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

by David DeCouto

  With Madman’s release, Elton proclaimed that he had gotten rid of “three years of shit. That might sound strong, but there were three years of songs and back catalogue which we’ve finally come to an end of…When we cut Madman…it was cut because we had to do an album. It was very painful. It was done under pressure and really tortured out of us, and I think it’s remarkable that it turned out as well as it did…It’s the very last album of its kind we’ll ever do.”

  Critical reaction to the work was mixed. Thomas Ryan maintained that Elton’s emotional piano introduction to “Levon” was “enough all by itself to guarantee immortality for the song,” while Sounds’ Penny Valentine wrote that “Madman is a giant stride for Elton John. A powerful and decisive album from a ‘full-blooded city’ music man.” Rolling Stone’s Alec Dubro was less enthusiastic. “Elton John’s music means a lot to me, and as a result, I’m not overjoyed with this album. ‘Levon’ sounds good, but I could listen to it for years and never know what it’s about. And it does make a difference…Madman won’t really crush any John fans, for he sings with the same power and brilliance he’s shown since he broke. But it probably won’t draw any either. Madman is a difficult, sometimes impossibly dense record. America is worthy of a better story than this record, and Elton John needs a better story than this to sing.” Writing in Newsday, critic Robert Christgau felt that the songs “meander. The others maunder as well. Ugh.”

  Elton wasn’t surprised by the many less-than-glowing notices his new album generated. “Now that I’ve made it, it’s become very hip to put me down,” he told the New York Times’ Nik Cohn. “When I was nowhere, it was hip to call me a genius. Now the same critics sneer at me. They won’t share me with a mass public. The snobbery in rock is amazing.”

  His partner agreed. “I think there’s a lull in everybody’s career,” Bernie said. “You can rise with tremendous popularity and then everybody sort of jumps on your back. They’re writing everything about you, and you get to a stage where people want to see if you can maintain that popularity, and the press coverages go down slightly during a phase when you’re trying to change your system of doing things and you have to come back. It’s like crossing a bridge. You either cross it or you fall off it.”

  When Madman failed to live up to sales expectations, Elton began to worry that he’d oversaturated the market with too many albums too quickly. “I was getting more and more unhappy about it. I thought, ‘We’ve worked so bloody hard to get this far, and now we’re blowing it.’” To NME’s Bob Randall, the star confided his determination to cut back on his work schedule. “I’ll be doing less touring and putting more time aside for recording and writing. I’ve got the British tour to do, but next year I must have time to think and write.”

  With a U.K. tour scheduled throughout November and December, Elton had little time to lament. For this latest outing—supported by the American pop duo England Dan & John Ford Coley—the pianist opened each night with a turbocharged “Rock Me When He’s Gone,” which never failed to bring the crowds to their feet. The ecstatic reaction underlined a dichotomy of expectations that his audiences brought with them to his shows. “They think I’m going to be moody and pompous, like James Taylor, but I’m a rock ‘n’ roll freak. I always have been. People take rock so seriously, but it’s just to be enjoyed. It isn’t an art form.” Of his ever-spiraling sartorial splendor, he noted that his clothes were simply a method to make up for lost time. “As a kid, because I was so fat, I couldn’t wear the latest styles, because I could never find anything that would fit. So I suppose I’m making up for it. I didn’t even start living until I was twenty-three. My life now is just an extension of things I always wanted to do. Bright clothes and shiny things. I’m catching up for all the games that I missed as a child. I’m releasing myself.”

  The Brit worked an emotionally raw cover of Shirley Bassey’s signature tune, “This is My Life (La Vita),” into his set list. The song, with its anguished lyrics, had always held special meaning for Elton. “One of my top ten,” he said. “I love sad songs. [It’s] just tremendous.”

  Despite the frenzied pandemonium each night’s shows were greeted by, the internal pressure within the powerhouse trio was quickly rising to dangerous levels. “The band were really getting pissed-off,” Elton said, “and I was really getting pissed-off, because we’d done all we could really do as a three-piece unit…We were so bored, we didn’t even look forward to playing anymore…It was impossible with three. It’s all right if you’re Emerson, Lake & Palmer and there’s Hammond organs everywhere, but with just a piano…” He sighed. “There’s no sustaining instrument among piano, bass and drums. I can’t think how we coped.”

  To help shake things up—as much for himself as for his fans—Elton brought T. Rex glam-rocker Marc Bolan onto stage for the encore of his show at Fairfield Hall, Croydon. Bolan, a glamorous, kohl-eyed sprite who’d recently scored a string of hits including “Hot Love” and “Ride a White Swan,” took to the stage like a reigning prince, all satin cloth and Rafael curls.

  “Groovy, baby,” he shouted, hugging Elton at the foot of his piano as the girls in the front rows screamed and screamed.

  “Levon” was issued as a single in select territories on November 29. With little publicity yet not-insignificant airplay, the potent track eventually reached Number 24 in America, and Number 6 in Canada.

  Elton was pleased by the song’s relative success; at the same time, he fretted over the state of the music business as a whole. “I wish the scene would change, and people would get young idols,” he told Melody Maker. “Rod Stewart’s in his mid-twenties, Dylan and Lennon are thirtyish. Elvis is an old man—and even I’m twenty-four. Where are they? Where are the new Beatles and Stones who are going to come along and shake us all out of our complacency? It’s all become so static, so solemn.”

  On December 7, Elton made an appearance on BBC-TV’s Old Grey Whistle Test. Wearing a shimmering silver-and-ruby-striped jacket, Elton performed “Tiny Dancer” and “All the Nasties”—though not “Levon,” as Dick James had deemed the song “a bit too long” for commercial release in England. Elton was displeased with this decision, seeing the rebuke as a vote of no-confidence from James.

  “My tongue is still,” the pianist said. “For the moment, anyway.”

  Elton ended the year by appearing with T. Rex on a spirited version of “Bang A Gong (Get It On)” on the Christmas edition of Top of the Pops. Pummeling a white upright in a poodle-strewn jacket, Elton allowed Marc Bolan the spotlight as he shook his long locks and swanned photogenically for the cameras.

  The galvanizing performance left Elton thinking about the direction he foresaw himself and his band taking in the near future. “Gus and I have already talked about the next album, and we want to get back to a basic sound. I mean, I’d love to do a Rod Stewart or Neil Young type of album. It’s time for a change. Adding [a] new guitarist next year will give us more scope, I think. We’ve proved better than anyone that piano, bass and drums can make it in a loud rock act, but there’s hardly any room for solos at the moment. I have to provide rhythm and solos on piano, which is a bit of a drag, and I think someone fresh in the group will take a bit of responsibility off me and give us a new lease on life.”

  This proposed change to a seemingly magical formula was a daring move, considering that Billboard had just ranked Elton as the sixth-highest artist in the world in terms of album sales, bested only by such long-established acts as Chicago and Grand Funk Railroad. In the solo singer category, Elton tied with James Taylor for first place.

  While the pianist was pleased with his musical prosperity, he was—more than anything—amazed that he’d been able to weather the tempest of fame at all.

  “When I think about it,” he said, “it’s a wonder I’ve survived the last few months.”

  Part Two:

  Silent Movies, Talking Pictures

  Chapter 10:

  Honky Château

&nb
sp; 1972 kicked off in grand style, with Elton receiving official confirmation from the Central Office of the Supreme Court of Judicature that his deed poll application—filed the previous December 8—had been successfully processed. Gone forever was the lost and lonely Reginald Kenneth Dwight. In his stead now, legally and forever, stood Elton Hercules John.

  The switch made an immediate difference to the pianist’s psyche. “It was like slipping into a Superman costume,” he said. “I’d grown fed up with people saying, ‘This is Elton John, but his real name is Reginald Kenneth Dwight.’ Reg is the unhappy part of my life. I can’t bear people calling me Reg. If people send me letters as Reginald Dwight, I don’t even open them.”

  The newly christened Elton John was advised to record his next album abroad, to escape Britain’s heavy taxation rates. “My solicitor said, ‘You’ve got to start recording outside the country,’ and I said ‘Why?’ and he said it would be much better financially if we recorded outside the country. I said, ‘You must be joking.’ He wasn’t. So I said I’d go only if we could find someplace peaceful, without any interruptions.”

  Beyond any monetary considerations, Elton also felt that a new studio would provide the psychological freedom necessary to expand his music in a fresh direction. “I was labeled a singer-songwriter and did four LPs in that syndrome,” he said. “But I’ve always fought against the Elton John Syndrome. People take it too seriously. I’d like us to be a band [now].” Indeed, he was more than ready to leave behind the overly complex pocket symphonies that had exemplified his earlier releases, and move toward something simpler and more organic. “On the first albums, we used a lot of session men, but we could never do it that way now, planning it down to the last flute.”

  When plans to record in France with the Rolling Stones’s sixteen-track Mobile Recording Studio fell through, Gus was dispatched to the south of France to hunt down a conventional studio. He found just what he was looking for at the Château d’Hérouville, a secluded eighteenth century castle thirty kilometers north of Paris. Hidden behind a wall of twisted chestnut trees and a four-hundred-year-old stone wall, the Eden-like studio overlooked sun-dappled fields where Van Gogh had painted several of his final masterpieces. The property was owned by film composer Michel Magne, who had installed a custom-made 16-track tape machine—along with multiple tons worth of the latest electronic recording gear—into his facility. Renamed Strawberry Studios, the facility was soon a sought-after facility utilized by the likes of Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead.

  “People said I was mad because no one would want to make the thirty kilometer journey from Paris to record in the middle of nowhere,” Magne said. “But then they saw the groups arriving.”

  It didn’t take Gus long to realize that he’d happened upon the perfect studio. “When I first walked into the studio proper, some guys from a band called Zoo were just starting a soundcheck,” the producer said. “And the drummer’s cymbals were nice and crisp—ting, ting ting—clear as a bell. And when I stepped into the control room, you could hear the exact same sound coming from the speakers—ting, ting, ting—even with the heavy control room door shut tight. [It was] just astounding. I’d never experienced that type of fidelity before, in any studio I’d ever been in.”

  The Château was comprised of two main wings—one which housed the studio facility and business offices, the other one containing spacious suites for the musicians and recording team. Boasting its own swimming pool, games room, and five-star banquet hall—not to mention an officially protected octagonal stone drinking trough which sat in the middle of a private garden—the Château’s crumbling splendor offered an unparalleled creative environment. “We didn’t have to pack everything away at the end of a session, and so we could work at night and sleep by day,” Elton said. “It is the only way to work. You come down to a place like this and you forget about all the troubles of the outside world. Nothing matters except getting your head straight and putting the music down.”

  Indeed, the studio’s relaxed, sleep-away-camp vibe proved invaluable in fostering a familial, us-against-the-world bond between the pianist and his band on what was to be their first full album sessions together. “The Château wasn’t the most technically wonderful studio,” he said, “but there was something magical about it. I’m not impressed with studios that look fantastic and then there’s no atmosphere about it. I’d rather have a shitty old desk.”

  Besides featuring Nigel and Dee, the sessions also saw the official addition of guitarist Davey Johnstone, whose broad range of styles would provide extra dimensionality to Elton’s music. Interestingly, Nigel and Dee hadn’t a clue that the lanky Scotsman had been invited to join the band until he suddenly joined them on the plane trip up to Paris.

  “I wanted (future Procol Harum guitarist) Mick Grabham in there,” Nigel confessed, “because he was a buddy from school. But we found he was the wrong type of player. Davey fitted because of his folk background.”

  “Surprises abounded,” Dee said with a grin.

  Gus and Nigel spent the first couple days at the Château working on achieving the proper drum sound, which required Nigel to bash away on his drums for hours at a time.

  “Nigel and Gus, with their engineer, would spend at least two days getting a drum sound for the albums, and this was a remarkable process,” Davey said. “In fact, I read Lord of the Rings while they were doing it. It speaks volumes for the way these records sound, because the drums sound phenomenal. They sound right-in-your-face. They sound natural. They’re different, as well…This is all to do with our friend Gus Dudgeon, who is probably one of the finest producers ever on the planet.”

  “Within the drum kit you have every frequency you’re never going to hear,” Gus noted, “from the highest high to the lowest low. Once you’ve got the drum sound together, someone can come in and say ‘What do you think of this bass sound?’—with it in solo. But you don’t know how good it is until you’ve put it up against the drum kit, because it may be a great bass sound in its own right, but does it work with the bass drum?”

  Once satisfactory drum levels were set, the group quickly fell into a hyper-productive creative pattern. “We’d have all of our instruments set up at the breakfast table,” Elton said. “I’d come down, have breakfast, get a lyric, and write a song at the electric piano while they’d eat…I couldn’t believe how everything began to flow.”

  Aiding in this fluidity was the fact that Bernie’s lyrics were coming to him faster than ever before. “We wanted to do some fun songs,” he said. “Very simple things that people could sing along with…For the first time, I found the songs coming out naturally. I didn’t have to consciously look for things to write about.” Sitting upstairs late at night, he’d type up new lyrics then hand them to his wife so she could correct his spelling. In the morning, Maxine would run them down to Elton and throw them on his electric piano.

  “The band would join in,” Elton said, “and by the time breakfast was over we’d written and rehearsed two songs…It was the height of our powers.”

  Once the band felt that the new songs were locked in, they would follow Gus across a sun-drenched courtyard and into the studio proper, where they’d commit the tracks to recording tape beneath a thirteenth century chandelier.

  “The band was almost telepathic,” David said. “We’d each know what the other one was going to play.”

  The third morning at the Château, Elton found a lyric that Bernie had written the week before they’d left for France. As he read over the words, his hands found a G-minor-9th chord on the keyboard, then a C-9th. “I was picking up melodies straight out on the piano and the group was right there putting everything together as complete arrangements,” the pianist said. “It was so good, so productive, that we wrote nine songs in three days. We were reeling them out.”

  Elton composed “Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going to Be a Long, Long Time)” in ten minutes. “Once he played the first chord, he would immediately
sing,” Davey said. “I’ve never really seen anybody else do that.” Gus concurred. “He would start singing and playing at the same time. It was really strange. And if he ever got stuck, if he ever lost his momentum, he’d simply back up a line or two and have another go, till the logjam passed.”

  While Elton’s speed was remarkable, it did give his producer a moment of pause. “I used to think, ‘Does this seem great because it’s coming out so fast? Am I fooling myself?’ But then you’d hear the whole band fleshing it out, and it’d be, ‘This actually is, in fact, superb.’”

  Lyrically, “Rocket Man” was inspired not by David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” as has been widely speculated, but rather by a tune composed by Pearls Before Swine’s Tom Rapp. “He actually wrote a song called ‘Rocket Man’, which was based on a Ray Bradbury story from The Illustrated Man,” said Bernie, who felt little compunction in taking the basic idea from a fellow songwriter, or the bones of another writer’s story—which concerned a conflicted astronaut who yearned to be home with his wife and child while out in space, yet ached to be tearing through the cosmos when he was home with his family—and using it as the basis of his own composition. “It’s common knowledge that songwriters are great thieves,” he said. “And this is a perfect example.” Especially, perhaps, given the unbidden manner in which the lyrics had initially come to him, the first two lines arriving while he was driving home from dinner. “By the time I’d gotten home, I’d written the song in my head,” he said. “I jumped out of my car and ran into my parent’s house, sort of shouting: ‘Please don’t anyone talk to me till I’ve written this down!’”