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

by David DeCouto

  As for his seemingly self-destructive streak, the star was reflective. “I get terribly depressed,” he admitted. “It’s my desperate craving for affection coming out. I’ll get in a mood and I’ll sit at home for two days in bed, getting more and more depressed, wondering if it’s all worth it…I can be very happy and then, all of a sudden, I’m on a comedown…I consider myself slightly insane, in a funny way.”

  During the run-up to the Wembley concert, Bernie was introduced to Kenny Passarelli; the two found a natural affinity with each other.

  “Bernie came out for that gig,” Kenny said, “and Davey told me, ‘Don’t be surprised if he doesn’t say two words to you. Bernie’s really shy.’ But he and I just hit it off. We just clicked, we ended up doing everything together. So Bernie and I are hanging out and we’re having a grand old time, and I remember Bernie called Maxine in L.A. and told her, ‘You gotta come out here and meet Kenny, I think you guys would really hit it off.’” Kenny grunted. “Bernie and I were best friends. And then Maxine showed up in London before the Wembley gig. I said like two words to her. I thought she was a stuck-up chick. And that was it.”

  Elton’s Wembley gig—dubbed the Midsummer Music Festival—proved to be the single biggest musical event in England during the hazy summer of ‘75. In an era before charity became fashionable, it was notable that Elton chose to divide the massive proceeds from this outing amongst nine separate charities, including the Institute for the Blind and the Lady Hoare Trust for Physically Handicapped Children. “That, too, was an example of the compassionate nature within him,” arranger Del Newman said. “I met many artists who—with all their wealth—would never have considered helping anyone less fortunate than themselves. Some were so wrapped up in their own importance that they weren’t conscious of the needs of others.”

  Elton had handpicked the artists for the daylong concert. The bill included Rocket signees Stackridge, as well as Joe Walsh, the American funk band Rufus—which featured R&B singer Chaka Khan—and the Eagles, whom Elton called “the best band I’ve seen onstage the last couple of years.”

  “It was awesome,” Eagles’ guitarist Don Felder said of the summer solstice show. “The place and the people just made us high. We didn’t need anything else.”

  Stevie Wonder, who had originally been slated to appear directly before Elton, had to back out at the last minute when health issues precluded his appearance. John Reid rang up the Beach Boys, who agreed to appear in the Motown star’s stead.

  The Beach Boys made the most of the opportunity, opening their set with a spirited rendition of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.” From the outset they had the entire stadium on its feet, singing along to one golden oldie after another, from “Little Deuce Coupe” to “Surfer Girl” to “Fun, Fun, Fun.”

  Taking their leave after five encores, the audience was forced to sit through a lengthy intermission during which the stage was adorned with potted palms and an electrified thirty-three-foot-long Captain Fantastic emblem. At the same time, the sun dipped behind the lip of the stadium, causing the temperature to drop nearly thirty degrees. “Everyone was really uncomfortable and they had had such a long day,” Clive Franks said. “That was probably one of the most difficult shows for all of us.”

  Taking to the stage in an aquamarine jumpsuit, Elton began his set just after seven p.m. with an opening salvo of “Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding,” “Rocket Man” and “Candle in the Wind.” His new band—augmented on the night by Doobie Brothers fret ace Jeff “Skunk” Baxter—then treated the fans to a string of classic hits including “The Bitch is Back,” “Philadelphia Freedom,” “Bennie and the Jets” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”

  If the band were at all apprehensive about premiering in front of such a massive crowd, they weren’t showing it onstage.

  “Nerves weren’t an issue for this band,” Roger said. “We all knew we could play. If I was personally nervous about anything, it was meeting John Robinson, Rufus’ drummer. We came toward each other backstage, right before we went on. You should have seen him. He just laughed and fell to his knees and I said, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ He said he was bowing to the world’s greatest living drummer.’ That made my whole day right there.”

  Chugging from a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé, Elton unveiled an expressive new ballad called “Chameleon,” which the Beach Boys had originally asked Bernie and him to write for them. “The Beach Boys came to us,” Elton later recalled, “and said, ‘Write us a song, baby.’ When I write a song, normally it takes me twenty minutes, half an hour—top whack—and I’m finished. With ‘Chameleon’, I spent six months on it, and I finished it, I always remember, in Honolulu, Hawaii. I rang Taupin up and said, ‘I’ve done it, I’ve done it, I’ve finished it.’ And it was, for me, it was what the Beach Boys were all about. And they didn’t like it.”

  Though the Beach Boys had turned the song down—feeling it too introspective—the massive Wembley audience had no such reservations, greeting its poignant G-major melody with a particularly enthusiastic cheer.

  After delivering a trio of insurance hits (“Bennie and the Jets,” “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and “I Saw Her Standing There”), Elton took a daring risk and ran through the entirety of his brand-new Captain Fantastic album.

  “No one had done that before,” Kenny Passarelli later told journalist Luc Hatlestad. “Only Elton could pull it off.”

  Paul McCartney and Wings cheered on Elton’s artistic gamble from the Royal Box. Other voices shouting out their approval that night belonged to Harry Nilsson, John Entwistle, Ringo Starr, Derek Taylor, Jimmy Connors, Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova and Candice Bergen.

  Elton fed on their approbation. It was his lifeblood, his raison d’être.

  Interestingly, a hyped-up, seemingly agenda-driven report by Melody Maker (Beach Boys’ Cup Runneth Over. Elton Left To Pick Up The Empties) had half the fans racing for the exits as Elton’s set progressed. Several Elton John biographers would later pick up on this article, parroting it over and over and helping to set in stone a fundamental misunderstanding of the reception that Elton’s new band actually commanded. Photographs of the concert, however—as well as a stereophonic recording released decades later—serve testimony that this was in fact not the case. While a few thousand casual spectators did leave when the temperature dipped dramatically before Elton’s set, the overwhelming majority stayed in place to cheer on England’s favorite son to yet another triumph.

  Arranger Paul Buckmaster, who had been in attendance, efficiently analyzed the situation. “That was a classic case of British media,” he said. “When somebody finally makes it, they start to tear him down. It was a great concert. It was very exciting. That’s the only thing that I can attribute it to. And the fact that Elton had changed his band, his formula. This just kind of fuels whatever that negative thing is with the British media, where they say, ‘Okay, we’ve had enough. It’s time to start tearing you down.’”

  Caleb agreed. “I think it went down well,” he said. “One critic said the audience was walking out on us, but I certainly didn’t see that. There’s a photo that Roger actually took of me playing, and you could see the crowd behind me, and I happened to look round, and he took the picture. And the place is packed. I don’t remember seeing anybody leave—or maybe if they did leave, it didn’t make any difference. We were just on cloud nine, ‘cause for us it was the first rock concert every to be held at Wembley Stadium at that time. It was a huge deal. To be English lads at Wembley Stadium, the shrine of English soccer, it was just amazing.”

  As for the small percentage of spectators who did bail, the pianist took it in stride. “People don’t like to go and sit at concerts, perhaps, and hear a whole album full of new stuff,” he told the BBC’s Andy Peebles. “I mean, I know when I go to a Joni Mitchell concert and she does some new songs, I think, ‘Oh go on, do one I know.’ But as artists, I thought I had to do it, it was a new band and as a new al
bum—the previous band had made and recorded the album—the new band was playing it. I had to do it.”

  After the final chords of “We All Fall in Love Sometimes/Curtains” disappeared into the frigid British sky, frantic fans called the band back for a double encore of “Pinball Wizard” and “Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting).”

  “Amazing!” Elton told the cheering crowd as the song climaxed with a triple guitar assault. “We’ll see ya soon! Thank you!”

  “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” was released a week later. Backed with “House of Cards,” MCA had wanted to edit the six-minute-and-forty-four-second A-side down to a more manageable length, fearing it far too long for radio consumption; Elton unwaveringly refused.

  “Fuck ‘em,” he said. “[The song] is what it is.”

  Despite its prohibitive running length, “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” managed a modest Number 22 placement in the U.K. charts, while making it all the way up to the Number 4 spot in the U.S.

  Critics were unified in their praise. “As long as Elton John can bring forth one performance per album on the order of ‘Someone Saved My Life Tonight,’ Rolling Stone’s Jon Landau noted, “the chance remains that he will become something more than the great entertainer he already is and go on to make a lasting contribution to rock.” Other notices were similarly glowing. Yet the person who in large part inspired the song’s creation, the “princess…perched in her electric chair” herself—ex-fiancé Linda Woodrow—had mixed emotions about the track. “‘Someone Saved My Life Tonight’ was a great song,” she said. “However, it made me very sad to hear it…because it sounded like Reg was not happy with me, and that was not so.”

  To help promote Captain Fantastic, Elton appeared with journalist Paul Gambaccini on BBC Radio 1.

  With the tape rolling, Gambaccini asked Elton to pick a track to play to the patients of a nearby cancer hospital.

  “Better Off Dead,” the pianist replied without missing a beat.

  Gambaccini turned off the tape.

  “You can’t say that. This is for a cancer hospital.”

  Elton nodded. “Okay, I’ll choose a different one.”

  Gambaccini cleared his throat and turned the recorder back on.

  “Elton, could you choose a track from the album that the patients might enjoy hearing?”

  “Let’s hear the new single, ‘Someone Saved My Life Tonight’,” he answered in all innocence.

  Realizing what had just been said, the two men looked at each other and laughed.

  “Let’s forget the question,” Gambaccini said.

  Elton was soon back in America to begin work on yet another album. At the same time, his smiling visage was beaming out from the cover of Time magazine.

  “When I met Bernie, I wanted to sit home and write records,” Elton reflected to journalist David DeVoss. “But it was easy to give in to the image. Things shiny and clean came so quickly. But in the winning, something was lost. Five years ago I wondered if I’d ever get to Spain for a holiday. Now, I whiz around the world. I regret losing touch with reality.”

  Bernie was also interviewed for the piece. “We never want to write songs that tell an audience what to do,” he said. “We don’t know enough about the world to preach to people. We take ourselves seriously, but the music has to be listenable.”

  Chapter 25:

  Rock of the Westies

  Sessions for the follow-up to Captain Fantastic began back at Caribou Ranch in early July, with a track-suited Elton writing songs at 6:30 a.m. each day, hours before the rest of his band awoke.

  Gus Dudgeon arrived at the studio twenty-four hours on to find Elton hard at work at the studio’s Steinway.

  “Had a good flight, Gus?” Elton grinned at his producer. “I’ve written six songs already, all rock ‘n’ roll. Got some great riffs.”

  “Yeah?”

  Elton nodded as he sipped a Perrier. “Davey’s written some bits, [and] Caleb’s unreal.”

  The pianist began banging out the percussively brutal “Street Kids” for Gus. Halfway through, Davey arrived, picked up a guitar, and joined in. Soon enough, the entire band was jamming away, Caleb letting loose volcanic solos on an Epiphone guitar that had once belonged to B.B. King.

  “They sounded brilliant,” Gus later recalled. “They had ‘it’, whatever ‘it’ was.”

  Indeed the group was tight, despite the copious amounts of cocaine and LSD that were making the rounds. “I remember standing in the middle of a garden trying to teach [Caleb] the chords to a song, and he was tripping off his head,” Elton said. “It was all very strange.”

  “It was

  “There were a lot of drugs in those times,” Caleb said. “It was a crazy time and we all had money to spend, so we spent it. All the excesses of rock ‘n’ roll were at our disposal.”

  The first song attempted was the lacerating stadium rocker “Grow Some Funk of Your Own.” Davey would also receive a co-writing credit on the track, for his work on the sizzling intro riff.

  “I had zero recollection [of] writing that one,” the guitarist admitted. “I’d been so drunk, the whole thing just escaped me till Elton played it for me the next day.”

  Next came the Beale Street funk of “Dan Dare (Pilot of the Future).” A flippant interplanetary tale about England’s comic book answer to Flash Gordon, the song gained a distinctively garage-glam flavor through Davey’s use of a guitar voice-bag, soon to be made famous by Peter Frampton on his live version of “Do You Feel Like We Do?” During the coda to “Dan Dare,” a coked-up Elton gleefully hisses, “But I liked the Mekon,” confusing American listeners unfamiliar with the green-skinned, round-skulled alien who was Dan Dare’s sworn enemy.

  Elton then attempted a rerecording of an outtake from the Captain Fantastic sessions called “Planes.” The compelling song was originally slated to appear between the title track and “Tower of Babel,” with Bernie—stuck in Lincolnshire with his border terrier, Jessie—watching as airplanes roared overhead, helplessly imagining the exotic locales those lucky travelers were headed for. “In my utopian ideology,” he said, “those planes touched down only in the most romantic places.” Despite a superior reading, the song would—for a second time—fail to make the final album cut.

  With the group firing on all cylinders, these early sessions proved incredibly productive. “There was new energy,” Kenny said. “Elton’s got a new band, he’s got a bunch of new people around him, he’s got his old mates from a long time ago. And the way Elton just wrote those songs, he’d just pick up one of Bernie’s lyrics and go. It was weird, man. It was magic. He has something very few people have. I remember when Davey first played me ‘Chameleon’, before the Wembley gig. I heard it and I thought, ‘Jesus, what a songwriter.’”

  When not recording, the band took to hanging out in their individual log cabins on the Caribou Ranch premises. Kenny, who had a house in Boulder, was the exception. Late one afternoon, Caleb and his wife Patricia went to visit the bassist—only to find Bernie’s wife Maxine there. “It was like, ‘Well, okay,’” Caleb later recalled. “Bernie was drinking pretty heavily then and keeping to himself even more than he usually did, but I don’t remember any tension.” He laughed. “It was the Seventies, after all. Free love.”

  “Bernie and Maxine, their thing was that they’d married young, Maxine was way too young,” Kenny said. “Too much money and too much fame. It’s enough to fuck up anybody. But it was what it was. And Maxine and I really hit it off, and it turned into an affair. We were covert, but Bernie eventually found out.”

  John Carsello, for one, was hardly surprised. “I love Kenny,” the studio manager said. “He can play a fretless bass like nobody could play—he was one of the innovators of the electric fretless bass—but, y’know, guard your wife or girlfriend when he’s around. Women liked him, and he and Maxine—they hit it off.”

  Group harmony was further tested when a helicopter came whirling o
ut of the azure Colorado sky just as the sessions were kicking into high gear. Landing directly outside the studio, the chopper deposited several clone-like attorneys outfitted in mirrored shades and Brooks Brothers suits.

  “Halt the magic, boys,” one of them said, unsnapping a briefcase. “We need to get your signatures on these contracts for the fall tour before anything else can happen.” He forced an unctuous grin. “Now step right up, sign your lives away.”

  “Can’t this wait a bit?” Caleb asked. “We’re in a bit of a creative mode at the moment.”

  But the lawyers were insistent.

  “It was an incredible amount of pressure,” Caleb later admitted. “It really hit me that we were stuck inside this huge machine.”

  Gus successfully harnessed that stress, capturing the raw vitality of Elton’s young band on the propulsive “Billy Bones and the White Bird.”

  “Gus was just the greatest producer,” John Carsello said. “He got such sounds out of the bands he was recording, and out of our studio. If you didn’t know him, you’d think he was kind of high-strung, just that British kind of high-strung, standoffish bit. So we thought we needed to step around this guy, give him what he wants. But once you got to know him, he was so sweet, and so incredibly talented. And his wife, Sheila, they were just so British—really heavy British accents—they were just amazing.” Carsello sighed. “And Jeff Guercio, Jimmy’s younger brother, he was just learning to engineer. So we asked Gus, ‘Will you take Jeff under your wing, give him some pointers?’ And he did. That was a major thing, getting a guy like Gus teaching you to engineer. Because he did sounds that were so clean and so incredible. He was a producer who was electronically inclined. But he wasn’t a musician—he was a scientist. An electronics genius getting the greatest sounds. Just listen to Elton’s piano sounds and Davey’s guitar sounds—especially the rhythms in the background. You could just hear everything Gus did. His talent in the control room was just unbelievable.”