Elton John
Keyboard Magazine, February 1981
My girlfriend and I met up in London during the summer of 1970. My brother, who lived there with our family, was an ideal tour guide, accompanying us as we sought out the best live music we could find. When Santana was announced at the Lyceum, we made sure to get there early. As usual, we were ready to endure the opening acts before getting to the headliner. On this particular night, one of those acts was someone new to me: a piano player and singer who called himself Elton John.
After watching his set, my date was breathless. “This guy is amazing,” she declared. “We’re gonna hear a lot from him.” I waved her off, a little condescending. “Nah,” I responded. “He’s just a Jerry Lee Lewis wannabe,” once again proving why the recording industry should count its blessings I never worked in A&R.
The very next day my brother Andy and I were riding the tube, on our way to somewhere in town. At one stop we noticed Elton’s bass player, Dee Murray, boarding. So we introduced ourselves and started a conversation. Of course I complimented him on his performance the night before and asked if the plans were for Elton to continue as a somewhat derivative rock piano pounder, in much more circumspect language than that.
“Oh, no,” he replied. “You should check out the album we just released. It’s called Elton John and it’s really different. It's got real strings on it!”
Before heading back to the States a few weeks later, I did listen to the whole record, including the tracks with real strings — “Your Song,” “Border Song,” “I Need You To Turn To” – and knew at once that my girlfriend had heard something I missed at the Lyceum: the excellence of Elton’s writing and how it lends itself to treatments far beyond the trio format. More broadly, the experience taught me an important lesson: Don’t trust your first impressions. Listen deeper, listen longer. You might be surprised.
About a decade later, I found myself in one of Elton John’s three Los Angeles mansions, where we prepared our interview for Keyboard. Elton was relaxed in a robe and sandals, looking as if he’d just showered. After talking about what our readers wanted to hear from him, we took our seats – Elton on a chair, me on a white leather couch. Because I’d had battery issues on a previous interview, I had brought a power cord with me and asked if I could plug it in somewhere before we began. He agreed and asked me to hand him the plug.
Then, muttering “I think there’s an outlet back here,” he thrust the couch somewhat aside and started burrowing around behind it. For a few seconds, his rear end pointed up toward where I was standing as he dug. Then his housekeeper entered the room, laughed and exclaimed “What are you doing down there, Mr. John?”
This was my intro to Elton’s intensity, whether recording masterful albums way under budget and ahead of schedule or finding a socket for a reporter’s recorder. Having achieved his mission, he turned his attention back to me, his hair a bit mussed but otherwise completely at ease. “Fire away,” he said.
We did a lot of chatting that day. This being for Keyboard, I transcribed mainly the piano-related stuff; many other bases were touched, but that content is lost, unfortunately. Since that day, I’ve made it a point to transcribe everything, whether germane or not.
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You’ve said that you had always considered yourself to be primarily a pianist. Is that still how you see yourself?
Well, I consider myself a much better singer now than I used to be. It’s gradually coming together. But I suppose I consider myself mostly a pianist. I mean, when you’re onstage you try to sing the right notes, but you also have to hit the right chords. When I first recorded as a singer, it was because no one was recording [co-writer Bernie Taupin] Bernie’s and my songs, and somebody just suddenly pushed me into a studio and said, “You can do it.” “Lady Samantha” [a single released in 1969] was the first really decent record I ever made as a singer. When I was in a semi-professional band I hardly used to sing at all. I knew I could sing — I always used to sing in the bath and things like that — but I had to be pushed into doing it on Empty Sky, and then I was pushed into getting a band together to go out on the road and sell the record. Everything was sort of an accident, a falling into place. So right now I’m probably fifty-fifty as a pianist and singer, although there was a time when I would concentrate on my playing rather than my singing.
Is that one reason why you did a solo piano tour back in 1979, accompanied only by Ray Cooper on percussion? To work on achieving that fifty-fifty balance?
That was done mainly to get me back into playing live. I never really thought I’d go back on the road after having come off of it in 1976. I had enjoyed everything we did on that tour. I had really good bands and very rarely played bad concerts. But I felt I was a little stale, both singing-wise and piano-wise, because the last thing I was thinking about onstage was singing and playing. I was thinking instead, “Can they hear the band? Are the monitors right? Is the lighting right? Is the audience getting beaten up?” Everything was becoming a little mechanical, so I decided to try a little tour of Europe, doing a couple of solo concerts in England and another one with Ray Cooper. Of course, when you go out alone you have to play and sing the right bloody notes, so I concentrated real hard and I actually enjoyed the discipline, every single minute of it. Throughout the 125 gigs I did in 1979 I never got fed up, not with one of them, because without a band you’re free to extemporize whenever you want, within certain limits, when you’ve got Ray onstage with you. There was no real framework, which was quite exciting. It also gave me my confidence back as a musician. I had become lazy. After ’76 I didn’t want to see another piano. The solo tour was the only thing that could have gotten me back into touring.
Well, what actually brought me back was when I came to Los Angeles to do some tracks for the 21 At 33 album. I played again with Dee [Murray, bassist] and Nigel [Olsson, drummer]. There was a certain magic. It was like never having been away. We had been the only piano, bass and drums trio on the road in the early Seventies, I think, and I thought, “Right, you’re 33. Let’s get the band together for a few years, give it one more shot and see how it goes.”
Looking back, do you think your trio in the early Seventies helped usher in the keyboard upsurge that followed in rock music?
Well, I sort of arrived at the same time as the Carole King album Tapestry, which probably had more to do with it than I did. I’m trying to think of other piano, bass and drum acts, and there weren’t any then. There was Emerson, Lake & Palmer, which was mainly organ, and there was Lee Michaels, which was just organ and drums.
Not much piano, though.
No, and that probably had something to do with our popularity. When we came to [Los Angeles venue] The Troubadour the first time, people honestly thought that because of the Elton John album I was going to come out with an orchestra! Then when we came out and played rock ’n’ roll, everyone just went, “Huh?” Then afterwards they said, “We didn’t expect that,” even though I’ve always been a rock ’n’ roll player. I don’t know how much of a new thing I was, because back in ’70 I’d been influenced by Leon Russell, The Band and people like that. They were already around. It’s just that in the Seventies a whole lot of people who played the piano came up, like Billy Joel, Steve Bishop and loads of others.
Is it hard to reproduce the full flavor of those orchestral songs when you play them live?
No, it’s much easier, because I’m able to pay more attention to Bernie's lyrics than I had done in the past. Also, you don’t have all the problems. It’s much easier to mike the piano. It was an absolute bonus for Clive Franks, who produces my records and has been doing my sound for the last six or seven years, because he was able to concentrate much more on the piano and vocal sound than when you’ve got six people onstage.
The Perfect Piano
Did you carry your own piano on the road?
I always do, yes. It’s the old nine-foot Steinway, the same one I’ve had for five or six years now.
Are you a Steinway artist?
No. They’ve been most unhelpful in placing ads and things like that. They don’t really need to have anybody advertising there; they’re like Rolls-Royce in that respect. I play Steinway because I’ve gotten used to the piano, but I’ve also played great Yamahas and the best piano I’ve ever played on is a Bösendorfer Imperial. That’s my favorite. It’s incredible. That’s what I used on Tumbleweed.
How long does it take you to decide whether you can work with a particular piano?
I think that when you first sit down at a piano, within a minute you can tell whether you’re going to like it because of the tone quality. But the action is really more important to me. The piano I have now has been doctored so much that the action is ridiculous. It’s just like an electric piano.
How so?
It’s real fast. The action on it now is absolutely incredible. But when you buy a Steinway I think you have to live with it a couple of years to let it settle down. I knew it was a great piano to start with, but it’s a question of easing into them when they’re brand new. Like any instrument, they can be temperamental sometimes. If you’re a guitarist you’ve got to have your one guitar, but for pianists I think it’s even more important to have your one piano. If you’re going to be doing concerts all around the world, it’s important to know exactly what you’re going to get.
I mean, I played on the worst pianos in the world back in the early days, from ’70 to ’74. We used to have a separate piano every gig. It was potluck. You’re there to play and you should be able to play on anything, but it’s a sound man’s nightmare.
“I used to play on uprights with two mikes hanging down the back.”
My piano is also completely miked and wired inside — not that I’m electrically minded, because I’m not, but they don’t have to set up any mikes when they get there. It’s all on the inside already. Eleven years ago, when I first came to the States, miking was a real problem. And in the early Seventies I used to play on uprights with two mikes hanging down the back.
Even after your first albums had become successful?
Oh, yeah. Yes indeed. I’ve played on many one-legged grands in England. I’ve played on some dreadful pianos here as well. In fact, when I came over in the Seventies for my first American tour, I played with Tracy Nelson and Mother Earth at The Electric Factory in Philadelphia, where the piano was held up by orange crates!
Having your own piano is a real luxury, especially when you can travel with someone who knows it inside out and takes care of it for you, like it was his Rolls-Royce. My piano has gotten to the point now where there’s really nothing much wrong with it.
Christine McVie [of Fleetwood Mac] told me that she often had trouble getting good pianos on the road because piano companies felt that rock ’n’ roll pianists would jump up and down on them, set them on fire or something like that.
Well, I’ve jumped on a few, I must admit. I mean, if anyone jumped on a piano, it would be me, not Christine McVie [laughs]. But then, I was a solo act, so people probably tended to think of me as not having to jump on pianos. We never had trouble with Steinway in that sense. Some places just don’t have Steinways. For example, in Hawaii, I think you can only get a Baldwin or a Yamaha. When we played there for the first time, we had to borrow a piano from some doctor and physically take it out of his house. If you play in Ames, Iowa, you may have to put up with a nine-foot Baldwin or whatever. And that’s okay; you do what you can, Sometimes it’s like working in a disaster area. But if you’ve got the right attitude you can get up on the stage, play on uprights with the notes missing — as I’ve done in England — and still put on a good show. That’s actually part of the fun when you look back: “Oh, do you remember that piano we had to play on there?”
Is it true that you own a transparent plexiglass piano, custom-made for you by Steinway?
No. Roger Daltrey [singer with The Who] told me about one that was up for auction. He said, “You should get it.” But I only have enough room in my house for one piano. I don’t collect grand pianos — God forbid! They’re not the sort of thing you go around buying. As I say, I’ve had my old Steinway for five or six years. This was the one on the Dodger Stadium tour that looked like the Concorde, but that was just the stuff built around it. It’s basically a black Steinway, although it’s white now; I just had it lacquered.
Session Lessons
Do you still play sessions occasionally for other artists?
Yeah, if they ask me and I have the time. I love to play sessions. I think people are afraid now that I’ll say no, but I’ve played a lot of dates. I played piano on “He Ain’t Heavy (He’s My Brother)” for The Hollies. At that time I was just a struggling new artist in England. Then when it was a hit they said it was their bass player playing the piano! I was so mortified [laughs]! And I played on their follow-up, “Can’t Tell The Bottom From The Top.” I used to sing on a lot of records.
Didn’t you play on a cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed And Delivered” in the Sixties?
That’s right. It was one of those cheap cover versions that were being put out in England. I used to do that all the time. They were great fun, really hilarious. That record was too high for me. Every time I hear it, it sounds ridiculous. I was singing like I had a pin sticking in my backside. I played or sang on a lot of records by English groups: The Scaffold, The Barron Knights. I sang on Tom Jones sessions.
When you play a session now, do people ask for Elton John-type piano, or do they ask you to adapt to some other style they want?
I usually go in and play the way I feel on the track. The only problem is that I sometimes overplay when I should underplay, so they might ask me not to play so much. I usually tend to take over a session when I go in there. With studio musicians there’s usually no problem, but when you get a bunch of musicians from groups coming in to play for an artist and they’ve never played together before, someone’s got to take the lead, you know? Otherwise it’s going to be a disaster for the producer.
When you’re backing another singer, do you play differently than when you’re accompanying yourself?
When you back someone else, I think you tend to play better. In my concert now Nigel does a little song of his own in the middle and I play background for him on piano. During rehearsal I really enjoyed it because all I had to concentrate on was the piano, whereas if you’ve got two things going on at once, it’s really hard to do your best on both of them.
Do you ever get insights as a composer from playing other people’s material?
Oh, yeah. It’s all just good fun. I mean, I’m not one of those people who’ll stay up until four in the morning, playing “Twelve O’Clock Blues,” but I do like to play with other musicians. You have to take risks. You can’t play safe all the time. There are things I’d love to do in the future, like just go to the studio and do a mini-Keith Jarrett, because I can sit at the piano and play for hours and hours. Even with Taupin, when I was working off of lyrics, I’d just play around until I found a chord structure I liked. I know I could do a really good album that way. There’s something within me that would love to do an album solo, just absolutely raw, with maybe some singing as well. It’s just a matter of finding the time and place to do it.
“I’ve never liked some of the mixes on my albums.”
What, for you, would be different about doing that sort of a project as opposed to what you’ve done up to this point?
You can get carried away with yourself. When Clive and I are mixing, I tend to mix my voice down and Clive will always mix it up again and say, “That’s what people want to hear.” As a musician, I want to hear the other things on the track. So I have to make a compromise.
I’ve never liked some of the mixes on my albums. But everyone else thought they were great, so as a musician you can sometimes be wrong. You might look for a certain bass part or a rhythm guitar part, or an electric piano thing you like, to lift in the mix, to the detriment of your own vocal performance. Knowing the best road to take can be hard.
How do you go about deciding which sidemen to use on a session? For example, why did you bring in Rick Wakeman on one song?
Yeah, on “Madman Across The Water.” He played organ. I got him for that because I’m the world’s worst Hammond organ player. I’m more used to playing my old Vox Continental — and that very badly as well. I couldn’t even understand the drawbars on the Vox. I played it with the same setting for three years [laughs].
There was a photo of you in Captain Fantastic at a Vox organ.
Yeah. In the early days, when I did the Elton John album, the songs were planned down to the smallest point. Everything was written down, even the bass parts, note for note. So most of the things were played by session guys. Tumbleweed was more or less written down note for note because there was a budget in those days. The Elton John album cost six or seven thousand pounds, which was enormous back then, like about $15,000. At that time, the idea of investing that much of my money in it was just incredible.
You were putting out a lot of records back then too.
That was because we had a contract for two albums a year. And we stuck to it. We didn’t find it hard to do. I remember that everyone was amazed that we could do two albums per year. People like Carlos Santana were in litigation at one point for not delivering albums. Linda Ronstadt was too, when she left Capitol, and Dylan when he went to Asylum. I never wanted to get into a situation where I owed some company albums.
Most of our albums after Elton John and Tumbleweed were so easy. Then when I wanted to stop using session musicians and start using my band all the time, [producer] Gus Dudgeon didn’t want me to. I fought hard enough to get one track for the band on Tumbleweed, called “Amoreena.” By the end of Madman Across The Water I really wanted to start using the band.
“You do your best work when you have discipline.”
Was it any less efficient to not rely on session players?
Oh, no. We always recorded quickly. I just hate wasting time in the studio. Nowadays, of course, recording has gotten a little more prolonged and scientific, and with the advent of 24 tracks and 43 tracks you can go crazy. But you do your best work when you have discipline. We used to do three or four tracks a day at Caribou Studios in Colorado, for example. I used to do eleven vocals in one day. When we did Caribou the basic tracks had to be finished in ten days because we had to go to Japan. And two of those days were spent in getting a drum sound, so we really had eight days to record the album.
Are you more satisfied with the sound of your more recent music than with the early stuff, because of the improvements in recording technology?
I don’t know. Look at the old Beatles records. All the original things we did were on eight-track, then later sixteen, but I’m constantly surprised by how good things like Tumbleweed and Elton John sound when I listen to them now. It seems that sophistication hasn’t really improved things that much. I don’t know how people can take a year to do an album. Everybody to their own sort of thing, I suppose. Nobody works the same way. But I’d just go mental if I had to spend a year over an album, hearing those things over and over again. No way.
Is the piano the hardest instrument to record?
No, that’s fairly easy. It’s the bass and drum sound you usually have the hang-ups on. I usually take two days off while they get the bass drum [laughs]. Gus Dudgeon was a drummer’s and bass guitarist’s nightmare because he was so particular. He was renowned for his drum sounds.
Are your piano tracks ever altered at all?
Most of the time I think Clive just mikes it straight. He’s got his own way of doing it, but it’s nothing very intricate. I wouldn’t put up with it if it were.
Do you ever record piano and voice simultaneously?
No, hardly ever. The only time we did that was on “Ticking,” which was on the Caribou album.
That was a pretty complicated piano track too.
It was, but playing the piano without the voice was harder. I would think so much about the voice that I would play the piano right. Gus was always a stickler for separation, but I had to tell him, “Look, the only way we’re ever going to get this thing done is by doing the voice and the piano together. Forget about the leakage.” It would only be the voice leaking anyway, so why care?
When we’re doing the instrumental track, I usually whisper a rough vocal into the headphones because it’s helpful for other people to play if they can hear a guide vocal. That can be frustrating, though, because you have to whisper to avoid leakage into the piano. But we’ve also done things like “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting,” which was recorded without the piano; we put it on later because we couldn’t get the right feeling otherwise.
Has your piano style evolved much since the first albums?
Not really. I haven’t picked up any new influences. I like Keith Jarrett but I would hate to say that my piano playing is at all like his, because it’s absolutely not. Over the last few years the only guy who’s really influenced me has been Bill Payne [of Little Feat]. I love his sort of time signature changes in the middle of things. He does all the “don’ts” and I love that.
And David Sancious … Jesus! Sancious has influenced me a lot, not playing-wise but because his music has been so great. It’s really inspired me over the past couple of years. It's a bit unfortunate that he’s been ignored because he doesn’t fall into any category, which is a shame. He’s just brilliant.
A few years ago, in another interview, you said, “Those are the sort of people I listen to all the time: Joe Zawinul, Stanley Clarke and Keith Jarrett, an amazing pianist. … I know a lot of people think I’m not good enough to do that, but I know I am.” Is this sort of project still on your mind?
It would be interesting. I think it would be a great idea. Maybe I was a little carried away. But you’d have to do a lot of rehearsal. I mean, I’m not a great believer in over-rehearsal. But sometimes, when people jam like that, you get onstage, sound three chords and that’s it. I think you can do a little better than that. I’ve been onstage in the last three or four years with Eric Clapton and people like that, and it’s been really nice. But if you’re going to do a whole gig, I think you have to have some groundwork before you step onstage. Otherwise it’d be a self-indulgent stunt.
“Playing ‘Stand By Me’ for hours is wonderful; those chord changes are so fabulous.”
What sort of stuff do you play when you’re alone, just for your own enjoyment?
I very rarely sit down and play. I don’t just get up every morning and play the piano. But when I’m in the mood to do it, I can play for hours. Just playing “Stand By Me” for hours is wonderful; those chord changes are so fabulous. But I mess around all the time, and then out of something like that comes a song. My songs aren’t planned; they just come out of the blue. The only time we’ve written songs in the last few years was when The Beach Boys asked us to write something for them. It took me six months — nothing had ever taken me that long before. It’s called “Chameleon; it’s on the Blue Moves album. They hated it [laughs]! So I said, “Right, that’s the last time I’m going to write a song for anybody. Forget it.”
To Bleed or Not To Bleed
Do you do any warmup exercises before going onstage?
The only thing I do is, when I haven't played for a long time, I usually put Nu-Skin on my fingers because my nails crack and sort of go into the skin. It’s a horrible yellow plastic film that bowlers use. It really does help your fingers a lot if they split easily. You just take it off with some kind of solution afterwards.
You’ve had some trouble with bleeding fingers, haven’t you?
Oh, yeah. Once at the L.A. Forum I was in absolute agony. This was before the days of Nu-Skin. And I remember once at a session I did with Jackson Browne, I had to do a piano part with lots of glissandos. I hadn’t played for a while, so when I came away from the Sunset Sound Studios my hands were bleeding and they felt terrible. If you’ve been away from the piano and your nails have grown, you really have to take care of them before you start banging away.
Have you sustained any other injuries from performing? Maybe from jumping up and down on the piano?
No, touch wood! I have not, which is a miracle since I used to wear those ridiculous, stupid shoes. I’ve fallen over a couple of times, but I’ve been very fortunate in that I haven’t broken any arms or anything.
How did you develop that uninhibited performing style?
Well, I was always physically held back from wearing what I wanted to as a teenager, so being able to put on helped to evolve that style, I suppose. People used to say that it detracts from the music. I can understand their point of view, but I was just having a good time. I enjoyed it. I think people did too, because I didn’t take myself too seriously. When the singer/songwriter thing did evolve in the early Seventies, a lot of musicians were starting to get very intense about what they were doing. People did take them maybe a little too seriously. I mean, look at the cover of the Elton John album. It was so confusing, all dark and mean and mysterious. Yet there I was onstage, popping along with Mickey Mouse ears. I’ve always been a rock ’n’ roller, so maybe if that album had had a different cover it wouldn’t have been so confusing.
Like I say, when I’m onstage I feel like I’ve got to move. The thing with being a piano player is that it sticks you in one position, which for me is the most frustrating thing of all time. These days, I really am quite happy just playing the piano.
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Great interview. Incredible, insightful details. I could have read another hour of that.
What a fun interview and especially the setup with seeing EJ open for Santana and the plugging in the tape recorder.