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

by David DeCouto

  The American ticket-buying public felt much the same. Despite being in the depths of an economic recession, Elton’s 1974 tour, which had been witnessed by over a million people, ended up grossing a record-breaking 6.7 million dollars—an enormous sum in a time when the average American home cost only $37,000, and the median household income was $9,900.

  Arriving back in Britain in early December after a pair of close-out gigs at the Spectrum in Philadelphia, Elton was glad to be home. “I thought seriously about staying in the States, but had to accept the reality—that I simply couldn’t face it. Anyway, I’ve now made enough money to live happily in Britain…whatever the taxman may take from me.”

  The pianist’s love of country was anything but an affectation. When Rod Stewart swung by his house later that same week and admitted that he was seriously thinking of becoming a permanent tax exile, Elton became enraged.

  “He called me a traitor,” Rod said, “and put on Elgar’s ‘Pomp and Circumstance Marches’ at a volume so high that we couldn’t talk over it.”

  Having properly chastised his friend, Elton decided to add to the British GNP by spending a little of his hard-earned money Christmas shopping at some of the finer auction houses. Yet because of his high profile, the joy in this endeavor was slightly usurped, as he was forced to submit his bids by proxy.

  “It upsets me a bit that I can’t actually go and bid for [art pieces] myself,” he said, “but if I appear at Sotheby’s, it immediately puts the price up, I’m told.” Still, his assigned intermediaries did well enough on his behalf, allowing him to furnish his home with French Art Déco pieces, Lalique sculptures, and paintings by Pablo Picasso and Francis Bacon.

  “[My house] would look like the British Museum,” he said, “except that I’ve got Gold records on the ceiling.”

  One who had little need to devote ceiling space to Gold records was Maldwyn Pope; the album he’d cut with David Costa, upon which all his career hopes rested, had its release date permanently scrapped.

  “That record was just about to come out when there was a big falling out with everybody at Rocket,” he said. “So a lot of artists were cut. I wasn’t cut, but a single came out and didn’t chart. But in the meantime my voice had taken nature’s course and my voice was getting lower. So Gus said, ‘I'm going to take control, we’re going to start again.’ And I did a 24-track recording at the studios at Wardour Street. It was Roger Pope on drums, Davey Johnstone on guitar, Freddy Gandy played bass, and a guy called Mike Moran was on piano. He was a great piano player, and Gus was a great producer. His sessions went on and on and on. He’d picked the best musicians he could and then he created this atmosphere. And he used to tell these stories all night. We’d play a bit and then he’d tell a little bit of a story—Gus was a great storyteller, he always had another story to tell—and then we’d go and record again and again. And he’d just get it down to the level where it was perfect. Gus was just so much fun to be with. He knew the right ingredients to put into a record; everything was just perfect, everything was just in the right place. He’d get the atmosphere in the studio just right, so that vibe then came across on the record.”

  While they were in the studio, tapes of the Elton/Lennon performances at Madison Square Garden arrived special delivery. “The tapes were brought straight to the studio, but they didn’t get there till two o’clock in the morning,” Pope said. “So Gus got the tapes up and he started mixing the tracks straight away. It’s three o’clock in the morning and I fall asleep on the sofa in the back of the studio while they mixed ‘I Saw Her Standing There’.” He laughed. “I was like the Forest Gump of Elton John’s career.”

  Elton finished off his triumphal year with yet another series of holiday concerts at London’s Hammersmith Odeon, with part of the December 21 show being aired on the BBC-2 on Christmas Eve.

  The memorable gig opened with a lifelike dummy of Elton dressed in a white-feathered jumpsuit sliding down a guide wire from the balcony. Zipping across the heads of the fans, the faux-Elton landed stage-right and disappeared into the wings—at which point the real Elton materialized in an identical suit.

  The audience roared its approval.

  “That was Elton at his absolute peak in terms of energy, flamboyance, stage presentation and warmth,” said Bob Harris, the show’s presenter. “I was at the side of the stage throughout most of the concert. Most of the audience were bathed in light, partly from the lights from the stage but also because of television lights used so that the cameras can pick up people’s faces. So I was looking out across the stage toward Elton and then out across the whole crowd into the auditorium, and everyone had a smile on their face. The warmth that was being generated toward Elton that night—you could cut it, you could hold it.”

  Despite suffering from a bad cold which sapped a bit of his considerable energy, Elton still gave a galvanizing performance.

  Toward the end of the concert, a pair of high-heeled snow-bunnies emerged from the wings to present Elton with a Christmas cake. Rod Stewart and Gary Glitter joined the festivities, lending their voices to a rousing sing-a-long on “White Christmas” as loads of polystyrene snow fell from the rafters. The crowd’s collective vocal chords shred themselves in unchecked appreciation as they stomped and clapped in unison.

  “Altogether, a night to remember,” John Tobler trumpeted in ZigZag. “Elton John is no way a here-today-gone-tomorrow performer—he’s a consummate professional who, apart from writing extraordinarily memorable and enduring songs, is able to stage a live concert which few, if any, of the audience would dare to leave without a contented smile…Say no more, squire.”

  Melody Maker felt similarly, maintaining that Elton had packed “more solid entertainment into one show than most artists put into half a year’s work,” adding that “apart from the showmanship, the costumes and special effects, the lasting impression was of Elton turning his voice, with its wide range and unpretentious style, to a whole gamut of stand-out songs. There are few singers in rock who could sustain interest in this fashion, or cope with such demanding material, without cracking up or resorting to vocal gimmicks. Thank you E.J. for giving us one of the best concerts of 1974, and keeping rock music alive and well.”

  Elton held a star-studded party after his Christmas Eve concert at 7 Dials Studio in Shelton Street, Covent Garden. Guests included Bryan Ferry, Brian Eno, Radio 1’s Noel Edmonds, the Monkees’ Micky Dolenz, Cat Stevens, Ringo Starr and Monty Python’s Graham Chapman.

  As the clock struck midnight, Elton and Rod Stewart exchanged Christmas presents.

  “A fucking Rembrandt!” Rod exclaimed as he opened Elton’s gift, an etching from the Dutch master entitled The Adoration of the Shepherds.

  In return, the rooster-haired rocker gave Elton a mini-fridge.

  “An ice bucket,” the pianist groused, shaking his head ruefully. “Thanks a fucking lot.”

  “I felt pretty small,” Rod later admitted.

  As the holidays approached, Elton released his final musical offering of the year, a private Christmas single under the pseudonym Ebenezer Moog. Featuring instrumental takes on “Silent Night” and “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” this limited-edition single would soon rate among the most rare and valuable of his vast catalogue.

  It was the least of the pianist’s recent musical accomplishments, for, according to the top music trade magazines—Billboard, Record World and Cash Box—he was again the world’s most popular artist. The top draw in concert and the undisputed master in moving vinyl.

  Billboard christened Goodbye Yellow Brick Road the album of the year, while Record World named Elton the top singles artist.

  Tellingly, the ranks of the Elton John Fan Club swelled, accounting for over 62,000 members in America alone, making it the largest participatory group for those under eighteen years of age outside of the Boy Scouts.

  The ‘70s may have been half in the books, yet in many ways Elton John was still just getting started.<
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  Part Four:

  Bottled & Brained

  Chapter 23:

  Dogs in the Kitchen

  1975 opened with Elton’s cover of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” having ascended to the top of the American charts. In the U.K., the single reached a less lofty, albeit still respectable, Number 10.

  “[The single’s success] didn’t surprise me in England,” Elton said, “but it surprised me [in America]. Sgt. Pepper is a revered album in England—it’s like the Bible. So all the kids knew it anyway, even the very young kids that I attract to concerts. They all knew it. But over here, it was a different ballgame. People went nuts when I did ‘Lucy’ from that album. Some kids hadn’t even heard it. And that really floored me. I thought, ‘Oh my God, there’s a new generation coming up somewhere.”

  As enthused as the pianist was by his latest single’s success, he seemed even more excited by an autographed football he’d recently received from the Washington Redskins.

  Elton headed back to the future nine days later—and a mere twelve hours after having jammed onstage with the Average White Band on a cover of the Motown classic “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” at the Marquee Club in London—by officially releasing his 1969 long-playing debut, Empty Sky, in the States.

  Featuring a brand-new cover—the artist Folon’s Picasso-esque painting of a blue Sphinx, which hung proudly on the wall of the pianist’s study—the U.S. release of Elton’s freshman effort was a greatly anticipated event. New liner notes had been composed for the package by novelist Eric Van Lustbader, while a center-spread photograph showed, incongruously, the wide turquoise sky above Caribou Ranch. “Empty Sky is as crude an album in its way as Meet the Beatles, but therein lies the charm,” Lustbader noted. “Greatness, thank God, has nothing whatsoever to do with elegance.”

  The LP, which had originally sunk without a trace in Britain six years earlier, now quickly ascended to the Number 6 spot in Elton’s adopted country, it would remain in the Billboard album charts for eighteen weeks straight.

  Elton was pleased that the disc had finally gotten its due. “I can remember more about making Empty Sky than later albums,” he said. “It’s such a great feeling to be able to make a record. The first one is never the best, but it’s always the most memorable.”

  Elton appeared on the February 12 pilot episode of the variety show Cher, which aired as a standalone special. A dour, Sonny-less affair, the show had actually been shot several weeks earlier. Standing before the CBS-TV cameras in cloud-shaped platinum specs encrusted with 103 diamonds, the Briton sang a duet with the hostess on “Bennie and the Jets” before offering a reflective rendition of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”

  After several imminently forgettable comedy sketches, the show ended with a white-tuxedoed Elton dutifully pounding out the chords to a medley of “Mockingbird,” “Proud Mary, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and “Never Can Say Goodbye” on a mirrored baby grand, while Cher, Flip Wilson and Bette Midler harmonized around him.

  After the show, a glum Midler asked Elton to help her pick out songs to record for her next album.

  “She’s always down in the dumps,” the pianist said. “Seems most ladies are like that. I haven’t met one female singer who’s really on the ball. [Though] I do have a feeling Joni Mitchell might be different.”

  The critics, fortuitously, were slightly less desultory than Bette Midler. “Television hasn’t seen so much glitter and flash since NBC did a special on Liberace’s closet,” Newsweek noted, while Woodmore TV Weekly opined, “Best show of the week by a country mile. More Elton, please. And soon.”

  The Englishman’s appearance was enough to guarantee a viewership of 40 million, and a Top 10 placement in the all-important Nielson ratings. Months later, without the assistance of rock’s most famous man, the Cher show would be summarily canceled.

  While the former Cherilyn Sarkisian was doing her best to forge a solo television identity, John Reid was busy chiseling out space in his schedule managing Elton to also take over the reins of the rock group Queen. The first question he had for Freddie Mercury and company: could they play live? “All I’d heard was ‘Killer Queen’ and ‘Seven Seas of Rhye’,” Reid said, “but they actually set up a full rig show…just for me.”

  Reid liked what he saw of the band that had concurrently been in negotiations with Led Zeppelin’s manager Peter Grant. While Grant advised Queen to go on an extended tour while he sorted out the financial quagmire they’d found themselves in courtesy of their prior manager, Reid simply told them to “go into the studio and make the best record you can make.”

  This is what the four members of Queen wanted to hear.

  “We knew we were in a difficult position management-wise, but we were in a good position overall,” guitarist Brian May later told author Mark Blake. “So we went around and saw everybody that we could, and the only situation that was suitable for us, really, was John Reid.”

  After signing with the Scotsman, the band immediately began working in earnest on what would become their pièce de résistance, A Night at the Opera.

  “Philadelphia Freedom” was released on February 24. Bearing the inscription: With love to BJK and the music of Philadelphia—and credited, for the first time, to “The Elton John Band”—the single was notable for its unique B-side, the Elton/Lennon live duet of “I Saw Her Standing There.”

  In a matter of weeks, “Philadelphia Freedom” reached Number 12 spot in the U.K., and Number 1 in America—his third chart-topping single in twelve months. It would also help break down the barriers between rock, soul and the burgeoning disco scene as it became his second single in less than a year to break into Billboard’s R&B charts. Elton was so pleased with its performance that he sent Billie Jean King a framed copy of the 45, along with the picture sleeve, and the Billboard chart with the song sitting at Number 1.

  Elton hosted a seventy-five-minute show on BBC Radio 1 six days on utilizing his “EJ the DJ” persona. Playing a wide variety of music which ranged from Archie Bell & the Drells to Little Feat, the pianist truly rose to the occasion, filling the airwaves with a constant stream of comic asides in a host of well-practiced Goon voices. The broadcast proved predictably popular; so many people called into the studio during Elton’s show, in fact, that the overwhelmed switchboards collapsed, causing local telephone lines to go down for the balance of the afternoon.

  “I’m a natural disaster, I tell you,” Elton joked.

  Similar mayhem ensued during the premier of Ken Russell’s Tommy on March 19. Attending the premiere on the mezzanine level of New York’s 57th Street subway station in a striped suit and John Lennon: Rock ‘n’ Roll button, Elton posed for paparazzi flashbulbs alongside costars Tina Turner, Ann-Margret and Pete Townshend. Thousands turned up to witness the affair, including pop-art maestro Andy Warhol and Psycho actor Anthony Perkins.

  While Elton’s professional successes seemed to know no bounds—although Tommy ostensibly starred Jack Nicholson, Eric Clapton, Oliver Reed, and the Who, his five-minute cameo as the Pinball Wizard would earn him top billing on a majority of movie house marquees across the country—things weren’t quite as perfect as they might have seemed from the outside. In truth, the pianist’s personal life had come apart at the seams, his relationship with John Reid ending with an abrupt thud.

  “He was more unfaithful than I liked,” said Elton, who finally pulled the plug on the doomed—and combative—affair.

  Reid was slightly taken aback.

  “I had already started looking for bigger houses for the both of us to live in,” he later told author Keith Hayward, “but Elton suggested that I got an apartment in London on my own.”

  The split caused the superstar’s experimental drug use to shift into overdrive. Perennial favorites like marijuana and scotch were superseded by cocaine, which quickly became Elton’s drug of choice—though he did his best not to indulge before a performance. “With coke, you get rid o
f so many inhibitions,” he said. “But onstage it’s no good for performing. You have a hundred thoughts in a minute, but other people can’t follow you. And then when I’d come down, I’d be a complete monster…Any relationship that you bring drugs into is doomed to failure.”

  More alone than ever, and in desperate need of a brand-new direction, Elton spent a large part of the new year brooding under stormy English skies.

  “I couldn’t understand why I was feeling so depressed,” he told Melody Maker. “In the end I just had to own up that it was because I wanted a change. I’ve always wanted to be part of a good, driving, rock ‘n’ roll band. [Nigel, Dee and I] used to rattle along. Whenever we played anything live, it was always twice the tempo of the recording and it was a bit off-putting to me. I wanted to chug rather than race. I wanted to rock ‘n’ roll in a laidback manner.”

  The ax came down later that spring, on April 19.

  “Both members took it very hard,” Elton said. “I did them both by phone. Nigel was in L.A…he actually took it worse than Dee…He’s a little hurt, and I can understand that…It’s an impossible sort of situation saying to someone after five years that they’re out and that’s it. But give it a little time and things will work out.”

  Lennon, for his part, was shocked when he learned of Nigel and Dee’s sacking. “You’re a fool for breaking up that band,” he told the pianist. John Reid, who had remained Elton’s manager and main confidante even after their romance collapsed, had to agree with the ex-Beatle. “I nearly had a heart attack…when [Elton] said he was going to change the band. It was actually inconceivable to me that it would happen so suddenly, and that it would work.”