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

  On April 19, Elton sang a live vocal on “Border Song” over a prerecorded backing track, per the shows rigid formatting rules.

  Despite the exposure Top of the Pops afforded, the pianist was left dissatisfied with the artificial feel of the program. “I’d really like to do a couple of gigs a week, because that’s how you sell yourself to people,” he said. “[But] Top of the Pops doesn’t really give anybody an idea of what you can do. In fact, it gives them a totally wrong impression.”

  Elton would view the broadcast the next night at the DJM offices, sweating nervously as he watched himself performing on Dick James’ rarest of possessions—a color television.

  “So that’s me then, eh?” he joked, wiping at his brow. “What a con.”

  Immediately following the broadcast, Elton and his new band cabbed it over to the Roundhouse, a soot-covered train shed in Chalk Farm, to play the first night of a “musical fair.” Hosted by popular BBC disc jockey John Peel, the six-night event also boasted a host of other groups including Mott the Hoople, Johnny Winger (“From America!”), Fairport Convention and Fleetwood Mac.

  Elton, Nigel and Dee opened for the Marc Bolan-led folk-rock group Tyrannosaurus Rex, who lent Elton’s group their amplifiers and drum kit for their set.

  A tremendously nervous, vodka-breathed Elton walked onto stage wearing a heavy afghan overcoat, which he hesitantly removed before sitting down to play.

  Starting with an elegiac reading of “Skyline Pigeon,” Elton was soon thrashing the keyboards with a rhythmic chord style reminiscent of his latest musical hero, Leon Russell.

  “It was a terrific gig,” Dee said. “We really gave it to them. We were on fire.”

  The set ended with the as-yet-unreleased “Burn Down the Mission.” During the song’s climax, Elton kicked his piano stool away and began playing standing up. Leaping about, whacking a tambourine against his ass in time with Nigel’s propulsive backbeat, completely losing his mind.

  “Halfway through ‘Burn Down the Mission’, he stopped playing the piano and stood up and got hold of a tambourine and started banging it on his ass,” Stuart Epps said. “I couldn’t look, I had to look away. I thought, ‘What the fuck is he doing?’ Because he never used to do that before. He used to just sit there and play and talk to the audience a bit, but not really. And now suddenly he’s up there banging this tambourine around, and I couldn’t look. But the audience started to like it, and they’re all clapping along and it was alright, they were obviously loving it. And that’s when Elton developed into a showman. I mean, I’m sure that side of him was always there, but he’d never shown it before.”

  Mounting hysteria erupted as the patchouli oil-scented, ganja-basted crowd pushed themselves bodily against the stage.

  “It was unbelievable,” Nigel said afterward. “People couldn’t believe that the three of us made that kind of sound.”

  With the band proving itself a more than reliable unit, Elton attempted to free himself from his current contract. “Reg didn’t feel like Dick James was backing him properly,” Caleb said. “Dick wouldn’t approve any of the songs we were doing. Elton tried to get out of his contract. He went to see Muff Winwood, Steve Winwood’s brother, over at Island Records. Muff offered to buy-out Elton’s contract, but the price wasn’t right and Dick James said no. Elton was furious. He felt trapped.”

  Undeterred, Elton decided to forge a managerial relationship with the man who’d introduced him to Bernie.

  “I was living near Chelsea,” Ray Williams said. “And Elton came to me with Bernie and he said, ‘Let’s have a drink.’ And we went to the Duke of Wellington in Chester Row, Belgravia. And Elton said, ‘I would like you to manage me.’ He was fed up that Dick James had signed him to every imaginable contract there was, but Dick didn’t really seem to understand what he had. So Elton said, ‘Would you be my manager? Dick James would sell my management contract if he could get some money.’ And I said, ‘I’ve got no money, however I’ll try to find someone with some money.’ So I started looking around, trying to find a money partner. The first person I tried was John French…who managed Jeff Beck. I then went to my friend Brian Morrison. Originally the agent of Pink Floyd, Brian was now working for NEMS, the old Beatles’ manager’s Brian Epstein’s company, and was run by former band leader Vic Lewis.” Despite his best efforts to buy out Dick James’ interest in Elton, he ultimately found no takers. “Vic said to me, ‘Are you serious that this guy is going to earn seventy-five-thousand-dollars a year?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘You’ve got to be joking.’ And the meeting was ended. Nonetheless, Brian Morrison came with me to meet Dick James, but they didn’t get on very well.”

  Appreciating Williams’ conviction, Dick James signed him to a three-year contract on May 11 to manage Elton’s growing daily affairs. The deal allowed Williams to split a twenty percent management fee with James himself, as well as earning himself a weekly salary of £40, plus a biweekly advance on expenses of £10.

  Williams’ first official action was to oversee Elton’s May 22 appearance on a 13-part BBC-2 In Concert television series which featured performances from different singer/songwriters each episode. “They’ve got such people as Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell,” Elton said, “so I was really knocked out when I was asked to do one as well.”

  Wearing a light orange shirt, a red, white and blue knitted vest, and sky-blue jeans—his ginger hair hanging down to his shoulders—Elton gave a subdued performance while Paul Buckmaster dutifully conducted a small compliment of string players behind him. Several dozen hushed teens watched on politely from the bleachers, providing restrained applause for a set list which included “Your Song,” “Border Song,” “Sixty Years On,” “Take Me to the Pilot,” “The Greatest Discovery,” “I Need You to Turn To” and “Burn Down the Mission.”

  “[The audience] were sitting on little cushions,” Paul Buckmaster said. “It was meant to be informal, but actually it sort of comes across a bit stiff and stilted. But that’s the BBC. They were trying to be ‘groovy, baby.’” Despite the forced casualness, the arranger/conductor found the show to be a nerve-wracking experience. “It was the first time I had ever done anything like that,” he said, “and I was thrown in at the deep end. You either sink or swim. I think I managed to swim…You’re generally nervous before the event, but once you start you go into a professional mode. It takes over, and the next thing you know is that it’s over and there’s applause and you say, ‘Oh, what happened in the middle?’ You’re at a different consciousness level.”

  A quarter way through the performance, Elton introduced Bernie, who sat shyly in the front row.

  “He’s my partner,” the pianist said as his blushing lyricist gave a quick wave. “Actually he’s more important than me, because he writes the words.”

  The show would air to indifferent reviews a month later, under the banal title: In Concert: Elton John Sings the Songs of Elton John and Bernie Taupin.

  Elton hired a lone roadie, Bob Stacey, between a headlining gig at the Marquee Club on Friday, June 5, and a support slot at the Lyceum in London on June 17—the latter a gig where he and his band found themselves opening for Santana on their sole London appearance for the year. Though the Santana show proved a bit of a musical mismatch, it was quickly becoming apparent that Elton showed a natural affinity for being the center of attention. “Once I started [touring], I really enjoyed it,” he said. “Because I’d never been a front-man before, I’d just been the piano player, so in fact I was in charge.”

  The band seemed to be gaining confidence exponentially each night as well.

  “It’s fantastic how enjoyable it is, amazing what we can do,” Dee said. “Often during a set I’ll be enjoying it so much that I’ll want to have a laugh with Nigel. I’ll turn round and take a look at him, and he’ll be working all over the place. I couldn’t imagine how much [playing together has] improved our playing, plus the fact that Elton’s music contains so much feeling.”


  Midway through this first makeshift tour, Elton’s first non-album single of the decade, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Madonna,” was released, on June 19. Backed with the terse lunacy of “Grey Seal,” the single received glowing reviews, with the Daily Sketch proclaiming, “As a singer/songwriter, [Elton] is emerging as one of the most fascinating new talents around.” Record Mirror’s Robert Partridge, meanwhile, asserted that Elton “is probably Britain’s first real answer to Neil Young and Van Morrison.” Perhaps the most positive notice of all, however, was posted by the International Times, which stated that “Elton John shares the distinction of creating music which strikes that rare balance between brilliance and honest originality.”

  Yet for all the accolades, the finely constructed single failed to chart.

  Despite Elton’s natural affinity for performing, many early gigs still proved a trial by fire. Unable to bring his own piano with him, he was forced to rely on the whims of fate at each gig. Some nights he played on pianos with busted keys. Other nights, his instrument would be sorely out-of-tune. One piano rested on orange crates; another had no pedals.

  Though Elton was able to roll with the punches, the unpredictability of the entire endeavor added to his writing partner’s nerves. Each night Bernie could be found watching Elton anxiously from the wings, a bottle of Courvoisier in hand. “I was always nervous when Elton played,” he said. “I lived vicariously through him going onstage. Because he didn’t have any paranoia, I had it all for him.”

  “Before I go onstage, [Bernie] sort of loses a handful of hair, he goes gray,” Elton joked to disc jockey Pete Fornatale. “He’s really a shivering wreck. By the time I come offstage, he’s lost five stone."

  Fortitude—and fortunes—seemed to brighten considerably when Elton’s band scored a plum support slot on Sérgio Mendes & Brazil 66’s European tour. “They aren’t exactly my scene,” Elton said of the Brazilian musician, famous for bossa nova-flavored covers of such light pop fare as “The Fool on the Hill” and “Scarborough Fair.” “So I just hope the audiences will accept us both. On the Continent, they are inclined to mix up the bills.”

  Things didn’t go well opening night at the Olympia in Paris. The crowd hated Elton from the outset, and were soon hurling cigarette packages and bits of hot dog at him and his band. “We got booed before we even got on stage and people chucked things at us, but we played for forty-five minutes and played bloody well,” he said. “And I went offstage and I went, ‘Well, obviously Sérgio Mendes fans don’t like me.’ And then Sérgio Mendes went onstage and everyone went, ‘Boooo!’” He chuckled. “Merci beaucoup.”

  Blaming Elton for his own poor reception, Mendes severed ties with him that night, paying the pianist £60 to not complete the tour.

  Things went infinitely better at the Speakeasy Club in London on July 4, when ex-Yardbirds blues maestro Jeff Beck turned up in the audience for Elton’s set.

  “I went through managers like a dose of salts at that time,” Beck said, “and one of them put me on to Elton, and took me to the Speakeasy to see him play.”

  The guitarist was impressed with what he saw. After the show, he approached Elton and asked if he could join his band. “I was very adamant about no guitars,” Elton said, “but it was Jeff Beck and I was little Elton John.” After consulting with Nigel and Dee, he invited Beck to their rehearsal at Hampstead Town Hall the next day.

  “I turned up late and [Elton] gave me a terrible roasting,” Beck said.

  Still, he fitted in perfectly with the power trio. Despite his initial wariness, Elton grew excited, noting that “[Beck] was fine. He played very quietly and very tastefully.” But it wasn’t long before he and the blues guitarist found themselves at loggerheads. “[Beck] said, ‘Well, I’m sorry, but I want to throw out your drummer [for Cozy Powell],’ and I made it plain that he was going to meet with violent opposition from me. And then he wanted to employ me, he wanted me to come and do a tour of the States and pay me money to be in his band, ten percent of what he was going to earn, and the original idea was for him to join our band. Sod Jeff Beck.”

  During a brief lull in club dates, Elton entered Sound Techniques Studios—a converted barn in Chelsea—to participate in a session held by folk-rock producer Joe Boyd. Boyd’s plan was to create austere versions of the most commercial tracks from his stable of songwriters—which included Nick Drake, Mike Heron, John and Beverly Martin, and Ed Carter—to leverage as a promotional demo disc for Warlock Music.

  Playing alongside Traffic drummer Jim Capaldi, guitarist Simon Nicol, and bassist Pat Donaldson, Elton recorded eleven songs live, including “Way to Blue” and “Day is Done.” Four of the tracks were then sung by a nervous Linda Peters, girlfriend of acclaimed guitarist/singer Richard Thompson, while the remaining seven tracks were handled by Elton.

  “Reg stood out at the sessions,” Joe Boyd said. “Around the time we did that session, his album, Elton John, was being released, and I was impressed with it. And there were people talking about it. So you had the feeling already at that moment that this was a guy who wasn’t going to be doing union-scale demo sessions for too much longer. He had a lot confidence, and a lot of talent.”

  During the session, Elton was introduced to arranger Del Newman, who would later orchestrate his magnum opus, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. “He was very quiet and polite, and he just got on with the task as all professionals do,” Newman later recalled in his memoir, A Touch From God. “Elton sailed through the work…He had a command of the material that was a delight to witness, and the calm way he approached the session told me that he had a great future ahead of him.”

  The fortuitous meeting with the arranger was a singular highlight for Elton in an otherwise unexceptional session.

  “I needed the money,” he said. “So I did it.”

  Also done for monetary reasons was a gig in Belgium on July 11 called the Knokke Festival. A lavish televised rock competition, the winning entrant proved to be none other than “Portrait van Elton John.”

  Nigel and Dee couldn’t stop laughing.

  “Who had any idea?” Dee said. “The Belgians were fucking great.”

  Chapter 3:

  Bad Side of the Moon

  While Elton and his band were scurrying around Europe in circles of ceaseless motion, the Elton John album was quietly released in America, on July 22.

  As was the case in the U.K., the disc sold poorly. Still, reviews were fairly positive. A typical notice was posted by the Village Voice’s Robert Christgau, who noted that the album offered “at least one great lyric (about a newborn baby brother), several nice romantic ballads (I don’t like its affected offhandedness, but ‘Your Song’ is an instant standard), and a surprising complement of memorable tracks.” Cash Box, meanwhile, labeled the disc “one of the two or three most beautiful albums released this year.” Al Kooper, Bob Dylan’s organist—and the founder of Blood, Sweat & Tears—deemed the album “the perfect record.” Rolling Stone, however, was unimpressed: “The main problem with Elton John is that one has to wade through so much damn fluff to get to Elton John. Here, by the sound of it, arranger Paul Buckmaster’s rather pompous orchestra was spliced in as an afterthought.”

  Despite Rolling Stones’ disgruntled reaction, Gus was rightfully proud of his team’s first effort. “The idea of taking a rhythm section and an orchestra and doing them live at the same time, with the kind of classical overtones within Elton’s piano playing and the Buckmaster arrangements on that album, added up to something completely unique,” he said. “It was unquestionably one of the most unique albums ever made in the history of pop.”

  Elton and his band were dispatched to the storm-ravaged English countryside on Friday, August 14, to play the Yorkshire Folk, Blues, and Jazz Festival in Krumlin. A poorly-organized, weekend-long gala plagued by severe rain and high winds, the festival—which was scheduled to begin at 3 p.m.—didn’t get underway until well after seven, due to torrential rains and bad d
riving conditions. The festival then suffered further delays when the bands on the bill couldn’t agree on who should go on first.

  Ominously, the canvas roof above the stage tore open before the show even began, allowing gallons of cold rain to pour down on the performers. Those out in the frozen fields fared no better.

  “They were carting the audience away with exposure,” said Fairport Convention’s Richard Thompson. “Everyone was dressed in those bin-liner things. It was great fun.”

  Elton ultimately took to the stage just after eight o’clock, following an opening set by the Humblebums, which featured Scottish singer Gerry Rafferty and musician-comedian Billy Connolly.

  Kicking things off with a blazing “Bad Side of the Moon,” Dee strummed out combustible chords on his bass while Nigel bashed his Premiere kit with primal anguish, breaking drumstick after drumstick.

  “Nigel suggested we try moving about on stage,” Elton said. “I realized that if I jumped about, not caring about what I was doing, then at least I’d keep my ass warm. I’ve always been into Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard and all, so I started jumping about, not even really knowing what I was doing.”

  The frigid conditions helped take his performance at the Roundhouse and multiply it by a factor of ten, and the appreciative crowd cheered him on without reserve.

  “They really went nuts,” Dee said. “It was great to see.”

  Toward the end of an energetic hour-long set—which had the entire field clapping along enthusiastically—the pianist passed out a bottle of Bernie’s Courvoisier and a stack of plastic cups to the front lines of the 2,000 rain-soaked festival-goers huddled close in the frozen Yorkshire Moors.