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

by David DeCouto

  “He was completely in control,” Caleb said. “The heart and soul of every fan belonged to him that day. Just superb.”

  Waves of uncut energy poured continuously from the silvered stage. As “Love Lies Bleeding” reached its giddily thrumming crescendo, it was clear that the Elton John carnival was in full-gear. The pristine acoustics achieved at the massive venue only added to the manic energy.

  “Usually, outdoors, the sound is lost and you lose the atmosphere,” the pianist later said, “but for some peculiar reason at Dodgers it stayed in the arena. At Wembley, for example, there seemed to be a tremendous gap between me and the audience, where I felt very close to them at Dodgers.”

  “Different members of Toto came backstage to tell us how amazing the sound was,” Kenny said. “That meant a lot. Elton spent a lot on the best sound systems, the best equipment. No expense was spared, the way he staged his shows. When other musicians notice how good you're sounding, that really means something.”

  Another concert highlight came with the first ripping chords of “Bennie and the Jets.” “The crowd was huge,” Jim Haas said, “and when we played ‘Bennie and the Jets’, it hit some visceral point with everybody, and the crowd absolutely went berserk. People really dug it, and Elton played it longer and louder than anything else. People were just going nuts.”

  Elton was soon joined onstage by a host of merry midgets dressed as sailors, in a scene later mocked in the film This is Spinal Tap. But it was his ardent performance of “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me” that really captured the essence of the day. The song was perfectly timed, the sun falling from the sky as the final chorus kicked into overdrive. Thousands of cigarette lighters flickered like hidden galaxies; the effect was so overwhelming, the usually stoic Bernie was nearly driven to tears. And he was far from the only one. “The concert at Dodger Stadium was a magical experience,” Cindy Bullens said. “Everything about it was amazing. The atmosphere was electric. Elton was particularly on that evening, and the band was completely in sync…It was a truly spiritual experience.”

  Billie Jean King joined in on the festivities. Wearing an Esso gas station uniforms, she lent her voice to sing spirited, if atonal, backup on “Philadelphia Freedom.” Like the others, the tennis champion was fundamentally moved by the event. “It was one of the best nights of my life,” she said, “seeing 55,000 fans with candles in their hands, swaying back and forth to the music and being totally involved in the moment.”

  “That stadium was just, I don't know, sort of vibrating when we were playing,” Kenny said. “It was crazy. I'd never experience that kind of energy before with an audience, really. Before or after. There was just an intensity that you couldn't believe. Elton was just on. He and the whole band, we were just one with the audience.”

  The Reverend James Cleveland’s forty-five-member Institutional Baptist and Southern California Choir took to the stage toward the end of the evening to lend their voices to “We All Fall in Love Sometimes/Curtains,” while Elton did his best to choke back the tears.

  “I was tired,” he admitted, “and the choir sounded so beautiful.”

  The show ended with the triple assault of “Tell Me When the Whistle Blows,” “Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting)” and “Pinball Wizard,” the last song the clear emotional pinnacle of the night.

  “You can’t properly describe the feeling in the air,” Roger said. “It sent tingles up and down your spine. Truly. I was in tears. If I never did anything else in my life and if I just had those two days, it’d be enough. [It was] just a perfect thing.”

  Ray Cooper was of a similar mind. “It would be wrong to say that up to that point I hadn’t fully comprehended how much Elton’s music meant to the American public,” the percussionist said. “But that day at Dodger Stadium I bore witness to such an unforgettable affirmation of his rightfully stellar place in the pantheon of musical gods.”

  The Dodger Stadium gigs were, without question, a high-water mark for Elton, especially in light of his most recent suicide attempt. “I didn’t think I’d ever perform again,” he said. “Yet it was the most magical gig I’ve ever done.”

  The critics were universal in their praise.

  “While the spark of pop star image was present in satisfying doses,” Cashbox reported, “the vast majority of pleasure derived came from getting inside the consistently creative flow of John and the music people he surrounds himself with…It was four hours of pure music that showcased the light and dark of Bernie Taupin’s lyrical mind as a fertile songwriter of this age. His pennings, coupled with Elton’s almost preternatural ability to match music to words, is the perfect meshing of musical minds. And this day it showed in spades.” Not the least of Elton’s capabilities was his almost hypnotic effect on his audience, the nameless reviewer noted in summation. “As the music unfolded, a powerful force was making its presence felt in the crowd. Almost as if guided by psychic cue cards, the masses rose, swirled, swayed and danced. It was in unison. It was one thought controlling many.”

  “For the first time in recent memory,” Ben Edmonds wrote in Rolling Stone, “an Elton John concert wasn’t as much a glittering extravaganza. Elton and band performed…without the neon signs, spangled keyboards, and peacock costumes of recent tours…On this night, Elton gave his people everything they wanted.” Robert Hilburn concurred, noting that the Brit’s appearance was “akin to a World Series for rock music fans. The 55,000 fans Saturday reacted to the key moments of John’s show with the kind of enthusiastic abandon that Dodger President Peter O’Malley and his staff had probably thought was limited to a series-winning bottom-of-the-ninth Steve Garvey double. The Dodgers may not have made it even to the playoffs this year, but Dodger Stadium got its World Series after all. At least, it did for 110,000 rock fans.”

  “After two days in that stadium, he was wiped out,” Terry O’Neill said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone work so hard in my life, [and] be so dedicated to putting on a show that the crowd would remember for the rest of their lives.”

  Indeed, the highly-charged concerts cemented Elton’s reputation as the most popular and relevant artist of the decade. In a manner of weeks, he and his new band had played to over a quarter of a million people—more than many upper-echelon bands would engage over the course of entire careers—becoming purveyors of the largest-grossing tour ever undertaken. The outing was a true phenomenon, a high-decibel apotheosis that could, perhaps, only fully be understood in retrospect.

  Weeks after his Dodger Stadium triumph, Elton turned his sites to soccer, investing part-ownership in the L.A. Aztecs club.

  “The people that got the Aztecs together approached me to sort of do some publicity for soccer in America in general and for the Aztecs, because I sort of regard L.A. as my hometown in America,” he said, “so I actually support all the L.A. teams, and I thought it’d be great [if] we could have a team in Los Angeles.”

  The pianist proved his worth from the outset, helping secure the services of international soccer great George Best.

  “I don’t think I can take hardly any credit for that,” Elton said. “But I know George knew I was involved with the club and he came out here. I’m so glad. It was great for him because George came out of retirement, came out here, got himself fit, and then went back to play in English soccer as well. And I think it’s improved him as a player as well. It’s incredible."

  Aztec manager John Chaffetz was pleased to have the British superstar onboard. “With Elton off the field and Best on the field, if we can’t make it, we ought to buy a drugstore, we’re in the wrong business.”

  As the holidays loomed, Elton retreated back to the comforting, green-sided hills of England. Though the U.K.’s tax rate remained prohibitively high, he’d come to the decision—after his recent sojourn to L.A.—that England was where his heart truly lay. “There is nowhere like Britain and I will pay through the nose to live here,” he said. “I love America, but there is no w
ay to describe the feeling you get when the plane touches down in England. Within minutes you are back into a British environment…Even when there is a depression here, people themselves don’t get depressed.”

  Having been forced to erect electric gates around his Virginia Water home to dissuade overzealous fans from continually storming the barricades, the pianist realized that it was time to move to a place that offered more seclusion. “I made up my mind to move after visiting Ringo Starr’s house,” he said. “When I walked through the grounds, I suddenly had this feeling of complete freedom and privacy.”

  Elton settled on Woodside Manor, a £415,000 Berkshire estate nestled off a serene country lane near Windsor Castle. Built in the sixteenth century, the three-story, eight-bedroom mansion had originally belonged to King Henry VIII’s private physician. Sitting on 37 acres of wooded land, Elton’s new home featured a swimming pool, tennis court, full-sized cinema, elevator and gym. It also boasted private gardens, three lakes, a vineyard, a coach house with stabling, multiple garages, a staff cottage and a groom’s flat.

  “It’s home,” the pianist said. “That’s it.”

  Woodside’s wide halls were soon filled with Rembrandts and Renoirs, while hundreds of Gold and Platinum records lined the walls, ceilings and floors which led to an enormous climate-controlled room dedicated to Elton’s prized records—now over 50,000 strong, his was rumored to be the largest private collection in the world. “I listen to practically every new album that comes out,” he said. “Not because I’m trying to pinch ideas, but because I’m interested in finding out what’s happening. If you take the standard of our albums compared to other people, the standard is so much higher. I read a great review of an album in a music paper and I immediately rush out and buy it. And some of those albums wouldn’t even grace making into an ashtray. It just seems that people are drastically searching for something red-hot and they’re not really finding it, and they’re turning to crap and saying, ‘That’s good.’”

  Within weeks, Elton invited his chauffeur, Bob Halley, to move into the staff cottage, along with his wife, Pearl. In time, after Pearl ran off with Elton’s landscaper, the ever-cheerful Halley was moved into the mansion as the pianist’s trusted aide-de-camp.

  “I think Elton liked me because I didn’t suck up to him,” Halley said. “I was always honest, and we shared the same sense of humor.”

  On November 8, as Elton was busy remodeling his new digs, John Lennon and Yoko Ono called to tell him that they had named him godfather to their first and only child, Sean Ono Lennon. The honor was at least in part in recognition of the key role he’d played in helping them reconcile the year before.

  “I was moved,” Elton said. “He re-met Yoko [the night of the Thanksgiving concert at Madison Square Garden]. It changed the course of his life again. Maybe I was put into John’s life to reinstate him with Yoko.”

  Elton closed out 1975 much as he began it, as the most popular artist on Earth. Billboard not only announced that he was the first solo artist to ever sell more than a million audiocassette albums in Britain—he’d also sold far more tickets, and shifted far more records, than anyone else ever had before.

  “He seems to have mastered the art of doing a thousand different things within a twenty-four-hour day,” Tony King said. “That’s what makes Elton John so successful and unique…He’s doing things that no one else in his position has ever done, and that’s what makes him so interesting. He isn’t like your everyday rock ‘n’ roll star. He’s an intelligent, aware person who’s interested in what’s going on and then gets out there and into areas outside of his own career.”

  Record World, Cashbox and Billboard agreed with King’s assessment, unanimously dubbing Elton John as the Best Selling Record Artist of the Year. His Greatest Hits collection was the Best Selling Album of the Year, according to Record World and Cashbox, while Billboard bestowed that honor upon Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. Rolling Stone, meanwhile, listed “Philadelphia Freedom” as the Single of the Year.

  What was there left to accomplish?

  Only Elton knew for certain.

  Chapter 28:

  Blue Moves

  Elton flew to the white sands of Barbados for the holidays. The lush West Indies island appealed to his nationalistic tendencies, existing as it did within the British Commonwealth, tea and cricket as much a part of daily life as scuba diving and waterskiing.

  The pianist’s companions for his St. James excursion included Bernie, Davey, Kenny, John Reid, lensman David Nutter and David Larkham, the latter of whom personally flew a Christmas turkey over first class.

  “We had Christmas dinner out on this patio in our swim trunks,” Larkham said. “Totally bizarre. Totally Elton.”

  The pianist saw in the New Year with a sense of relief that the ceaseless chaos of the last year was over with. “I was really quite shattered, physically and mentally,” he said. “I’d never really had a long holiday.”

  “Barbados was magical,” David Nutter would later recall. “We would all be woken up in the morning with blasting music. And then we’d all sit around a huge table for breakfast. Elton and I played endless games of Scrabble and listened to Bob Marley. You’ve never seen so much alcohol consumption. And one of my favorite memories of that time is sitting with Elton by the sea, rating the incoming waves from one to ten.” After the photographer and his other friends would take their leave each afternoon to go paragliding, the superstar continued sitting by himself on the beach, listening to Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here while contemplating his future. It proved a trying task, for even amongst the aqua waves and lush tropical greenery he could never completely escape the populist reality that had come to define him.

  “You’re just lying on the beach and people still come up and prod you, kick sand in your face and go, ‘Are you Elton John?’”

  The new issue of Playboy—which included a much-heralded interview with Elton—hit the stands while he was still in the Caribbean. “I sometimes get depressed for no reason whatever,” he acknowledged to journalists Eugenie Ross-Leming and David Standish inside the pages of the world’s premier men’s magazine. “[I] just stay in bed and get really miserable. Usually, they’re one-day jobs, just out of the blue. It’s quite frustrating. I just say, ‘Oh Christ, let’s get on to tomorrow.’”

  Elton went on to claim that—despite the inevitable setbacks and heartache—he actually enjoyed his struggle to remain at the top of his profession. “It’s what keeps me going,” he said. “I don’t begrudge anyone else his success. You have to pay attention to what others are doing, keep listening to what’s happening in order to grow. For example, Stevie Wonder can eat me for breakfast as far as musicianship goes, but that doesn’t make me angry or jealous or uptight. I’d give anything to have his talent, but I’m not paranoid about it. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to write as good as he does.”

  When queried as to whether attention-shy Bernie Taupin had become a recluse, Elton joked, “If you call staggering out of some place at six-thirty in the morning with a bottle of wine a recluse.” He laughed. “No, he’s quite busy. He’s got a book coming out, he’s producing the Hudson Brothers—but he’s very loyal and an integral part of the group. I could never find anyone who could take his place.”

  Predicting his own future, the pianist claimed that he wouldn’t be playing older hits like “Crocodile Rock” in six years’ time. “I don’t want to become a pathetic rock ‘n’ roller and take a slow climb down, like a lot of people do. I don’t want to be Chuck Berry. When I’m 40, I don’t want to be charging around the countryside doing concerts. I’d rather retire gracefully.”

  The magazine—which also featured fiction offerings from Nabokov and Cheever, as well as a curvaceous centerfold soaking seductively in a stage-lit bubble-bath (“I’m not a women’s libber…God forbid!”)—disappeared off newsstand shelves in a matter of days, requiring an additional printing. That second run also sold out i
n record time.

  “First time this decade,” Hugh Hefner said. “We should run [Elton] every month.”

  Elton’s father was decidedly less flippant about his son’s appearance in Playboy. “He doesn’t seem very happy to me,” Stanley Dwight told the Britain’s Daily Mail. “Last time we saw him I asked him who his friends were, and he said, ‘Elvis Presley and Billie Jean King.’ But when he was a child, they were his idols. How can someone you’ve only just met be described as a friend? There are friends, and ‘friends’—and I think Reggie has to buy his friendships.” Regarding the piano skills of Stanley Jr., a son from his second marriage, Stanley remarked, “He’s so much more advanced than Reggie was at that age. I don’t think Reggie’s all that good even now.”

  Elton’s endless vinyl offerings continued apace with the January 9 U.K. release of “Grow Some Funk of Your Own.” Issued as a double A-side—alongside “I Feel Like a Bullet (In the Gun of Robert Ford)”—the disc hit American record stores three days later. While English disc jockeys plumped for “Grow Some Funk of Your Own,” MCA’s initial push was for “I Feel Like a Bullet.” But when Rick Sklar, program director for influential WABC, declined to add the torrid ballad to the station’s Top 40 playlist, it proved problematic. In an effort to win Skylar over, MCA sent him an enormous cake decorated with a gun and inscribed, in blue icing: “‘Give Elton a Shot, ‘Feel Like a Bullet’ is a hit.”

  “We [still] didn’t play it,” Sklar said. “We were skeptical.”

  A week later, MCA sent him an even larger cake which read: “Disregard previous cake. ‘Grow Some Funk’ is the A-side.”

  “Grow Some Funk of Your Own” ultimately gained enough traction in America to peak at a healthy Number 14 on the Billboard singles chart. The song failed to chart in the U.K., however—Elton’s first misfire in his homeland since the “Friends” single had stiffed back in 1971.