ roll, the nineteen-year-old was more than willing to give it a go. “Honest, I didn’t really know at the time who Elton John was,” he said. “I’d seen him a bit in the music papers, but I wasn’t into what he was doing—I was into traditional Irish music. But money’s money, so I agreed to do the session. Why not, right? The day before the session, however, I saw Elton perform ‘Border Song’ on Top Of The Pops and I went, ‘Wow, this guy is good.’ So I went into the session with a whole new attitude.” Still, his enthusiasm couldn’t quite hide the surprise he felt at how withdrawn Elton seemed. “[He] was kind of quiet at first,” Davey later told musicradar.com. “He sort of stayed in the corner at his piano. It’s funny—I wasn’t intimidated at all. I should’ve been, but I was kind of a hotshot kid at the time. Elton, on the other hand, looked a little nervous. I guess he was just concentrating a lot.”

  Though Davey Johnstone had originally been booked on the session as a banjo player, he campaigned to play the mandolin instead. “It just seemed like a mandolin would help better accentuate the song.” The guitarist further suggested that Elton ditch the elaborate piano intro he’d devised and instead open the song cold, with just his voice. Elton appreciated the feedback, and ultimately decided to lay it down that way.

  “It’s one of my favorite Elton songs, ‘Holiday Inn’,” Nigel said, despite having not played on the track himself. “We stopped staying there after a while, though. I think Dee clogged the toilet up once too many times.”