“He was right,” Elton conceded. “I thought, ‘Oh fabulous, we’re going to get on really well.’ Well, he was right.”
Elton contributed two songs to the six-song project: “Shine on Through,” and an older Bernie Taupin lyric leftover from the Rock of the Westies sessions which he’d recently set to music called “Nice and Slow.” A third song, “Country Love Song,” sprung from the pen of Joseph B. Jefferson, who had written hits for the Spinners and the O’Jays. The remaining three tracks were composed by Thom Bell’s nephew—Casey James—and Leroy M. Bell.
“[Elton] was a superstar,” Leroy said, “so I was expecting a little more of an attitude, [but] he was a very pleasant guy to be around. I think everybody was excited to work on the project. Everybody got along really well. It was kind of an emergence of two worlds kind of colliding, but with a lot of excitement.”
In only a day and a half, Elton recorded lead vocals on all six tracks. The consensus favorite of the session was “Three Way Love Affair,” a deftly understated funk spasm which—powered by Bob Babbit’s sinewy bass—perhaps best fulfilled the promise of the project. “I remember liking that song a lot when [Casey and I] wrote it,” Leroy said. “We wanted something real pop and danceable at the same time. So, as writers, we just tried to come up with a melody and lyrics that you imagine Elton’s voice on, and coming up with a lyric.”
Used to vocalists having to record their parts over multiple times to get them right, Thom Bell was astounded by Elton’s proficiency. “When it was time for him to sing, he just nailed it.”
Back in England, Gary Osborne was pleased when he heard what Bell had done with “Shine on Through.” “Actually, I love it,” the lyricist said. “[Bell] made it looser, he made it funkier. And it’s not a funky song, it’s an Elton John ballad. It’s not born to be funky. But Thom Bell is born to be funky, and he doesn’t know it any other way.”
Elton was less impressed, however, deeming the mixes on all six songs “too sweet.” Not helping matters: the Spinners’ backing vocals took over nearly the entirety of the planned single, “Are You Ready for Love.” “When his mix came through,” he said, “I only sang one verse and they did the whole lot.” Consequently, instead of releasing the song as a single for the upcoming Christmas season—and then reconvening in early ’78 for further sessions to complete an entire album’s worth of material, as had originally been planned—Elton shelved the entire project indefinitely. Instead, he turned his mercurial focus to a one-off band gig scheduled for November 3 at the Empire Pool arena, a charity performance for the Royal Variety Club and the Goaldiggers’ Association.
Feeling that his decision the year prior to come off the road may have been premature, Elton planned on using the show as a bellwether of sorts. If he enjoyed it as much as he hoped he might, then he’d hit the road next February with a full band. A slightly reconfigured China—with Dennis Conway having taken over drumming duties from Roger Pope—was given the nod as his backup band. Elton rehearsed the group, augmented by Ray Cooper, for three weeks at Shepperton Studios. Though run-throughs went well, the night of the actual show found a coked-up Elton in a bleak mood. When a requested collection of hats failed to turn up in time for his stage entrance, the storm clouds erupted.
“I’m not bloody well going on!” he snarled, his nerves getting the better of him. “I’m not bloody well doing it!”
Davey looked silently at Ray. No one said a word.
“On drugs I was divine, lovely and fabulous,” Elton was later to reflect. “Coming off drugs, I was a nightmare. I used to fly over anger and land in rage.”
Elton walked onstage twenty minutes late in a black leather jacket and black beret, looking pale and distracted.
“Right,” the pianist sighed, sitting at the piano and playing the first jagged chords of “Better Off Dead.” Abruptly, he stopped. “That’s a good start. Hang on.” He stood, walked in a circle, and sat back down. “We’re just testing you, that’s all,” he said, grimly launching into the song proper.
After a brief solo set which included rarities like “Roy Rogers” and “The Goaldigger’s Song,” Elton was joined by Ray for a particularly passionate reading of “Tonight.” China then seamlessly merged behind the pair for an enthusiastic version of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” while spirited backing vocals were provided by Gary Osborne, Chris Thompson and Stevie Lange. “Gary Osborne had booked myself and Chris Thompson to sing on [the studio recording of] ‘Part-Time Love’,” Lange said. “We were thrilled, and before long we were asked to tour with Elton. Our first gig was Wembley. [It was] incredible.”
“Bennie and the Jets” followed “One Horse Town,” which followed “Island Girl.” Everything was rocking along smoothly. Even so, Elton seemed to be growing more tense with each successive song. Deep down he understood what the problem was: he’d tried coming back too soon. “I suddenly saw all the machinery and all the reasons that I wanted to stop,” he soon admitted. “I was doing things that I’d promised myself I’d never do again. I was angry with myself.”
As the set swung into its electrifying homestretch, Elton came to a rash—yet seemingly inevitable—decision.
“I’d just like to say something,” he told the crowd. “It’s very hard to put it in words, really, but I haven’t been touring for a long time, and it’s been a painful decision whether to come back on the road or not, and I’ve really enjoyed tonight—thank you very much—but I’ve made a decision tonight that this is going to be the last show tonight. All right? There’s a lot more to me than playing on the road, and this is the last one I’m gonna do.”
The crowd cried out their displeasure as the pianist broke into the sorrowful opening chords of “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word.” Behind the soundboard, Clive Franks was shattered by Elton’s impromptu announcement. “My last five years had been on the road with him,” the sound engineer said. “I was having trouble mixing [his sound] that night, because everything was so emotional. I was shaking.”
After a megablast of hits—from “Funeral For a Friend” to “Rocket Man” to “Your Song”—Kiki Dee led Stevie Wonder up onto stage to join Elton on the finale, an eighteen-minute rave-up on “Bite Your Lip (Get Up and Dance).”
The two piano men embraced near Elton’s piano.
“Please don’t do it,” Wonder told his English counterpart. “You may think you mean it, but it’s hard to retire in this game.”
“I thought, ‘Fuck, this is the reason I stopped, and I’m doing it again,’” Elton later told Musician’s Chris Salewicz. “The whole night was a nightmare. I knew I shouldn’t be up there…I felt like something out of Las Vegas.”
Daily Telegraph’s John Coldstream was considerably less bleak about the whole affair. “If this was a wake,” he wrote, “it will not be forgotten by any of the 8,000 present. It was a glorious way to go, but the concert stage will be a less colorful place even if Watford FC is the richer.”
“I’ve got to discuss this whole thing with him,” a flustered John Reid told reporters backstage as Elton’s limousine tore off into the chilled British night.
Confused and distressed, Elton spent the holidays locked behind the gates of his mansion, mulling over John Lennon’s words from a phone call they’d shared the summer before. “Lennon said to me, ‘You’re not doing another album, another concert, are you?’ I said I’d got to. He said, ‘You don’t have to do anything. Just fuck off.’ It was easy to say that, but I told him I’d got a lot of responsibilities—the band and the roadies. If I don’t work, they don’t work. That’s why it took so long to organize my retirement.”
Elton would step out only once that December, appearing on The Morecambe & Wise Christmas Special on BBC-TV. The British Commonwealth came to a near-standstill that night, as more than two-thirds of all television sets tuned in to the highly anticipated program, which had promised the airing of Elton’s newest composition.
The show was built around a r
unning gag which posited that the pianist—in a blue piano-key-striped suit—was incapable of finding the television studio where the special was being filmed. And indeed, for the entire show he was hopelessly lost, following misguided directions from one incorrect locale to the next. By the time the end credits began to roll, Elton was still yet to find either Morecambe or Wise.
Watching the broadcast at home with his wife and friends, Gary Osborne was mortified. “I thought that the ground might as well open up and swallow me,” he said, “because everybody in the entire world had been told that my song was on this show, and it wasn’t. Most disappointing moment of my entire life.”
As the credits finished up, the show cut to Elton as he stumbled upon a pair of cleaning ladies tidying up an empty studio while listening to a Muzak rendition of “The Long and Winding Road.” In reality, they were Morecambe and Wise in drag. Telling a despairing Elton that he was too late, that the show was over, the pianist hung his head in defeat.
“Well, I don’t know what to say. I might as well do it. Do you wanna hear a new song? I’ve been all over the place.”
Elton sat forlornly at a grand piano and began playing a particularly anguished rendition of “Shine on Through.”
“That was what I was gonna sing on the Morecambe and Wise Show,” he said as the final chord rang out plaintively.
Morecambe nodded.
“It’s a good job you didn’t,” he said.
Chapter 33:
Ego
Two days after the Sex Pistols stumbled through their final show ever—on January 14, at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom—a new-look Elton was appearing on the cover of People magazine, sans his trademark glasses. “The New Elton John: He’s given up touring and those nutty glasses—but not lasses,” the magazine’s headline provocatively promised.
In the accompanying article, the pianist confessed that while the recent punk rock phenomenon made him feel old, he still had a bright outlook for his own future plans. “I know I have more talent than most of them,” he told journalist Fred Hauptfuhrer. “I do believe that I could come back anytime I want to. I’m fortunate I’m only 30. There’s so much time still.” As for the songs he’d already created throughout his career, Elton was as unfailingly forthright as ever. “What I have done is musically of no great importance next to what’s been done down the centuries…You can’t produce a major work between climbing off the stage and getting onto a plane. There’s so much inside me that still has to come out.”
Toward the end of the article, Hauptfuhrer switched gears, noting blithely that the superstar’s sex life didn’t seem to be suffering. Elton begged to differ. “I mean, not once a day. Say three times a week, at best. And more female than male…I like pretty people, but I don’t have a rampant sex life. I can get off on my work just as well.”
As if to prove his point, on March 10, a rejuvenated Elton stepped into Gus Dudgeon’s Mill Studio—a quadraphonic facility in Cookham, Berkshire—to work on a new single. Though they hadn’t professionally reconciled, the pianist had chosen the Mill to soften the financial impact their split had caused Gus, and to generate positive press for his new facility. It was an easy decision for the pianist, given the state-of-the-art nature of the Mill. “The Mill was the most technologically advanced studio for its time,” said Stuart Epps. When Gus decided to build the Mill, he wanted it to his own specifications. He went over to Miami, and he met with sound guys and soundboard builders and said, ‘I want this and I’d like that.’ All the things that he’d been frustrated with in other studios, he wanted to put right for his. Any bit of technical advancement, he would always be straight on it. He would go to the most extreme lengths. John Reid used to say that Gus’ theme song should have been, ‘I’m Forever Blowing Budgets.’”
The producer hardly recognized his old charge when he first stepped into the studio sans glasses. Why the change, he wondered? “I actually went scuba diving in 1976 and I couldn’t see without my glasses,” Elton said, “and I thought, ‘Well, this is ridiculous.’ I’d tried contact lenses before, hard ones, and I went scuba diving and I loved it, and I thought, ‘If I’m gonna improve at this, I’ve gotta get soft contact lenses,’ so I did.”
As for these latest sessions, Elton’s plan was simply to record a song he’d originally written with Bernie during the Blue Moves sessions called “Ego.”
“It’s dedicated to the Jaggers and Bowies of the world,” the pianist said. “And especially Mr. McCartney. I like most of the stuff the Stones have done, but they’re one of the worst live bands I’ve ever seen. David Bowie is a pseudointellectual, and I can’t bear pseudointellectuals. ‘What clothes shall I wear for the next album?’ Coming to London in a train and giving the Hitler salute. And McCartney’s music has gone so far down the tubes, I can’t believe it…They all just annoy me.” Elton paused thoughtfully. “There’s a lot of me in [the song] as well. Music is still important, but selling oneself at a price isn’t. Once you’ve attained success, you reach a crossroad and you have to be totally honest, and I feel that’s what ‘Ego’ [is] all about.”
Elton produced the song himself, along with live sound engineer Clive Franks. When Clive was informed that Gus wouldn’t be involved in the recording process, he was floored. “I really didn’t consider myself a producer, per se. I was always an engineer,” Clive admitted, feeling rightfully uneasy about trying to fill Gus’ massive shoes. “I didn’t have [Gus’] perspective or attention to detail, at least not in a studio setting. I had no master vision, and couldn’t see beyond the moment until I went back later and listened to what we’d done.”
On the first day of recording, Elton sat behind a gleaming nine-foot grand and broke into the demonic broken-chord triplets which opened “Ego.”
“What do you think of this?” he asked with a malevolent grin.
“I’ve no idea,” Clive confessed. “Sounds like a silent movie.”
Elton laughed. “Good,” he said. “Let’s put it down.”
After laying a detailed piano demo, the two quickly went about the process of recruiting a group of top session men to help flesh out the tune. The musicians included Tim Renwick—who had played lead guitar for the Sutherland Brothers & Quiver when they’d opened for Elton on his fall ’73 tour—and Steve Holley, who was soon to become Wings’ final drummer. “I was slightly stunned, being in Elton’s orbit,” Holley said. “I had youth on my side, I had a lot of gusto, I was very hot-headed and was very full of myself. And I felt really at home with Elton. He’s such an ingratiating character, I actually really adored being in his company. We shared a love of backgammon, amongst other things, and we’d play endless games [between sessions]. I was a huge fan to being with. I remember clearly the first time I listened to Empty Sky, and I was blown away with that record. I was just blown away to be in the same room as him, yet at the same time you’re trying not to be too over-the-top about it, so I was acting as cool as I could be.”
As Elton’s first choice for a bassist—Yes’ Chris Squire—was unavailable, the pianist turned to Clive.
“You play bass, Clivey. Don’t you?’
His co-producer shrugged. “Not for years. Not seriously.”
“You can do it.”
So it was decided. Though petrified (“I was seriously shitting myself that first day!”), Clive played bass live on “Ego,” sitting in the control room with a direct line plugged into the console. “It was a real challenge. That song in particular has so many chord changes to it, it’s ridiculous. I kept thinking, ‘If only Dee Murray were here.’ But he wasn’t.”
With its calliope rock soundscape—the song contains everything from castanets to triangles to train whistles—and ever-shifting time signatures, “Ego” possessed an oddly flinty beauty. Even so, Clive was dissatisfied with his steady yet unadventurous performance. “I kept bringing my bass down [in the mix], so I didn’t have to hear it. But Elton kept pushing it back up. ‘It’s fine,’ he’d say.
Ultimately, he knew better than I did.”
Elton found a host of melodies coming to him unbidden as he sat at the studio’s grand. “Because I hadn’t written for so long, I sort of got ‘writer’s diarrhea’ as I call it, and suddenly I began to write melodies first—after all these years of lyrics coming first and then melodies.”
“Those sessions were just tremendous fun, there was nothing difficult about it, nothing strange,” Steve Holley said. “At the end of the session for ‘Ego’, Elton said, ‘Do you have any plans for the next five to ten days?’ And I said, ‘No. Why?’ And he goes, ‘Well, I don’t have anything else written, but I’ll start working on some stuff now, and if you can come back for a few days, we’ll see what we can do.’ I just remember him going home and coming back the next day and he had three more songs, four more songs, six, eight, ten, twelve more songs. I don’t think we recorded anywhere near as many songs as he wrote during that time period. And I was astounded by the wealth of material. For me, it was the turning point. There was something about him and his musicianship, I was just completely blown away by it.”
Clive Franks was also blown away. “Between takes Elton was tinkling away [on the piano],” he said. “By the time ‘Ego’ was finished, there were six more songs ready to go.”
Elton called Gary Osborne into Mill Studio and had him craft lyrics around his new melodies. “[Osborne] fills a creative need right now,” the pianist said. “Sometimes I’d have one line in a song that I wanted to keep, and he would say, ‘That’s alright, I’ll try and work around it,’ and he did that admirably, which helped me a lot, and I’m very grateful for that.”
Captain Fantastic: The Definitive Biography of Elton John in the '70s Page 58
