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

by David DeCouto

  The program proper ended with “Your Song.” Before performing the emotional serenade, Elton told his audience, “I got interviewed on the news tonight, and I looked like a pregnant coalminer—in fact, I am a pregnant coalminer—and I said I was petrified, and that’s not too far off from the truth. Because it’s very rarely that I get the chance to do one of these things, and usually, as I said, most people are drunk, so it doesn’t matter, but tonight was a rare occasion…But it’s good to get the jitters, ‘cause sometimes you can take things for granted. And I never took you for granted tonight, and I want to thank you very much.”

  As “Your Song’s” final E-flat rang throughout the hall, the pianist modestly bowed and left the stage, only to be brought back for an encore. Shaking hands at the front of the stage, he handed out bottles of Coca-Cola and tomato juice from the antique drinks cabinet onstage.

  As he prepared to launch into his first encore, he spilled a splash of Bloody Mary on his keyboard.

  “Oh shit, hang on,” he said, running a hand up the keys to clean them off before remembering that his performance was being beamed out live. “Oh, I beg your pardon, radio listeners.” He laughed. “Never mind, I’m sure you’ve heard worse than that. Give me another drink and I’ll say worse myself. I’m gonna try to do something, [but] it’s very hard, y’know—as the Bishop said to the actress.”

  With that, he tore into a blistering “Island Girl,” which incorporated generous passages from “The Bitch is Back.”

  After taking his leave, Elton was soon called back for a second encore. He was truly moved, and truly at a loss.

  “I was there at the show,” Henry Scott-Irvine said. “It was an incredible concert to be at, and the crowd…a good Edinburgh crowd really gets into it. So they were standing for quite a lot of the show, and when he played a song they really liked, everyone would stamp their feet as well as applaud. You could hear the whole theater literally resounding with applause that night. It was overwhelming.”

  “Now I don’t know what to do,” Elton admitted to the overheated crowd, “‘cause I’ve only rehearsed that much.” He thought for a moment. “I’m gonna try something that’s gonna be quite out of the ordinary and mad and totally ridiculous. I haven’t rehearsed it, so you’ll have to help."

  “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” came rolling breezily off his piano keys, the audience gleefully singing counterpoint.

  “Alright,” Elton huffed afterward. “Lunacy prevails on this evening.” He stared out into the darkened recesses of the cheering crowd. “I’ve had an effing great time. Thank you very much...But most of all, I’d like to say how pissed I am. How pissed I am to be on the stage.” He held up his glass. “No, really, this is pure tomato juice. I’m willing to go to the lab. I’m willing to be given the green breathalyzer test...”

  Tearing into a turbulent “Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting),” Elton ended up atop his piano, the entire hall clapping along to an imaginary beat. When a tartan scarf landed at the pianist’s feet, he tied it bandana-style around his head, leapt off the piano, and fell to his knees before his keyboard, finishing the song in the grandest of styles.

  The crowd rose for one final standing ovation as Elton handed his piano bench to a star-struck girl in the front row.

  “I like to share things,” he later explained. “It’s not easy when you’re that big a megastar. When you look at 70,000 people, how the fuck can you share things? That’s another thing that depressed me on the last tour. It suddenly struck me it was like a Nuremburg rally.”

  Despite surviving the evening unscathed, the pianist couldn’t foresee many more solo shows in his future. “One-man shows are boring,” he declared. “I’ll never do that again. I mean, who wants to see one guy up there for two-and-a-half hours?”

  The Rolling Stone issue featuring Elton’s interview with Cliff Jahr hit the newsstands weeks later. While the cover showed the pianist in a wholesome striped sweater featuring soccer players battling it out on the pitch, the headline luridly promised: “Elton’s Frank Talk: The Lonely Life of a Superstar.”

  The interview had tectonic ramifications. In the socially conservative United States of 1976—where the Center for Disease Control still listed homosexuality as an aberrant mental disorder—Elton’s admission of bisexuality had an immediately chilling effect on his career. Overnight, his records stopped selling in the massive quantities that they always had; the near-saturation-level radio-play that his songs routinely enjoyed also came to an abrupt halt. In a matter of days, Elton went from celebrated media darling to a mere foreigner with dubious leanings. Someone to be suspected. Somebody different.

  16 Magazine, a glossy publication filled with soft-focus “exposés” on teen heartthrobs like Leif Garret, David Cassidy and the Bay City Rollers, had long made Elton their favored point of focus. As often as not, he could be seen gracing their covers beside such animated headlines as “The Truth About Elton!” and “Elton—Hot Secrets!” Once his admission of bisexuality became public fodder, the magazine quickly and decisively dropped him from their pages without a word of explanation.

  More ominously, Elton’s records were ritualistically burned in public bonfires throughout the culturally-conservative American South. This reaction was perhaps best summed up by a letter-to-the-editor that appeared in a follow-up issue of Rolling Stone, where a young girl from Provo, Utah wrote: “As a highly devoted Elton John fan, I regret being needlessly informed that my “hero” is bisexual. The effect is shattering. He needn’t have revealed his moral midgetness. I regret facing the fact that he is a gross perverter of the sacred (ignorance was bliss). Luckily, his decrepit morality hasn’t affected his musical abilities, although it may take an exercise in “separating the man from the music” to enjoy him again. My disgust is matched only by my disappointment, while both are overshadowed by pity; I pity him for his sexual illusions and perversions.”

  Elton could only laugh.

  “America’s supposed to be the great liberated free-minded society—which, of course, it isn’t,” he said. “Everyone goes: ‘Peace and love, man,’ but it’ll never happen because hatred is rammed into kids by their parents, and hate makes much more money…People burnt my records. But you know what? It was a very small price to pay for the freedom that it gave me…[And] to be honest, I don’t believe that I’m one-hundred percent gay, because I’m attracted to older women and I can’t dismiss that side of my character.”

  The fallout in Britain was noticeably less severe than it had been in the States. “I found that when I was driving around London, I got far more waves from taxi drivers and lorry drivers than I ever had before,” Elton joked.

  Despite the career-shifting power the interview exerted, the pianist harbored no ill feelings toward Cliff Jahr. “It was a great interview. [Jahr] was one-hundred percent fair…Nobody’s had the balls to ask me about it before. I would have said something all along if someone had asked me, but I’m not going to come out and say something just to be [outrageous].” He sighed. “I don’t want to shove it all over the front pages like some people I could mention.”

  While glam rockers like Mick Jagger and David Bowie had playfully toyed with their images—leveraging androgynously bisexual mystiques in a bid to increase their artistic credibility—no universally adored personality such as Elton had ever dared make such a blunt admission of their sexuality. It was, at the time, a monumental revelation. Recognizing this, his friends rallied around him for support. “I’m sure it was a great relief to him once the article was printed,” Kiki Dee said. “It was typical of him to follow his instincts, even if what he said was potentially risky.” Rod Stewart, however, was less certain. “I saw him at his lowest ebb after he did [that] interview. I think that was probably a turning point in his career, too, but he won’t admit that. I still can’t see why he said that.”

  The day after the Rolling Stone issue hit the stands, Elton was due to fly up to Manchester to attend Watfor
d’s game at Rochdale.

  “My mother was up with me,” he later recalled, “and she came into the hotel bedroom with all the Saturday papers: ‘Bisexual Elton Said…’ She said, ‘Have a look at this then!’ I thought, ‘Oh my God’…I’d expected it to come out, but on a Saturday morning when I’m going to meet the team? And I walked into the hotel in Manchester, and the then-manager, Mike King, came out and said, ‘Listen, we’ve seen the papers. What you do with your life is your own business’…They handled it superbly. British people do.”

  Some British people did. That afternoon, a frigid, gray Saturday, saw thousands of Rochdale supporters singing, “Don’t sit down while Elton’s around, or you’ll get a penis up your arse!” to the British tune “My Old Man (Said Follow the Van)” as the pianist appeared near the Watford bench. Later, with the match well underway, they began chanting, “Elton John’s a homosexual!” to the tune of “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah.”

  Elton simply nodded.

  “They’re doing it to test you out. And if you get uptight about it, that’s the wrong thing to do. It’s been very hard for me, but I’ve sat there and grinned and borne it, and it’s taught me a lot about dignity.”

  Amidst all the controversy, Gus was as busy as ever, recording overdubs and creating final mixes for Elton’s upcoming album at Marquee Studios in Soho.

  “The plan was to mix the Canadian tracks into a solid single [album],” the producer said. “But then I made the mistake of letting it slip at this luncheon I was attending with some of the MCA brass that we’d actually recorded enough material for a double album. They immediately rang up John Reid, and next thing I knew, I was back in England mixing a double album instead of a single. It was a great shame.”

  Many of the songs which Gus had already planned on scrapping—including “Shoulder Holster,” “Boogie Pilgrim” and “Where’s the Shoorah?”—were suddenly reinstated. Particularly painful was the restoration of “The Wide-Eyed and Laughing,” a track the producer openly loathed. “Sitars for bloody years, that one” he said. “Crosby and Nash [sang] backup on it. Crosby was such an unbelievable asshole, so, hey—not my favorite [song].”

  Gus purposefully sequenced “Bite Your Lip (Get Up and Dance)” as the album’s final track, as a subtle protest to its “ninety-five-year fadeout.”

  “One does what one can,” he said. “End of story.”

  The producer invited the Captain & Tennille to the studio one day to allow them into his work process as he created final mixes. “We were in England, Daryl and I, doing this special for the BBC,” Toni Tennille said. “So we went into the studio and it was so loud that my chest was rattling, my ears were burning. I went, ‘Oh my God, how can this man still hear?’ He told me later on that day that his theory for getting the best mix was to listen to it so loud that it would start to hurt his ears, and then he would turn it down just until it was sort of comfortable, and that’s how he would mix, at that level.”

  Assisting Gus at Marquee was lead engineer Phil Dunne and a trainee engineer named Gary Bremner. It was Bremner’s job to set up the studio pre-session, and de-rig it afterward. “It was a tough job at times, with little financial reward or thanks,” he said, “but you knew that a queue would quickly form to take your place if you left, as you were right in the center of the heartbeat of the music industry, working and meeting with some of the biggest stars in the business—both behind and in front of the microphone.”

  It was of particular reward to the novice engineer that he was able to observe one of the most highly-respected producers in the industry up-close.

  “Gus was a larger-than-life character that would arrive at the studio in his chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce, and he wore a long floor-length fur coat,” Bremner said. “He had this amazing presence and energy that was infectious, and he brought such an enthusiasm to his work. He had a clear idea of what he wanted, and was an absolute perfectionist. With Gus, there was no second best—he strove for the highest standards. He was charming and daunting at the same time, and he’d play the mixing desk like it was a collection of instruments and he was the conductor. The faders were manually operated, and it would not be long before the mixing desk was a myriad of [hieroglyphic-like] level marks and masking tape, each marker delicately inscribed and notated. Each had its own special role to play in the overall produced sound that Gus wanted, and that he created.”

  The track that perhaps left the most indelible impression upon Bremner was “One Horse Town.” “The studio control room was rocking on that one,” he said. “It took forever to mix, but it was a roller coaster ride of adrenalin and emotion. Gus spent hours setting up the sound balances for the drums, building his music up from the foundations of his drum sound, bass, and rhythm guitars. Those were the building blocks. If they were all in sync, then he would add vocals and other instruments, like he was an artist adding colors to a painting. And Elton’s band was so tight—so on-point—that no one could afford to miss anything the guys were playing. The drum sound on ‘One Horse Town’ in particular was sensational. Roger Pope was on fire when it was recorded. [There was] no digital tech then, it was all [done] on magnetic tapes and an MCI Desk, and—I can tell you—when we mixed this track the studio monitors were rocking their socks off. Hearing Roger Popes drum patterns pan from left to right across the studio was just incredible, because—even with all the other instruments and vocals in perfect balance with each other—his drum sound still came through so clearly and defined. I’ve never heard a better drum sound before or since. In fact, ‘One Horse Town’ is still my all-time favorite track of Elton’s. It has such energy and build to it, and Roger’s drumming was world-class throughout. It’s timeless, and—in my opinion—will never age.”

  Bremner was equally as impressed with the talent and gentlemanliness of percussionist Ray Cooper, who turned up at the studio one day to overdub some bongo drums on “Crazy Water.” “Gus asked him to go listen to the track and fill in where he felt. Within minutes, he was playing these amazing patterns that just brought the whole track to life. He was an incredible percussionist. What I remember most about him, however, was the fact that he was so down-to-earth and such a nice guy. One lunchtime, Gus and everybody disappeared for a meal and I was left on my own in the studio. Ray came into the control room and I told him everyone had gone out to a certain restaurant. He asked why I hadn’t gone, and I said I had not been invited. He then said, ‘Well, in that case, we will both go out and have a pint and a sandwich together, if you are up for it.’ So I spent the next hour in the corner of this small pub in Soho sipping a pint and chatting away with one of the world’s most talented percussionists. No one had a clue who he was, and he didn’t care a jot.”

  Forty-eight hours after the Sex Pistols signed a record deal with EMI, portending a seismic shift in the landscape of popular music, “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word,” was released as the leadoff single from Elton’s upcoming LP. Entitled Blue Moves, Elton’s first long-playing offering to come out on his own Rocket Records label (which now featured a sleeker corporate logo of an angular train slicing determinedly through the countryside), had been amended at the last minute from the bleaker working title of Black Moves. Backed with “Shoulder Holster,” the 45 peaked at Number 11 in the U.K., and—on Christmas Day—at Number 6 in America. It was another hit for Elton, his fourteenth Billboard Top 10 single in four years. “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word” would go on to sell over a million units in its three-month residency in Billboard’s Hot 100, technically becoming Elton’s first Platinum single, as the Platinum certification had only recently been instated by the RIAA.

  As Blue Moves was being readied for the shops, Bernie promised “up-tempo disco stompers, Bob Marley-type tracks, Spinners-type tracks, [and] a few instrumentals. There’s a lot of very downer songs, too—suicide material—but good at the same time.”

  Days later, on October 22, a Blue Moves launch party at a Savile Row art gallery heralded the disc’s re
lease. Elton’s debut on his own Rocket Records label, the LP went Gold in less than a month, though it only managed to reach Number 3 on either side of the Atlantic. His first collection of new material since 1971’s Madman Across the Water to stall out before the top spot in the States, the sepulchral song cycle was—at 84:47—the longest studio album Elton ever delivered, besting Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by a good eight-and-a-half minutes.

  Though Gus was displeased at having been forced to artificially extend the album’s length, he was at least content to the see the recording officially finalized in vinyl. “There’s something very strange about making records,” he said. “It isn’t until you get a bit of black plastic in your hand and you hear it on the radio that you actually believe you’ve made a record. While it’s still a tape and it goes around [in the studio], it doesn’t really appear to be what it is.”

  It was an all-too-common phenomenon for an album that was, paradoxically, unique in nearly every way. Gone was the accessible iconography that helped delineate Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player and Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. Gone too were the pinup portraits featured so heavily on Caribou and Rock of the Westies. Instead, Blue Moves’ cover featured a reproduction of Patrick Procktor’s “The Guardian Readers,” an impressionistic blue-on-blue enamel showing a group of men lounging in a park in various stages of undress. “I bought [the canvas] without realizing it was all blokes,” Elton said. “It fitted the mood of the album exactly. People said I should have a picture of me on the front, but I’ve had enough of those. I put me little food down. And then The Sun were going to use the album as contest prizes and they rang us up to say they couldn’t do it because of the painting. Silly, isn’t it?”