Elton John: The Billboard Interview

by Timothy White

Three decades after his career blasted off, Elton John's popularity is reaching new heights. Candle In The Wind 1997, his memorial single for Diana, Princess of Wales, has quickly become the best-selling song on the planet and his new album for Rocket/A&M Associated, The Big Picture, is arriving with unprecedented fanfare.

The October 4 issue of Billboard contains a special salute to John and Bernie Taupin, his writing partner of 30 years. The largest solo artist special in Billboard's 103-year history, the salute contains exclusive interviews with John and Taupin; a U.S. discography; Fred Bronson's analysis of their chart achievements; a listing of John's top-40 hits; and articles about every facet of the John/Taupin legacy, including an examination of the many covers that have been made of their songs.

The centerpiece of the salute is Billboard editor in chief Timothy White's extensive Q&A with John, excerpts of which appear below. The complete text of the interview and the rest of this Billboard Special Issue is available to Billboard Online members. Log in or subscribe now to read the full interview, plus additional articles, an interview with Bernie Taupin, and Elton John's discography and chart history.

Your R&B and soul interest goes back to your days with your initial band, Bluesology, in 1961-67. Were the very first records you owned American R&B?

Not really, no. My parents collected records when I was a child, and the records I grew up with were Guy Mitchell and Johnny Ray and then Elvis Presley. But the first 45s I ever owned were Reet Petite by Jackie Wilson and At The Hop by Danny And The Juniors. I think that as a pianist I used to copy Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis and Fats Domino, and then Ray Charles. And even in the early days, my father bought me things by people like the Nat King Cole Trio.
And then, when you played in bands, you tended to play black music. My first band, we were so snobbish we wouldn't play anything unless it was unheard of. So we used to play lots of Jimmy Witherspoon and Mose Allison stuff. And then they became very popular - Mose Allison, especially, through Georgie Fame in England.

You were very sophisticated in your [recording] approach from the start: your music has always been arranged, with major assistance from someone like Paul Buckmaster.

Yes, because I was very influenced by people like Charles Stepney with Rotary Connection. He also did arrangements for Ramsey Lewis. Charles was a big influence; I thought you should be able to do funky rock music with great string arrangements and brass arrangements, as he did. But we were very, very fortunate in the fact that Buckmaster was available, who had worked on David Bowie's Space Oddity. So he became part of the team for the Elton John album, did the arrangements, and I recorded them live with the orchestra. I think the album cost about £5,000. We did three tracks in a session. To play with a live orchestra was extremely intimidating for someone who was 27 years old. It was quite a fearsome task. But we did it. Gus Dudgeon produced, and the team was born. It was just like Bernie and I; it was fate basically.
The biggest influence on me from a production standpoint and a songwriting point of view was Brian Wilson. I mean, I love The Beatles, I love their records, but I don't think they influenced me as songwriters. The Beach Boys' production and the Beach Boys' sound and the Beach Boys' way of writing and their melodies were a much bigger influence. Brian Wilson was the genius and always will be. He's probably one of the most underrated songwriters in the whole history of rock 'n' roll. And production-wise, his idea of initially using echo vocals on a track and then using dried vocals, I mean, it completely changed the face of recording vocals as well.
Even albums Brian didn't have anything much to do with, like Carl And The Passions - So Tough and the Dennis Wilson Pacific Ocean Blue solo album, were sensational. That's why I was always so honored when any of the Beach Boys sang on my records, like Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me, because I loved what they did and the melodies. It was all so beautiful and touching and tireless.

How did you come to play with John Lennon in 1974?

It was through a mutual friend of ours named Tony King. Tony I'd known from when Bernie and I first started, and he was working for John. I think I met John at a video shoot at Capitol Records in Los Angeles, and we just hit it off and got on like a house on fire. Obviously, I was very intimidated to meet him, but he put me at ease straight away. You have to remember I'm a consummate fan and get very tongue-tied. But he was great, and was seeing May Pang at the time, and we all hung out and had a ball together.

You did that song from his Mind Games album with him in 1974 at Caribou Ranch, One Day At A Time, which was the flip side of your version of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.

I loved that song. I just wanted to choose one of his songs to do that was not a Beatles song, and it was my choice to do that.
Later, I said, "Listen, if your record Whatever Gets You Through The Night, which I sang on [as part of The Plastic Ono Nuclear Band], gets to No. 1, you're going to come on stage with me in New York. We'll shake on it."
John hadn't had a hit for a while, and when Whatever Gets did get to No. 1, he kept his side of the bargain and decided to come on stage at Madison Square Garden. So we rehearsed and we did three songs together, but he was physically ill, physically sick before the show with worry and nerves. Also, I remember that that was the night that Yoko came to the Garden and they got back together again.
When John came on stage, I've never heard a louder reception in my life for anyone. Never. It moved us all to tears, in fact. The band was crying, I was crying. And for 10 to 12 minutes, the audience would just not stop cheering and clapping. I just think it was so moving for him, to feel that amount of love. It gives me goose pimples to talk to you about it. Afterwards, we went out to the Pierre Hotel, and we just had the best time. It was just a joyous evening.

Where were you when you heard that John Lennon had been killed?

I was on a plane and I was flying from Brisbane to Melbourne, Australia. When we got to Melbourne, everyone was told to depart the plane except the Elton John party. I thought my grandmother had died or someone else in my family. My manager John Reid, who was at the airport to greet us, came on the plane and he was crying his eyes out. He said that John had been shot and was dead.
I can't, I don't really remember how anybody reacted. We were so shocked and stunned because we didn't really believe it. We got to the hotel and we found out it was true, and then I spoke to Yoko and David Geffen on the phone. We were absolutely distraught.
The day of his funeral, I've never been a particularly religious man but I wanted to do something, so we got up at the equivalent time to noon in America, went to the local cathedral and had a service for him, and we sang hymns and said good-bye.
There are still times when I expect to see John walking down the street. It's so very strange that he's not here.

How did the 1982 Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny) tribute single come about?

Well, Bernie and I wanted to write something for John, because he affected our lives, because Bernie became close to him, too. I wrote an instrumental called The Man Who Never Died. It was a really lovely melody, but when Taupin came up with a lyric for Empty Garden I thought that said it all in an eloquent way.

You've duetted with a lot of people over the years, from Kiki Dee and Millie Jackson to John Lennon, and then all the artists on the 1993 Duets album. The 1985 Wrap Her Up single with George Michael was enjoyable, and I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues in 1983, with Stevie Wonder on harmonica, was as good as any of the best Gershwin songs.

Well, thank you. I'm a melody person, so I can sit down and write a song, and I know this is going to sound really boastful, but something like Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word or Your Song, I can write that sort of melody every day. I find it harder, because I'm a pianist, to write a good uptempo song.
When you play piano, the chord structures of songs are so much different. You tend to put in more chords, whereas when you're on a guitar, a three-chord song on a guitar always sounds better than a three-chord song on a piano for some reason. [Laughter] It's ludicrous. It has to do with the structure of the instrument.
But I listen to so much stuff that I get influenced. It's nice to write different sorts of songs, but that can also lead to problems with albums .... That's why we did Sleeping With The Past. I wanted one album to sound the same all the way through rather than be a little disjointed.
I'm quite happy with my music, but I'd like to go back to playing the piano a little more on my albums, and stop making, per se, pop-music albums. But I don't know; I always say that, and I always end up doing them.

Who would your heroes have been once you had a few years of piano lessons under your belt?

That's easy: Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino and Little Richard were the big three piano players. And, later, to a certain extent, people like Floyd Cramer. George Shearing, also, because my father always had George Shearing records; I never played like George Shearing, but I like listening to him.

In 1983 Too Low For Zero was your first full-album collaboration with Bernie since Blue Moves. Were you on a sabbatical from each other?

That's the misconception. There was never a falling out. As far as this whole vision of Bernie and I not talking to each other or anything like that, it's totally wrong. I did an album called A Single Man [1978], which was totally Gary Osborne songs, and then I did 21 At 33 [1980], which had Bernie Taupin songs on it - Chasing The Crown, for example, and Two Rooms At The End Of The World - and then I did The Fox [1981], which had Bernie Taupin songs.
So there was only one album ever without Bernie Taupin, apart from the [1979] Victim Of Love album, which had various material written by someone else. But when I did A Single Man with Gary Osborne, Bernie at the same time was doing an Alice Cooper album [From The Inside, 1978], and I think there was maybe a little friction - not between the two of us, but it was kind of competitive. Both albums came out at the same time.
Thank God we did do things like that, because I think if we'd have just stuck together and wrote just for ourselves and not had the freedom to write with anybody else, I don't think the relationship could have lasted. I don't think you can just pin two people down and say, "That's it for life."
That's not fair. I know Bernie enjoys writing with other people and I always used to encourage him to write with others, but he never really wanted to. Then he got into it, and I think he enjoys it, and I'm glad that he does. I think it widens his writing, and it certainly is nice for me to write with other people too. And there's no problem. Whenever I do a new album, they say, "Oh, I see you and Bernie are back together again," and I think, "Oh my God, not that old chestnut." It really is a myth.
I dedicated Sleeping With The Past to Bernie, just because we were so happy working together. And I know Bernie was really thrilled with the way the album came out; it turned out the way he wanted it to, and I wanted it to be like that.
I think it's an achievement to have lasted so long, and we are enjoying writing with each other more now than we ever did. Obviously, sometimes he gives me a lyric and he thinks it's going to be a ballad, and I turn it into something else. But he's never complained about it. He's never argued about anything I've written, which is pretty amazing.

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