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

by David DeCouto

  “The guy who ran the studio said, ‘Carlton, get the microphone,’” Davey later recalled. “And we went, ‘Oh fuck,’ y’know? Get the microphone? We used like twenty mics on the drums, even in those days. It was like, ‘We’re in deep shit here.’”

  “We need these microphones,” Gus told the studio manager.

  “Don’t harass me, mon. Tomorrow.”

  “The weather was beautiful and the atmosphere really fantastic,” Elton said. “But the Jamaican philosophy is that anything can wait until tomorrow.”

  And tomorrow never came.

  The only track attempted at Dynamic Sound was a frantic version of a newly written track entitled “Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting).” When the group listened to the playback, they were disgusted. “It sounded like thirteen-million very small Japanese radios full crank,” Gus said. “It was the worst sound I’ve ever heard in my life.”

  He turned to Elton.

  “I think we have a problem.”

  Elton nodded, his spirits low.

  Resigned to the fact that the studio was utterly inadequate to their needs, the group decided to leave Jamaica the next day. That decision didn’t go down well with the locals—equipment and rental cars were immediately impounded.

  “There was most definitely a very dodgy feeling in Kingston towards us,” Gus said.

  “It really was an escape, more or less,” Bernie said. “I remember everybody sort of jumping into whatever vehicles they could get in. It was a bit like the sort of Cuban Revolution, trying to make it to the airport. I imagine it was like the scene from The Godfather Part II, where everybody is just racing for the airport. It was our mini version of that.”

  During the taxi ride to Kingston Airport, Elton and Bernie’s driver mysteriously took them through an empty sugarcane field.

  “I just thought, ‘They’re gonna kill us,’” Elton said. “I’ve never been so glad in my life to leave a place.”

  As Elton was making good his escape, his latest album—entitled Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player—was being released around the world to much fanfare. In America, it was Elton’s first LP issued on MCA’s “black rainbow” label. No expense was spared advertising the LP, with tens of thousands of dollars sunk into a series of print ads, which billed the album as “The Latest Adventures of Elton and Bernie in France.” Animated television commercials also ran for the album across England.

  As for the seven-month gap from when it was recorded to when it was released, Elton explained, “We made the album last June, and it seemed like it would never come out. But I wanted a long gap, and we only had one LP out last year. I didn’t want the situation where every few months there was an Elton John album out.”

  The disc’s memorable cover was shot on a Universal back lot, on a ‘50’s cinema set. The album’s title glowed from a lit-up marque as a leather-clad greaser and his bobby-socked sweetheart bought tickets for this nonexistent Elton John film from a bored booth attendant. Off to the side sat a poster advertising the Marx Brother’s 1940 classic, Go West—a nod to Groucho for inspiring the work’s title, and a direct reference to “Blues for Baby and Me,” whose narrator sings of how he and his girlfriend are “gonna go west to the sea.”

  The extravagant inside packaging was equally as detailed. It included a 12-page color libretto full of hand-tinted photographs which imbued the images—mostly taken at Elton’s rented Malibu beach house—with a timeless, otherworldly feel. Created by Michael Ross and David Larkham, the booklet presented Elton as the shiny pop star he’d long-threatened to become, the Great Gatsby of rock.

  Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player was a watershed release, moving more units in a fortnight than Honky Château had managed to move in a full year’s worth of effort. Becoming Elton’s first album to feature multiple Top 5 U.K. hits, the LP would also quickly become his first transatlantic Number 1—and yet another Gold record to add to his ever-expanding collection.

  “I remember being on a train, getting Melody Maker and seeing Don’t Shoot Me was Number One,” Davey said. “And it was like, ‘Oh, that’s great. It’s happening.”

  Congratulatory telegrams poured in from all quarters. No one was more pleased—or surprised—by Elton’s ever-escalating success than his old mentor, Long John Baldry. “I always knew that Rod [Stewart] was going to become something very, very special,” Baldry said. “But how could one predict that a boy with an overweight problem—I mean, he is a bit broad across the beam, our Reg—who would have thought that this strange boy with his myopic lenses and fat arse could turn out to be one of the pop sensations of all time?”

  Critics were less startled than Baldry had been. “It’s not just geography that has affected Elton John’s music,” John Pidgeon wrote in Let It Rock magazine. “There’s a full-time guitarist, Davey Johnstone, a band unity coupled with an awareness of instrumentation previously blinkered by Paul Buckmaster’s omnipresence, and a set of lyrics from Bernie Taupin that suggests he’s finally thrown off his dogged obsession with Old Americana.” “Don’t Shoot Me is one nice piece of black plastic,” Charles Shaar Murray opined in NME. “Don’t listen to the nasties, Elton. You’re doing all right—in fact you’re doing pretty damn good—and if there’s still any stigma attached to your name after this one gets out, I’ll be mightily surprised. Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player is a damn good album. Purchase it, glory in it, dance to it, and play it to your friends. Comprenez?”

  Bernie saw the LP’s success as yet another rung on a ladder that stretched far into the future. “The reason we’ve survived and will continue to survive for a good long time,” he said, “is because we’ve got the upper hand on everybody else and can turn our ideas into anything, any sort of music. We do things like playing rock ‘n’ roll, twelve bars to country material, blues…I mean, we’ve done every type of music. You can compile an album, taking tracks from all the things we’ve done, and come across with the most amazing cross-section of material.”

  Calling Don’t Shoot Me his “discotheque album,” Elton reflected that it was ultimately a disposable work. “It was a record that for the few months that it came out,” he said, “it bore a lot of relevance to that time, and I think people should just listen to it and enjoy it for that time and then put it aside and buy something else. There’s so much stuff coming out that’s good that you shouldn’t say, ‘I’m going to keep playing my Don’t Shoot Me album and put everything else aside,’ because you’re probably missing out on something else.”

  For once, Elton’s fans ignored him. Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player proved a monster hit, remaining in the Billboard charts for a staggering eighty-nine weeks running.

  Elton, Bernie, Gus Dudgeon, John Reid and Steve Brown decided to leverage the momentum Don’t Shoot Me’s success afforded them to finally follow up on their drunken idea months earlier to launch their own record label. The idea was one which Elton had long held close to his heart. “I always wanted to start my own record company,” he said. “Even as a kid, when I was playing my records, I’d be looking at the label spinning round and dreaming of having my own company.”

  Named after “Rocket Man,” Rocket Records would focus on fostering the musical ambitions of those who toiled in obscurity. “Basically what we’re interested in is new talent,” Elton said. “There’s thousands of me around in small bands—there must be. All I needed, initially, was the encouragement. What we’re offering is our undivided love and devotion, a fucking good royalty for the artist, and a company that works its bollocks off. I’m prepared to sit in the office from dawn to midnight listening to tapes.”

  From the onset, it was imperative that Elton’s label not function as a vanity press for his own material, the way Swansong did for Zeppelin or Rolling Stones Records did for the Stones. Instead, it would allow up-and-coming artists the breathing room necessary to create truly unique artistic works. “The whole reason for starting a record label
was to get away from the ‘You must record an album in fifteen hours’ time’ syndrome,’” Elton told Bob Harris. “There’s no real limit on to what people can do, if we’re behind them. For example, there’s a young guy [that] came in this week that’s eighteen years old who plays the piano and we listened to his songs and [said], ‘Well, they’re not very good’. And then we sat down and said, ‘Well, was I writing very good songs when I was eighteen?’ I said, ‘Well, I wasn’t writing any songs when I was eighteen.’ And he hadn’t ever listened to any records, so we gave him some records to listen to. And we said, ‘Listen, go away for six months, we’ll give you wages every week for six months. And come back and see us in six months. That’s what we’re looking for. Because I know how hard it was when I was trying to get publishing. It’s such a hard thing.”

  Announcing itself in a full-page ad in the February 3 issue of Melody Maker, Rocket Records opened an office that same week in a small two-story house at 101 Wardour Street, London. Featuring mirrored doors painted with the bright Rocket logo—a David-Larkham-designed, primary-colored image of a winking Thomas the Tank-like train breezing past—and walls covered in a selection of Elton’s Gold records, the epicenter of the office was a massive boardroom which housed a mahogany conference table upon which a row of white telephones sat, a dozen leather swivel chairs, and a single oversized wicker peacock throne reserved for Elton himself.

  Rocket’s first order of business was to finalize its Board of Directors. Comprised of Elton, Bernie, Gus, Steve Brown and John Reid, each had a unique role to play. Reid was charged with looking after all business dealings and contract negotiations, while Brown was to manage the day-to-day running of the office. Elton, Bernie and Gus, meanwhile, were in charge of the creative end of the venture, finding and producing new talent as they came upon them.

  With Elton’s high-profile name attached to Rocket Records, a bidding war quickly broke out for distribution rights to the embryonic company. “It was a toss-up between EMI and Island,” the pianist said, “and Island won because of their track record. Everyone was a bit worried about EMI’s inability to get records in stock, and—overall throughout the country—ninety-nine percent of the stores said that Island’s records were practically never out of stock. There’s nothing worse than having a hit record that’s out of stock.”

  Rocket Records quickly made its first signing, bringing aboard the former Pauline Mathews, who performed under the stage name Kiki Dee. Kiki had an enviable pedigree, having been the first white European artist ever signed to Barry Gordy’s famed Motown label. She’d also served time as a backing vocalist for Dusty Springfield, while never being able to find a niche for herself as a solo artist. Elton had been impressed with her soulful voice for years, however. “She’s been around for a long time, living in the wake of Dusty Springfield,” he said. “And she could sing the balls off Rita Coolidge any day.”

  The pianist invited his inaugural signee over to his house for dinner, to get to know her on a personal level.

  “Neil Young was there,” Kiki told journalist Richard Barber. “At one point, [Elton] asked me to go into the kitchen and fetch some wine glasses. He was already a star by then and had started investing in lovely bits and pieces. The glasses must have cost a fortune.” Carefully reaching into the cupboard, Kiki promptly sent an entire row of crystal-cut glassware shattering on the floor. “I was mortified. Elton came in to see what had happened and burst out laughing. He thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. I’ve loved him from that moment on.”

  Other early Rocket signees included the pub-rock unit Stackridge, the Zombies’ Colin Blunstone, and the Sunderland folk-rock group Longdancer, which featured Nigel Olsson’s brother, Kai, as well as guitarist Dave Stewart, who would later rise to fame in the ‘80s—along with partner Annie Lennox—as the Eurhythmics. “Their first album [If It Was So Simple] is gonna be good,” Elton said of Longdancer. “It’s not gonna be great, but then my first album [wasn’t great, either]. Nobody’s first album is usually great, unless you’re a genius. That’s not the point in signing people [like that]. You’ve got to have potential. The point of starting a record company is to encourage people who’ve got that spark of potential, to sort of encourage them onwards, because I needed that when I started off, and I really didn’t get it, half the time.”

  For his part, Dave Stewart was enthusiastic about working with one of his musical idols. “It was really like signing a record deal with the Mad Hatter,” Stewart said in his memoir, Sweet Dreams Are Made of This. “At the time Madman was the newest album, and we all adored it. It was never off our stereo. We got to hear his next album, Honky Château, before anyone else. He was an amazingly inspirational songwriter and performer. And also one of the sharpest wits I’ve ever encountered. He would always have us in hysterics by mimicking everyone from the Queen to Winston Churchill, and he could switch between the two in a nanosecond.”

  As for signing more established acts, Elton was a bit sanguine on the potential of making them Rocket artists. “We were offered Queen and Cockney Rebel [as well],” he said, “but we turned them down simply because we couldn’t afford them. We were even offered 10cc—but again, they want far too much money up front to sign with the label…[But] we want to be completely open to any type of music.”

  Hardly stopping to catch his breath, Elton launched a winter’s tour of the British Isles on February 24. He hardly minded the deep effort involved, understanding as he did just how important touring was to his overall career prosperity. “People that bring albums out have really got hardly any chance if they’re not on the road,” he said. “If you’re not on the road in England, you can’t sell your albums. That’s why people like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple sell a lot of albums. Not ‘cause they get played on the radio, but because they go out on the road and get their following.”

  Elton’s shows on English soil were notably different than the ones he gave in America. “We don’t do ‘Madman Across the Water’ on stage [in the U.K.] because it’s too drawn out,” he said. “With an American audience you can draw it out and draw it out, but with an English audience you have to hold their attention all the time. With America, they don’t mind what you do with them. In England, they really manipulate you. You can’t afford to do four slow numbers together, otherwise they get really pissed-off, whereas in America you can.”

  The pianist gave a particularly dynamic performance at the Greens Playhouse in Glasgow, Scotland, pounding the keys like a maniac behind a diamante-encrusted, pink satin-covered piano, driving the crowd to distraction. He may have even overshot the mark a bit—after the show, he found himself trapped inside the theater for several hours as a horde of frantic fans blocked all the exits. “People invade…all the time and sort of try and put their fingernails into your flesh,” he said. “I get worried sometimes because some of these girls are hulking great brutes, I tell you.”

  Promoter Peter Bowyer fought to hold the unruly mob at bay, receiving a broken ankle for his troubles. Elton finally managed to slip out of the building, only to endure a gauntlet of frantic fans. The maddened mob ripped his glasses off his face before chasing him down an alley. “I thought that the fans would rip us apart,” he said. “I don’t know what it takes for a girl to get it into her head that she must touch me. When they grab hold of you, it takes about six guys to get them off.”

  Similar scenes of pandemonium played out on subsequent nights, as Elton suddenly found himself elevated to teen idol status, alongside such glitter-dusted glam rockers as David Bowie, Slade, Marc Bolan, and Roxy Music. Hordes of frantic teenage girls now stood ten-deep at his shows, shrieking, screaming and flinging themselves brazenly onto stage for the chance to touch him for even a split second before burly bodyguards graded out of the wings to hurl them back into the overwrought throng.

  Now Elton’s a Teen Idol! Melody Maker proclaimed in a bold-type front-page headline days later. “In the fluctuating world of pop,” they noted, �
��[Elton] has made a dramatic comeback to answer the doubters. It has turned him into a teen-idol pin-up as well as a respected musician. Few artists these days can wear both crowns, and wear them with such elegance.”

  “It happens to anybody who has a hit,” Elton philosophized, “no matter if they’re the ugliest people in the world. Look at me. If they scream at me, it’s probably in horror. I’ve not got attractive features. I’m plain.”

  Sharon Lawrence, a Rocket Records publicist, disagreed, noting how on more than one occasion particularly comely backstage lasses would not only swoon over Elton—but would also spark a noticeable reaction from him. “I always felt that he could easily have married and had children—something he often said he wanted to do,” she later told author Philip Norman. “Once or twice, I tried to encourage him in that direction. I told him, ‘Don’t get stuck with choices now that you’ll regret for the rest of your life.’”

  Indeed, the pianist had given thought to marriage and children, if only in the most facile manner possible.

  “When I have a kid,” he said, “I’m going to call my little girl Umbrella. Umbrella John is a beautiful name. Poor little girl, she’ll really have the piss taken out of her. ‘Umbrella, stand over there…’”

  Elton’s father and stepmother, Stanley and Edna, came to see the first of his two performances at the Empire Theatre in Liverpool on March 2. The three met up after the show, and made plans for lunch the following day at the Dwight home.

  Elton arrived at noon in a bone-white Rolls, and dined on a home cooked meal of roast chicken and apple pie à la mode. He sang a few songs at the family piano, then played soccer with his half-brothers in the front yard, the four of them laughing easily. Conversation with his father proved a bit less natural, however. “There was…an awkwardness there,” Elton said. “It was just two people who just didn’t know how to gel together…It’s just a missed opportunity for two people to not have more love between each other.”