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

by David DeCouto

  “Best I’ve heard in eons,” said J.K. Singer, record-spinner at several underground Manhattan discos. “‘Thunder’s the most requested song since ‘YMCA’. Elton’ll be brought through the wringer [for it], no doubt. Useless critics.”

  Sure enough, rock’s self-appointed tastemakers pilloried the superstar. Disco was the natural nemesis of any self-respecting, head-banging malcontent, and the fact that the genre was currently in free-fall only provided additional ammunition. Rolling Stone’s Stephen Holden took the lead, summing up the general critical reception to Elton’s thrumming valedictorian statement thusly: “Elton John’s entry into the rock-disco sweepstakes comes a year too late…It’s Munich pop disco with no climaxes. Only two of the new numbers, the title tune and ‘Thunder in the Night’, have catchy melodies. Otherwise, the album is empty of ideas.” US magazine was in vitriolic lockstep. “He should have called it Victim of Boredom,” reviewer Martha Hume sniped. “If Victim of Love is the best Elton John has to offer these days, he ought to retire.” Colin Irwin, writing in Melody Maker, similarly opined, “This album can’t even be blithely dismissed as a bore. There are moments when it’s thoroughly objectionable.” Robert Christgau felt much the same. “What’s most depressing about this incredibly drab disc is that Elton’s flirtation with Eurodisco comes a year too late. Even at his smarmiest, the man always used to be on top of the zeitgeist. C-.”

  Stalling just inside the outer reaches of Billboard’s Top 40, Elton’s seventeenth album of the decade proved more successful globally, reaching Number 28 in Canada, Number 23 in France, Number 20 in Australia and Number 18 in Norway. Though ultimately being certified Gold and remaining in the U.S. charts for more than two months, Victim of Love was the unquestionable nadir of his commercial fortunes. Elton, however, had no regrets. “I wanted to make a record that people could dance to in Rochdale or somewhere like that without sort of taking the needle off,” he said. “I like to go off sometimes and do something a little different. This one was disastrously timed, but I enjoyed doing it.”

  As the decade drew to a close, Elton’s sexuality seemed to again become the focus of many in the media. “I realize it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, and I try not to dwell on it too much,” he told Alasdair Buchan of the Daily Mirror. “I didn’t ask to be this way, but it just came out like that…and it’s no good hiding it.”

  Elton found himself flooded by letters from gay people living in small towns throughout Europe and America, folks too afraid to reveal their true identities. The pianist had the utmost respect for those who took the time to write to him, people in less artistic walks of life who had no choice but to grapple with their sexuality in private. “I know it was far easier for me to come out than for many others. They go through a hell of a lot of pain, and I would support anyone who was totally frank, because it’s never easy. I’ve had a lot of letters from people who think they’re gay, but live in small communities where it would be very hard to say so. I rarely write back to anyone, but I wrote back to every one of those people and said, ‘If you ever get down in the dumps, write again.’”

  After his final American date on November 11 in Houston, Elton flew to Maui for a brief respite before heading to Australia for the final leg of his global campaign. He arrived in Oz for his Down Under ‘79 tour in a wheelchair propelled by John Reid, his injury the result of a pinched nerve in his back suffered while holding a drunken arm-wrestling contest. Even so, the pianist played two shows at Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion with his usual physical abandon.

  ‘A Genius with Guts’, the Melbourne Herald appreciatively declared.

  Elton’s final Australian concert occurred at Perth’s Entertainment Center on December 7. Having consumed nearly an entire bottle of Lagavulin before the show, Elton arrived onstage legless. His performance that night was particularly notable for a twenty-five-minute rendition of “Rocket Man,” during which he railed against the Ayatollah Khomeini.

  “To hell with dissidence,” he sang. “To hell with hate…”

  Giving his final interview of the 1970s to Countdown’s Molly Meldrum, on December 16, Elton admitted that “when Captain Fantastic came in at Number One, then I wanted the next one to come in at Number One, and it did,” he said. “But then you tend to want everything to be Number One, and you suddenly realize you can’t. I did become a bit obsessed about being Number One, but I’m certainly not obsessed anymore.”

  Things grew terse when Meldrum showed Elton a brief video Rod Stewart had shot ten days earlier in an English pool hall. “[Elton] phoned up,” Rod said in the clip, “and he said, ‘I’ve made a disco album,’ and I said, ‘You’re a bit late dear, aren’t you?’ And I haven’t heard from him since.”

  “He could not understand why you’d done a disco record,” Meldrum told Elton. “Which he said he hated, incidentally, because he felt that you were too late doing that, and he was looking forward to a rock ‘n’ roll album.”

  Elton’s countenance darkened. “I don’t think it’s just a disco album, I think there’s a lot of rock ‘n’ roll on it,” he said through gritted teeth. “And [Rod] made a very big disco record, which he stole the tune of—from Brazil—and had to settle out of court and pay the money. ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy’ was stolen. We went to Rio together to the Carnivàle, and he bought a record in Rio, ‘Ole, Ole…’ No, that’s the wrong cut—which he also stole. Not many people know it, but I have the record, it’s by a guy called Jorge Ben. So I’d rather make a not-so-big-selling record and actually give the writers the right amount of money. If Mr. Stewart’s gonna have a go at [Victim of Love], then why did he steal a tune and try and hush it up?”

  Elton’s final single of the decade, a 3:47 edit of his propulsive four-on-the-floor rendition of “Johnny B. Goode,” was released that same week to overwhelming indifference. The 45 failed to gain a toehold in the charts on either side of the Atlantic—a dismal fate which hadn’t befallen an Elton John single since “Rock ‘n’ Roll Madonna” back in June, 1970.

  Billboard helped soften the blow, to a certain moderate degree, by listing the pianist in its December 22 issue—the venerable music magazine’s final publication of the decade—as the nineteenth most popular male album artist, and fifth most popular male singles artist. But Elton hardly took much notice. His lonely private life, made bleaker by the holidays, had him in a particularly black state. After spending Christmas night partying nonstop, his own “Step Into Christmas” blaring incessantly from an antique radio tuned to BBC 1, he attended Watford’s game against Luton on Boxing Day looking quite a bit worse for wear.

  “I was drinking very heavily, I wasn’t particularly very happy,” he admitted. “Graham Taylor said, ‘I’m gonna see you for lunch.’ And I thought, ‘I know what he’s gonna say, he’s gonna give me a lecture.’”

  Elton went to Taylor’s house at noon the next day. As they sat together at an ornate dining table, Taylor pulled out a large bottle of brandy and slammed it down hard.

  “Here you are, Elton. Fucking drink this. It’s what you want, isn’t it?” Taylor kicked the wall. “For fuck’s sake, what’s wrong with you? Stop doing this to yourself, you fool.”

  “He frightened the fucking life out of me,” Elton confessed.

  The emotionally bruised pianist was painfully sober as he entered EMI Studios at Abbey Road on New Year’s Eve to record “Carla/Etude” with the London Symphony Orchestra. Playing under the baton of James Newton Howard, Elton gave the performance every drop of artistic nuance that he could muster.

  Pleased with the session, he returned to Woodside and reflectively paced through the silent halls.

  Alone, seemingly always alone.

  Finally, he stopped by his grand piano and sat down. His fingers found an E chord, and the first few notes of “Skyline Pigeon” reverberated achingly throughout the empty rooms.

  Elton breathed in the melody, letting it flood through the darker recesses inside of him.

  Music was
his greatest passion.

  His strongest addiction.

  His saving grace.

  “Never give up, there’s always hope,” he once said. “There’s so much more to do. But you have to be true to yourself, because you’re creating your own future.”

  Epilogue:

  Central Park

  (September 13, 1980)

  Time has a way of bending the truth.

  Memories have been known to lie. Calendars, too.

  As often as not, a decade’s defining parameters aren’t what they first appear to be. Did the ‘50s really begin on January 1, 1950—or did they in fact truly blossom on September 2, 1945, the day World War II ended? And were the ‘60s forged into being on January 1, 1960? Or was their true inception three years later, on that bright and windless afternoon when Kennedy visited Dallas?

  In much the same manner, the ‘70s—Elton John’s ‘70s—hadn’t ended on December 31, 1979, but rather on a glorious Indian summer day in mid-September, 1980. Inside that gleaming emerald slab in the heart of Manhattan known as Central Park, a half-million aging hippies amassed for one last communal bacchanal, to hear the soundtrack of their lives blasted back at them through massive stacks of thousand-amp speakers. The open-air concert, a charity event held in partnership with designer Calvin Klein, wasn’t merely the anchor gig of a tour that would see Elton spinning ceaselessly around the globe yet again—it was also the largest single audience he’d ever dared to play to before. It was Woodstock for the Me Generation, one last salute to dreams long forgotten and future hopes as yet unwritten.

  The historic concert’s subtext seemed entirely appropriate, for Elton had somehow managed to survive the emotional and physical consumption of the last ten years relatively unscathed. A summation and a new beginning, Central Park was his celebration as much as it was anyone else’s.

  Indeed, the new decade had already started out incredibly well for Elton. He’d enjoyed his first Number 1 in the French charts with “Les Aveux,” a melodic curio recorded that April with songbird France Gall. Even more promising, his latest album, 21 at 33, had charted at a healthy Number 13 in the U.S., and at Number 12 in the U.K., giving him his highest ranking long-player since 1976’s Blue Moves. Moreover, the LP spawned a pair of Top 40 hits—“Sartorial Eloquence” and “Little Jeannie”—the latter making it all the way up to the Number 3 spot on the Billboard charts to become Elton’s best-performing American single since “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” back in the heady summer of 1976.

  People began arriving days in advance of the show, roping off valuable turf near the stage as if they were settlers claiming their children’s birthrights in some mad Old West scramble.

  As the day of the concert dawned, greedy territorialism transmuted into intermutual celebration. Across the Great Lawn, Frisbees soared and joints flamed as fans reminisced about past Elton triumphs they’d been a part of. Backstage, champagne frothed over crystal flutes as John McEnroe rubbed shoulders with Carly Simon, Dudley Moore and Susan Anton.

  Elton arrived just past noon, in an unmarked van. He was, as always, the calm eye of a frenetic storm.

  “Nice crowd,” he said with a laugh. “Who’s on, then?”

  Others weren’t quite as calm.

  “I’ve always been absolutely terrified of performing,” said Judie Tzuke, who had been chosen as the opening act, “but Central Park was probably the pinnacle of my nerves. When I was on tour with Elton, most of the nights were like twenty-thousand people and thirty-thousand people. But when you’re onstage—with the lights and everything—you can only see the first few rows anyway. So it doesn’t really make any difference if it’s one-thousand or ten-thousand [people], ‘cause you can only see the first few rows. Of course, Central Park was in the daytime, so there was no hiding from anything. You could see everybody. And so Elton and I ended up backstage drinking. I think we cleaned up most of a bottle of whiskey between us. I’m sure he wasn’t anywhere near as nervous as me. I think he was just being very kind and sort of keeping me from internally combusting backstage beforehand.”

  Stepping out before nearly half-a-million people, Tzuke found herself in a near-catatonic state. “I don't remember much about going onstage,” she said. “All I know is that we did it in twenty minutes. It was supposed to be a thirty-minute set, but we were so scared that we played everything fast, and just got through it really quickly. I’m very proud of the fact that I played to that many people, even though, unfortunately, nobody knew who I was.”

  Elton and Bernie cheered Judie’s efforts on from the side of the stage. When her set was over, the pianist gave his lyricist and oldest friend a warm embrace before stepping onto a sleek, high-tech stage. Dressed in a mirrored cowboy suit—and hidden from view by a massive curtain—Elton took a seat at his nine-foot grand—painted virgin white for this outing—and slowly closed his eyes. He was about to embark upon the biggest challenge of his entire career, with only the vaguest inkling of what lay ahead. So many future classics—“I’m Still Standing,” “Blue Eyes,” “Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny),” “I Want Love,” “Sad Songs (Say So Much),” “Circle of Life,” “I Guess That’s Why They Call it the Blues,” “The One,” “Something About the Way You Look Tonight,” “I Don’t Wanna Go On With You Like That,” “Believe,” “Can You Feel the Love Tonight,” “Kiss the Bride,” “Sacrifice,” “Looking Up,” “Nikita,” and countless others—were mere vapors on the breeze that humid afternoon.

  Indeed, Elton could have hardly foreseen that his already storied career would remain vital for decades to come, his consecutive streak of Top 40 hits extending straight through the ‘80s and well into the ‘90s, easily besting Elvis Presley’s long-standing, and seemingly impenetrable, record of having scored a Top 40 hit twenty-three years in a row—by nearly a decade.

  The feat would be only one of many that Elton would achieve throughout the coming years. Inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame—as well as the Songwriters Hall of Fame—he would not only revive the career of his idol, Leon Russell, he’d also successfully diversify his musical palette, composing multiple long-running Broadway musicals which would earn him a Tony (for Aida), a Disney Legend Award (for The Lion King), and an Olivier (for Billy Elliot). His mantle would also boast an Oscar, a handful of Grammys, and multiple Golden Globes. He would be selected for a Kennedy Center Honor, a Billboard Magazine Legend of Live Award, twelve Ivor Novello statuettes, a Rockefeller Foundations Lifetime Achievement Award, a Kennedy Center Honor, a Grammy Legend Award, and five Brits Awards—as well as a special Brits Icon honor for his “lasting impact on British culture,” presented to him by longtime friend and musical rival, Rod Stewart.

  The RIAA would name Elton one of the “Artists of the Century,” alongside Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Barbara Streisand, and the Eagles. He’d receive an honorary doctorate from the Royal Academy of Music, and would become a Fellow of the British Academy of Songwriters and Composers, even as Billboard ranked him as the most successful solo male artist of all-time on their “Hot 100 All-Time Artists” list. Other accolades would include the Society of Singers’ Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as the PRS for Music Limited Heritage Award. The French government would bestow one of their greatest honors upon Elton, naming him an Officer of Arts and Letters, while the King of Sweden presented him—along with cellist/conductor Mstislav Rostropovich—with the prestigious Polar Music Prize.

  Perhaps most meaningfully, Queen Elizabeth II would name the pianist a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for “services to music and charitable services.”

  Sir Elton’s final sales tallies would prove every bit as remarkable as his career awards, including as they did more than thirty-eight Gold albums, twenty-seven Platinum LPs, twelve Multiplatinum discs, and a staggering fifty-eight Top 40 hits, made up of twenty-seven Top 10 singles, four Number Twos, and nine Number 1s. He would also hold the record for the most Adult Contemporary hits—besting the likes of
Elvis Presley, Neil Diamond and Barbara Streisand with a staggering seventy-two hits—as well as having the most Number 1s and the most Top 10s.

  350 million records and counting, Elton would become the third most successful artist in the history of recorded music, behind only Elvis and the Beatles. Unlike his progenitors, the pianist’s creative impulses would never wane, with some of the highest-charting and best-reviewed albums of his unparalleled career—including 1983’s Too Low For Zero, 1995’s Made in England, 2006’s The Captain and the Kid, 2012’s Good Morning to the Night (a U.K. Number 1 collaboration with Australian electronica duo Pnau), and 2016’s sterling, T-Bone Burnett-produced effort, Wonderful Crazy Night—still well ahead of him.

  Gracefully growing into an elder musical statesman—a true and literal Knight of the Realm—Elton would become nearly as well-known for his tireless humanitarian efforts as he was for his timeless melodies, founding the hugely influential Elton John AIDS Foundation, which has raised tens of millions of dollars for patient care services and AIDS prevention education—a disease as yet unnamed on that celebratory September afternoon.