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

by David DeCouto

  Imminent demise was the last thing the pianist had to worry about, however, as—weeks later—he received his second British Gold record, this time for Tumbleweed Connection.

  Elton headed back into Trident Studios on February 27 to lay down a pair of tracks for the proper follow-up to Tumbleweed Connection. The first song recorded was a gospel rocker called “Levon.” Borrowing the name of the Band’s lead singer, Levon Helm, the song itself was a pure invention on Bernie’s part, an illusory character sketch about escaping paternal control. “People got their knickers completely in a twist just because Levon called his son Jesus and he was a balloon salesman,” the lyricist said. “Just because he didn’t call his child George and he wasn’t a mechanic or something. I don’t know, the story’s completely simple. It’s just about a guy who wants to get away from his father’s hold over him.”

  Of the esoteric lyrics, Elton could only laugh. “I really don’t know what’s going on in Bernie’s mind,” he confessed. “I ask him if a certain song is about a certain person or something like that, but I don’t get any sense out of him.”

  The Strawbs’ Rick Wakeman, who was soon to join Yes, was brought in to add organ flourishes to the track. “Elton told me that he never really enjoyed playing the organ and always considered himself a piano player,” Wakeman said years later. “And indeed he was, and still is, a bloody good one with a unique technique and style. He asked me to play Hammond on some tracks, and I was booked through a session-fixer called David Katz. The most rewarding thing was when you arrived at a session and heard songs for the first time and knew instantly they were a different class and that’s that these [songs of Elton’s] were…I was genuinely honored to have worked with him.”

  Additionally, Gus booked several Arco basses for the session, to add heft to the bottom end of the mournfully urgent track. “I knew the kind of beef that came from basses from being a tape jockey for quite a few classical sessions,” he said. “I was confident I could make it work.”

  Gus’ poise allowed for “happy accidents,” one of which occurred when session drummer Barry Morgan misread his drum chart during the song’s final pre-chorus and played a tom-fill in the wrong place—as Elton sings “he was born a pauper to a pawn on a Christmas day.”

  “I’m really sorry,” Morgan said contritely as he shuffled into the control room, head hung low. “I screwed up.”

  But the producer was grinning his head off.

  “Barry, that was a superb drum fill. What on earth made you put it there? It was a moment of genius.”

  Morgan insisted on doing another take, but Gus wouldn’t hear of it. “Robin and I played it back a couple times, and everybody agreed that it was absolutely brilliant,” the producer said. “That’s the kind of magic you’re always looking for. But you can’t force it. You’ve just got to be supremely patient, and open to it when it arrives. And it will arrive.”

  Also recorded at this session was the reflective piano ballad “Goodbye,” which had earlier been excised from the Andy Williams Show. At 1:48, the darkly muted, enigmatic track was the briefest song Elton had yet committed to recording tape.

  Dressed in a Wonka-esque top hat and bone-white tails, Elton played London’s Royal Festival Hall with a 30-piece session orchestra—along with special guests Skaila Kanga and Rick Wakeman—on March 3. Performing the first hour with just Nigel and Dee, the pianist gave fresh readings of numbers like “Where to Now, St. Peter?” and “Talking Old Soldiers” before being joined by the orchestra for a passionate selection of more expansive songs that included “First Episode at Hienton” and “Come Down in Time.” The highlight of the performance was an ardent “The King Must Die,” which received an extended and well-deserved ovation. The show then ended, appropriately enough, with the premiere performance of the mournfully pensive “Goodbye.”

  Despite Elton’s best efforts, Melody Maker’s Ray Coleman was less than impressed with the evening. “It was sad,” he wrote, “the man, the living myth, darling of the Americans, the ultimate local boy makes good, struggling like a pygmy center half with just 7,000 of his own people.”

  Why the Brit-on-Brit hostility? Elton had an idea. “I got rave reviews from the first gig I did in America, and it snowballed,” he said. “The reports began to get back to Britain, and because I hadn’t done many gigs here, people assumed I was a phony. Maybe they didn’t like the Americans getting to know me first…But reading anti-Elton John comments in the paper does depress me.”

  The Friends soundtrack album was rushed out to the shops two days later—weeks ahead of the film’s release—to capitalize on Elton’s cresting wave of popularity. The pianist was less than pleased by the move. “They put ‘Elton John’ on the front of the album cover and, in little print, ‘From the film Friends,’ and we couldn’t do anything about it because that was one of the things we’d agreed to do before we’d made it. The record company are promoting it as a new Elton John album, and kids will probably think it is a new Elton John album…but it’s not.”

  The LP stalled at Number 36 in the U.S., while failing to chart at all in Britain. The horrendous cover art, a garish “pink massacre” by Paramount Records’ art director Ruby Mazur, was in no small part to blame. “Paramount came out with the worst album cover I’ve ever seen,” Elton said. “It looked like a Barbara Cartland dress…[It] makes you feel ill every time you look at it. They came up with dross. I mean, it was hideous.” He took off his glasses and rubbed at his face. “The whole album was a complete and utter rip-off. It should have been put out as a maxi-single, with [my] songs on it and the rest of it forgotten about.”

  Despite his misgivings, the album went on to receive a Grammy nomination for Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture. With that nomination, Elton was again lauded in the press for being a musical emancipator—but he took the praise with a healthy grain of salt. “Something new is gonna come along soon. I hope there is, anyway, because I think everybody needs a shot in the arm…I’m looking forward to seeing who it is.”

  Elton geared up for his third tour of the States, a massive ten-week, forty-five-city jaunt that commenced on April 2. The tour featured an ever-broadening set list, including “Ballad of a Well-Known Gun,” “Friends,” and the as-yet-unrecorded “All the Nasties.” Elton also performed cover versions of Janis Joplin’s “Mercedes Benz”—which she’d recorded just two days before her death, six months prior—and a fury-saturated rendition of “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On” which would close the show each night in incandescent style.

  The campaign again broadened Elton’s reach, taking in “second tier” cities like Columbus, Cincinnati, Omaha, Portland, Seattle, Dallas, New Orleans, Oklahoma City, Denver, and Ashbury Park. While in Ohio, a roadie forgot to screw Nigel’s drums together properly. “So, on the second song, the whole kit falls apart,” Nigel said. “So I kick the drums all over. And I’m thinking, ‘What would Moonie do in this situation?’ So I kicked them over and Elton stopped the show. We got backstage and fisticuffs started happening. Elton said, ‘You flash bastard, don’t ever do that again.’ We started pushing each other. He pushed me, I pushed him.”

  Tensions had eased by the time the band reached Southern California. More than any other area on the planet, Elton was able to mark his incredible rise by the succession of venues he’d played in the sun-drenched area. In less than a year, he’d graduated from the 300-seat Troubadour to the 3,500-seat Santa Monica Civic Auditorium to the 9,100-seat Anaheim Convention Center.

  The night before the May 14 Anaheim show, Russ Regan invited Elton over to his house, where he and his wife, Judy, cooked dinner for him. “I was barbecuing and Judy had made this phenomenal cold cherry soup. Elton just could not get over how fantastic that soup was.” The next evening, Elton sauntered onto the Convention Center stage in a sequined cowboy suit made especially for him by famed Hollywood tailor Mr. Nudie, who had created outfits for everyone from Dean Martin to Mick Jagger.

 
“Before we start tonight,” Elton told the crowd, “I just wanted to dedicate this concert to Judy Regan’s cold cherry soup, all right? Here we go, Los Angeles...”

  With this tour, Elton’s popularity reached an all-time high. Yet the more his fans clamored for him, the more the press pilloried him. This was never more apparent than in critic Stephen Chensvold’s emblematic review of the pianist’s April 24 show at the Seattle Center Coliseum. “When John threw his long coattails into the audience in a spasmodic burst of misdirected energy,” Chensvold wrote, “and when he took off his silver boots and climbed his piano, like a sophomoric cheerleader at his first big rally, the temperature of the concert began to change…If Elton John takes his performance seriously, that’s one thing. But if he asks others to accept this neatly packaged, glossed-over and well-promoted garbage as anything short of ludicrous, then music has become nothing more than slick packaging and an energetic advertising campaign.”

  Elton read the review aloud to his next audience, in Honolulu.

  “Poor Mr. Chest Cold,” the pianist teased, ripping the review to shreds and throwing the bits dismissively over his shoulder. “I think he’s missing the point. And not for the first time, I’ll wager. Anyway, this [concert] is for you. Any critics present may leave. We just want to rock ‘n’ roll. Fair enough?”

  Elton’s tour soon landed in New York, where he played a trio of shows at the Fillmore East. “That’s a bit of a legendary venue,” Stuart Epps said. “Yet being in New York, which I didn’t really like, [it was tough]. There was always this stuff in the paper about ‘This person’s been shot, and someone else has been shot,’ or whatever. And then someone threw something at Elton onstage. It was probably only a bottle top or something, but he thought he could be shot. Still, it was an experience for everyone. The thing is, I was a complete Elton fan. I’d been rooting for him since I was fifteen. To see him doing these theater gigs and going down an absolute storm, with people whooping and yelling like American audiences do—they go out to have a good time—it was incredible. And it was emotional. And that’s how everyone felt. ‘Now it’s all coming true,’ we thought. ‘It’s actually happening.’”

  Between gigs, the Brit sat in his midtown hotel room and admitted to Gallery reporter J. Marks that—despite his displeasure with certain critics—he still kept a complete book of all his reviews. Newspaper clippings and magazine articles, too. Why? “I’ll look back on all of it one day, and I’ll probably say, ‘Wow, looky here, dearie, what I did. Look what so-and-so said about me back when.’ I just think it’s part of the fun. If I didn’t have anything to look back on in ten years, all this wouldn’t really make much sense, now would it? Because it’s going by so fast that I don’t hardly know that it’s happening. I don’t have time to enjoy it.”

  When Marks asked the pianist what his favorite type of music was, the classic R&B records from Chess, Stax and Motown ranked highest. “I always loved it the most. But kids here think Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye are very ordinary and brash. And I’m really sorry that so many top people who are into rock think it’s far beneath them to dig rhythm and blues or commercial soul.”

  “Do you think that your act is going to hold up?” Marks inquired.

  “No,” Elton answered without hesitation. “I didn’t want all of this. I’d already had enough of it. I had four years in a shitty band. I played and played and traveled and traveled. Dragging around my own huge fucking equipment. Setting it up and taking it all back down again. At the moment, I’m enjoying all of this. But I think the act will fade. I’ve got two or three years of performing, and then it will be completely over. I’ve set the deadline for 1973. That’s it, as far as touring is concerned.”

  Bernie married his “ballerina,” Maxine, not long after, on a chilly late April afternoon in his hometown of Market Rasen in Lincolnshire. Paparazzi and fans swarmed the event to get a glimpse of such wedding guests as Marc Bolan and his wife June, as well as BBC producer John Walters, who sidled up to the visibly nervous groom and serenaded him with: “If I were a bridegroom…but then again, no...”

  Taking a vestiary queue from his writing partner and best man, Bernie wore a white velvet suit, lilac shirt and gold earrings to the candlelit ceremony at Holyrood Catholic Church. Even so, Elton still took the crown that day in a white silk suit hand-embroidered with diamanté edging, rhinestone flowers of blue and red, and a deep-silver silk top hat.

  “Maxine was a crazy woman, really,” Stuart Epps said. “When everyone went to the States, we all just got carried away with America and with the women and everything else, and Bernie actually brought one back and married her. And Maxine was a pretty outrageous, glitzy young girl who then had Bernie buying pink E-Type Jaguars, when all he ever wanted was a simple Land Rover before that. I really liked her.”

  After a reception at the Market Rasen Racecourse, Dick James toasted the couple at a wedding reception at the Limes Hotel before presenting them with a chromed-out Mark II Mini as a wedding present.

  James handed Bernie the keys, which Maxine deftly plucked out of her husband’s palm—he was yet to learn how to drive.

  “She was quite outrageous and very Hollywood,” Stuart Epps said. “In many ways, she was leading [Bernie] around and spending his money, but she was lovely and I liked her.”

  Elton did his part at the festivities by playing piano as the three-hundred guests played a drunken game of musical chairs. “He was showing off all his roots,” David Larkham said. “Songs that influenced him, Winifred Atwell stuff interspersed with his comical impressions.”

  The lyricist ultimately stole the spotlight, however, leveraging a healthy share of his newly-minted royalties to surprise his bride with a stone cottage in the scenic village of Tealby. Named after a childhood character from one of his favorite authors, A.A. Milne, Bernie christened his new residence—which featured completely re-tiled floors, courtesy of Elton—“Piglet-in-the-Wilds.”

  As charming as the house looked on the outside, it was equally garish within. “I had no notion of taste,” Bernie said. “What I had in the cottage at Tealby was just like any other pop nouveau riche—black walls, lava lamps and sand candles. Heavy Victorian furniture everywhere. Orange couches covered with Liberty prints. No coordination whatever.”

  Still, with his new bride—and a bloodhound pup from the Battersea Dogs Home named Cyril—Bernie confessed, “I don’t wish for any more.”

  Bernie and Maxine honeymooned in Hawaii while Elton prepped for a concert at the Honolulu International Center. A crisis erupted the day of the show, when the piano that the Center had promised to have ready for Elton’s show never materialized. John Reid was forced to hunt down a grand piano that afternoon. After a frantic search, he finally located a foot surgeon in Waikiki who had an instrument that fit the bill. Elton, Reid and several roadies had to physically remove the 760-pound instrument out of the good doctor’s house, wrestle it onto—and then off—a flatbed truck, and haul it onto stage.

  “It’s why we earn the big dollars,” a long-haired roadie joked. “Didn’t you know that?”

  Hours later, Bernie stood anxiously beside his new bride as Elton’s show began. “I’m probably more nervous than anyone else in the group,” he conceded. “It’s very rare I can sit and watch a whole show. I have to walk around and people think I’m trying to hide.”

  Despite his worries, Elton gave another high-octane performance that night. By the end of the concert, the pianist was as battered and bruised as ever.

  “[Touring] just kills you,” he said. “I bang the piano a lot. It’s hard work. My hands, by the time I go home, will be ruined.”

  Chapter 8:

  Madman Across the Water

  Elton’s label decided to capitalize on the tremendous buzz surrounding his November 17, 1970 radio concert, after multiple bootlegged copies of the gig—released under such titles as Knocking ‘Em Dead Alive, Live E Jay, Radiocord, Rock and Roll Madonna, Superstar: Live and Ve
ry Alive—had flooded the underground market. Elton found the situation bemusing. “It’s funny to think people want to hear your stuff so desperately they’ll buy a bootleg album,” he said. “Or that people will go to the trouble of manufacturing a bootleg album because they know the demand is there.”

  Wanting to put a stop to the bootleggers efforts, the original multi-tracked tapes of the November performance were rushed into production. “Gus and I mixed the tapes for the British release at Dick James’ [DJM Studios],” engineer Clive Franks said. “After we played them back a few times, Gus decided to remix them again for the States. Change a few bits, tighten up the sound. He did those at Trident Studios with Dave Hentschel. They came out a lot better.” After giving an attentive listen to both mixes, Elton agreed, determining that the English version was dull and dreary while the tapes for the American market were “very good.”

  Taking its title from the date of the concert—17/11/70 in the U.K. and Europe, 11/17/70 in America—the live disc was ripe for critical attack. “I’m going to get criticized for that album, because everyone will say, ‘Oh, fuck, not another Elton John album,’” the pianist predicted. “But it has to come out now, because it has been released [on bootlegs] and people are playing it. So I’m just going to have to face the criticism. [But] it’s a bloody good live album. What decided for me that it was a good live album was the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young [live LP, 4 Way Street], which I was eagerly awaiting, and I thought it was a disaster...There’s two or three really nice things on it, but I think it’s an unmitigated disaster. I thought, ‘Well, ours is so much better than that.’ It’s not fair to point that out, but that’s what decided that it really should come out.”