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

by David DeCouto

  Elton completed the recording by laying a minimal vocal line over the coda, mumbling how life wasn’t everything in a mesmeric death chant.

  “I want that mixed so far down that no one’s going to really know what I’m saying,” he told Clive as Gus Dudgeon walked into the studio.

  “What’s all this, then?” Gus asked.

  “Just a track,” Elton said.

  Clive played a rough mix of the song back for the master producer.

  “That’s a smash,” Gus said.

  Elton looked at him, astonished. “Sorry? What do you mean? It’s a piano instrumental.”

  Gus simply nodded. “Elton never knows which songs are his best,” he later noted. “Yet [‘Song for Guy’] was just so obvious to me. It was perfect.”

  Unsure of what to name his new song, Elton soon learned that Guy Burchett, a Rocket Records employee, had died mere hours before. “As I was writing,” he said, “I imagined myself floating into space and looking down at my own body. I was imagining myself dying. Morbidly obsessed with these thoughts, I wrote this song about death. The next day I was told that Guy, our seventeen-year-old messenger boy, had been tragically killed on his motorcycle the day before. Guy died on the day I was writing this song.”

  Thus it was decided: the spectral instrumental would be called “Song for Guy.”

  “I remember trying to persuade Elton to let me overdub some guitar on ‘Song for Guy’ without success,” Tim Renwick later recalled. “Shame, as it was such a big hit.”

  With “Song for Guy” in the can, Elton and Clive were ready to mix down the eighteen tracks they’d recorded. Each song became a mini-battle between the two men, with Elton inevitably pushing his voice down in the mix.

  “No,” Clive would say, patiently raising the vocal faders back up. “That’s what people want to hear.”

  Elton reluctantly acquiesced.

  “I’ve never liked some of the mixes on my albums,” he said, “but everybody else thought they were great, so as a musician you can sometimes be wrong. You might look for a certain bass part or rhythm guitar part, or an electric piano thing you like, to lift in the mix, to the detriment of your own vocal performance. Knowing the best road to take is very hard.”

  After final mixes were locked in, it came time to decide which tracks would make the final cut for an album release. To aid in the decision, Elton enlisted a cadre of music-minded friends which included Gus Dudgeon, disc jockey Kenny Everett, and journalist Paul Gambaccini. A playback was arranged, with each person marking off a list of songs, rating them from their favorite to least favorite.

  Purposefully or not, the few tracks bearing Bernie’s imprimatur were all relegated to B-side status. The pianist was quite aware that Bernie might be upset that the new LP wouldn’t feature even a single track that had sprung from his pen.

  “He’ll probably feel extremely hurt,” Elton conceded, “but it’ll give him a much-needed kick up the arse.”

  Chapter 34:

  Benedict Canyon Boogie

  After final track selections—and a proper running order—had been sorted out for his new album, Elton turned his attention to the script of Jet Lag, a Hope/Crosby-styled “road picture” which was to pair him with Rod Stewart as a couple competitive rock stars who jet compulsively around the world.

  “It will be a film about the rock business that leans towards the funny side of it, and some of the incredible things which go on,” Elton said. “My idea for the opening is to have two superstars landing in their private jets in L.A., and jamming up the runway because neither of them wants to get out first. I could name two or three people who would do that.”

  Elton received the Golden Note Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers days later. He was particularly moved, being only the third performer to ever secure the prestigious honor. In the wake of that accomplishment, he released “Part-Time Love,” the leadoff single from his forthcoming album, titled A Single Man. Backed with “I Cry at Night,” and powered by a video featuring ‘60s icon Cathy McGowan shot at Ladbroke Grove, the song reached Number 22 on the U.S. charts and Number 15 in England—giving Elton his first U.K. Top 20 single since “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word” two years earlier.

  Besides rejuvenating his fortunes in the charts, the song—and the long-player from which it came—was also instrumental in reaffirming Elton’s belief in his vocal abilities. “In the past, I’ve often neglected my singing,” he told journalist Rick Carr. “On this new album…I’ve sung far better than I’ve ever sung in my entire life. If [A Single Man] does flop, I’ll be very disappointed, but I won’t be destroyed. In the past, if something failed I could put it down to other things, to other people. This time it’s really all down to me.”

  All down to him on record, though not on stage—at least for the time being. 1978 would, in fact, prove to be Elton’s least active year on the road since his early teens. With no tours planned, foreign or domestic, his only live performances—three in total, and all solo—came in relatively quick succession that fall.

  The first, and perhaps most memorable, took place on October 14 in L.A. Performing an impromptu ninety-minute set in front of 250 MCA executives in the Westside Room of Century Plaza. “I’m so nervous,” he admitted before the show, his first Los Angeles-area appearance since his massive Dodger Stadium triumphs three years earlier. “I just hope I can remember all the words.”

  Elton’s adrenaline was pumping hard—he had to press down on the sustain pedal just to keep his right leg from shaking.

  “How wonderful to play this room,” the frightened artist told the lucky few gathered before him. “I came in with Bob Hilburn, he’s an old friend and a good friend, and he said, ‘No need to worry. Dusty Springfield’s played here, Sergio Franchi’s played here…’ And I said, ‘Yes, but what’s fucking happened to them?’ But if you’re gonna go out, go out in a blaze of glory. Which I intend to do.”

  Elton served up a heavy dose of older material, alongside such newer titles as “I Don’t Care,” “Shooting Star,” “Part-Time Love” and “Return to Paradise.” After performing a beautifully ragged “Ego,” Elton noted that “those expert lyrics were by Mr. Taupin. And they are expert lyrics, they’re exactly what I wanted. All power to his elbow, if not any other part of his anatomy.”

  Twenty-five minutes into his performance, a drunken woman in a gold silk dress shouted, “Do the Benedict Canyon Boogie!”

  “Another drink for that lady,” Elton said, launching into an improvised 12-bar blues.

  Halfway through “Sixty Years On,” Elton forgot the lyrics and was forced to hum his way through the entire third verse.

  “Sorry, sorry,” he said, blushing. “Nerves, you see. It’s just a new era for me. And an important era, ‘cause I’m nervous as hell about [A Single Man], I’m nervous as hell coming on tonight. But that’s the best thing about it, because in this business, unless you’ve got a bit of adrenaline, it becomes too easy. And perhaps I got a little too cozy in what I was doing, and too safe, and it’s a good thing we had a two-year layoff, ‘cause I’m excited again, and that really is important.”

  By the end of his set, everyone was on their feet, calling out his name and asking for more. Another standing ovation, another satisfied audience.

  “Tonight it was more like it should be out there,” the pianist said. “The adrenaline was really pumping…If I do come back, that’s what I want to do, just me and the piano.”

  He took a sip of Perrier, shut his eyes, and laughed at nothing at all.

  A Single Man was released two days later. Critics immediately took note of the title, which made specific reference not only to Elton’s status as the world’s most infamous bachelor, but also stood as a clear indication that this would be his first LP not to feature Bernie Taupin, Gus Dudgeon, or either incarnation of his previous bands.

  “It’s an album that’s marked by change in a lot of ways,”
Elton said of the disc, which he’d dedicated to Graham Taylor in recognition of the sweeping changes the coach had instituted at Watford. “The album is a very sensitive one, simpler than the stuff I’ve done before, reflecting the time that I took to take stock of my situation.”

  Change was immediately evident from the album cover itself, which featured a funereal Elton in a black overcoat, black judo trousers, patent leather boots, top hat and cane, standing grimly on the Long Walk drive leading to Windsor Castle, which sits forebodingly in the background. “I was in a lazy mood,” he said, “and we just went up the road to Windsor Castle. And so many people think that’s the house in which I live.” He smirked. “[The photo shoot] was terribly embarrassing because there were picnickers and everything, we had to get them out of the way. Terry O’Neill was like a used-car salesman: ‘‘Scuse me, Luv, get outta the way…’”

  The iconic photograph O’Neill took that wet afternoon sent a clear signal: that the glamor and excess Elton had once worn like a second skin was very much a thing of the past, and that he truly was on his own now—a single man in every way. This idea would be further driven home with the release of Alice Cooper’s From the Inside weeks later—an album not only co-written by Bernie Taupin, but which also featured the talents of such Elton stalwarts as Davey Johnstone, Dee Murray, Kenny Passarelli and Kiki Dee.

  In a scalding review of A Single Man presented under the title, “Elton John: No Future? Apathy in the U.K.,” Rolling Stone’s Stephen Holden didn’t mince words: “John’s coproduced himself and used studio musicians to turn out his sparest LP since Honky Château. But this move towards simplicity is a step into emptiness, since A Single Man is nothing more than a collection of trivial hooks performed about as perfunctorily as possible. Even the best tune, ‘Shine on Through,’ is marred by hopelessly trite words and a dull slogging arrangement.” Holden went on to claim that the album “demonstrates just how thin the line really is between disposable radio pop and elevator music…If John and Taupin’s final collaboration, Blue Moves, was a disastrous exercise in inflated pop rhetoric, A Single Man is an equally disastrous exercise in smug vapidity.”

  The New Orleans Times-Picayune disagreed with Holden, calling the LP one of Elton’s “most brilliant efforts.” The Village Voice’s Robert Christgau, meanwhile, wrote, “Like the homophilophile I am, I’m rooting for Elton, but though it [A Single Man] isn’t as lugubrious as Blue Moves, it comes close, and the flat banalities of new lyricist Gary Osborne make Bernie Taupin’s intricate ones sound like Cole Porter. Personal to Reg Dwight: Rock ‘n’ roll those blues away.”

  Many other reviewers would also compare Osborne unfavorably with Mssr. Taupin. Elton’s new lyricist adopted a Zen-like attitude toward the whole inevitable situation. “In the real world, it doesn’t matter to me whether I’m being known for not being as good as Bernie,” he told journalist Randy Alexander. “I just thank God that somebody, somewhere, recognizes me. I’m just a songwriter, for God’s sake.”

  Despite the lackluster reviews—and in the face of DJM having flooded the market with newly repackaged collections of older Elton John material (Here and There became London & New York, and so on) in a seemingly purposeful act of sabotage—A Single Man easily managed to secure the Number 8 spot in Britain. The album would go on to remain in the charts in Elton’s homeland for over six months, longer than any of his other LPs since his first Greatest Hits package back in 1974.

  The disc also proved popular in the U.S., going Gold eight days after its release, and Platinum three weeks later. A Single Man hit many Top 20 charts around the world as well, going Gold or Platinum in Canada, France, Italy, New Zealand, Australia, Spain, Norway, Germany and the Netherlands.

  With the French release of “Return to Paradise” nestled comfortably in the Number 2 spot on the Continental charts, Elton played a one-off solo show at RTL Studios in Paris on October 20 in front of a select group of fifty. It was a significant performance, his first on French shores since his self-imposed exile after the MIDEM disaster in ‘71.

  Wearing a brown tweed jacket and beret, and with a small gold hoop earring gleaming in his right ear, Elton sat at a black baby grand and performed an enthusiastic set nearly identical to his L.A. show. As far as the Briton was concerned, he was happy to just play the occasional promotional gig. “I enjoy making records, but I don’t particularly want to go back out on the road again,” he said. “If you’re half-hearted when you go on the road, you’re cheating the public. Let’s own up—half the bands who go out on tour hate each other’s guts, and [they] channel the aggression into their music. I couldn’t exist under such conditions.”

  Elton gave a final promotional gig a fortnight later, this time at the British Phonographic Industry’s Annual Ball at the Hilton Hotel in London.

  The show marked the end of his official stage commitments for the year, such as they were. Yet that wouldn’t slow the manic artist down. He immediately launched into a heavy round of press interviews for A Single Man, then participated in a grueling five-a-side charity soccer game at Wembley that Saturday, with friends Rod Stewart and Billy Connolly making up his backfield. A three-hour tennis exhibition match with Billie Jean King followed on Sunday.

  The bill for all this restless energy expenditure came due less than forty-eight hours later, when, on November 7, while preparing to fly to Paris for a final hair transplant procedure, a searing pain shot up Elton’s left shoulder blade and drove him to his knees. Moments later, he collapsed in his front hall with debilitating spasms in his chest, arms and legs. Assistant Bob Halley phoned an ambulance; minutes later, the superstar was being rushed to Harley Street Clinic’s coronary care unit.

  “I could hardly move for the pain,” he said. “As I went down I said to myself, ‘Hello, this is it. The Grand Heart, then out you go.’”

  At first thought to be a case of cardiac arrest, the doctors—at John Reid’s urging—officially ruled the episode a case of nervous exhaustion.

  “This has really shaken me,” Elton admitted. “When you are used to nonstop tours across the States and so on, you start to think you are superhuman. Then something like this happens and you realize you’re not. Sometimes you’ve got to slow down like everyone else.”

  Despite the grave health scare, the pianist’s priorities remained unchanged. Upon regaining consciousness, his first request was to have a special telephone line set up in his hospital room so he could keep abreast of Watford’s game against Exeter. His team ultimately prevailed by a score of 2-0, which pleased their ailing chairman no end. “There’s no way I’m leaving this earth before Watford have gone the First Division,” he declared.

  Tellingly, news of Elton’s collapse caused sales for “Part-Time Love” to spike. Instead of moving three-thousand units a day, it was now shifting over twenty-thousand. “If any of you artists want to sell more records,” Elton told journalist Andy Peebles, “just have a heart attack scare and go into hospital, because your sales go up immediately.”

  With the specter of oblivion looming so large, it struck some as ironic that the death-centric “Song for Guy” should be chosen as Elton’s first post-collapse offering. Released in the U.K. on November 28, and backed with a slice of chiming pop-rock whimsy entitled “Lovesick,” the single quickly reached Number 4 on the BBC charts. “Song for Guy” also proved a major global success, rising into the Top 10 in Portugal, Scandinavia, East German, Italy, Belgium and Spain. Called “the most elegant piece of music that Elton has ever recorded” by Melody Maker, the mournfully melodic song would soon earn the composer another prestigious Ivor Novello Award.

  While reviews for the single were overwhelmingly positive, one brash critic likened the piquant track to something by Ferrante & Teicher, American pianists popular in the late ‘50s for light treatments of classical pieces. But Elton didn’t mind the comparison. “I take that as a compliment,” he said.

  Despite the single’s overwhelming success, MCA was reluctant
to release “Song for Guy” in the States, fearing that Frank Mills’ recent hit, “Music-Box Dancer,” had sucked all the air out of the charts for another piano-based instrumental. Elton was insistent, however, and the song was belatedly released the following March. Displeased with having their hand forced, MCA refused to expend any promotional effort on the track, allowing it to die a quiet death languishing outside the Hot 100.

  Elton was hardly surprised by MCA’s cold shoulder. Too often had he been burnt by the capricious devotions of various record labels throughout his career to ever invest any real or lasting faith in them. Musicians, however, were a different story. They were comrades, trusted allies. Thus the pianist soon found himself jamming away with rockers both old and new. First he stepped onto stage with Wreckless Eric, Lene Lovich, Jona Lewie, Mickey Jupp and Rachel Sweet, to add his vocal chops to “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll” during a Live Stiffs/Be-Stiff Tour gig at Hemel Hempstead.

  “I like Wreckless Eric a lot, I like all that Stiff catalogue,” Elton said. “They’re tremendous.”

  The superstar followed up this performance with a show at the Civic Hall in Guildford with fellow rock dinosaurs Eric Clapton and George Harrison, and blues great Muddy Waters. Together, the four aging icons joined forces on a convivial rendition of “Further On Up the Road” which proved to be the clear highlight of the evening.

  Appearing on a special December 2 anniversary edition of Michael Parkinson’s self-titled television program—Britain’s longest-running talk show—on December 2, Elton shared the stage with Sunset Boulevard actress Gloria Swanson, Olivia Newton-John, and Australian comedian Barry Humphries, who appeared under the guise of his alter-ego, wisteria-hued Dame Edna Everage.