Elton John Talks to Terry Towne

 

During the summer [of 1970], a tune called Border Song began to receive widespread, though unsolicited, regional airplay. Listener response was tremendous, and more airplay followed, the result of which was an unprecedented ad, paid for by several Los Angeles disc jockeys, thanking Uni Records for the release of an album entitled, simply, Elton John.The album is, for the most part, a result of the labors of two men: composer Elton John and lyricist Bernie Taupin--who have been able to do a bit better than just get by with the help of their friends. Their music is hard to define--being music of universal appeal, a most encouraging bright spot in the current pop mire. But, hard as it may be to define, the album is presently riding high on the trade charts (and, no hype, you should have it if you don't already).The following are some remarks taken from an interview with Elton John and Bernie Taupin, when they were in New York for a bit of r&r between tour dates...--T.T.

Terry: I'd like to start with a little background, if I may. How did the two of you get together and about how long have you been working together?

Elton: It's actually pure fate. I was playing in a soul band--just playing organ and getting nowhere. I was making a living wage but getting very bored; I'd been doing it for four years, nothing but play organ. I suddenlythought, I must get out or I'll end up under a heap. There was an ad for Liberty Records in one of the music papers in England. Liberty had gone independent and they advertised for new talent and new songwriters. I went to see them, and said that I was a singer, which I wasn't, and that I wrote songs but that I'd really like to meet a lyric writer. Bernie had answered the same ad--or rather, he had written a letter which he had laid aside; actually, his mother had posted it for him.Anyway, they said they had a lyric writer there; they gave me some of his stuff and I was quite impressed, so Liberty arranged a meeting. After that, I did a recording test, which I failed miserably because I'd never sung before, and I thought, well, that's it, endsville. But the guy at Liberty was still quite nice, and said he would introduce us to Dick James Music and see if we could do anything there. We went up and started doing demos--we did about fifteen which the Hollies signed to their company--and finally one day Dick James said, Who is this Reg Dwight who's spending all this money in the studio? Bernie was at that time calling himself Reg Dwight [sic]. [NB: Obviously we all now know Bernie wasn't doing anything of the sort--well, maybe he did for laughs--and we kindof thought so then, but that was what Elton said on the tape, and all of us in the office listened to it over and over just to be sure. And no matter how many times we replayed it, that was still what Elton--er, Reg--um, Sir Reg--said; so that's how we printed it. Maybe he was confused. --PKM] Dick met us and quite liked the songs, and signed us for three years. That's how we really got together. Then for the next year and a half we spent time--or rather wasted time--writing bubblegum rubbish. Dick sort of forced us to write it--he was paying us a living wage and he'd say, "That's got a good tune to it, it ought to be a hit." We really didn't want to do that sort of thing but we had to. They were all terrible songs and nobody ever recorded them.

Terry: So it's really been quite a while. When did you start writing for yourselves?

Elton: Yes, it has been a while, about three years, and then [knock at the door] then this gentleman arrived. Then Steve Brown arrived and he said it's all rubbish, which brought us down even more because we knew it was rubbish, but you don't like to admit it, do you? Well, Steve said, "Do your own thing, baby doll, and don't take any notice of Dick; just write what you want." We figured we hadn't anything to lose and decided to do it, and we've been doing it ever since. It's been about a year and a half since we started writing the stuff we wanted to, and I don't think we'll ever write for anyone else again.

Terry: I'd like to find out a bit about the album. The thing that intrigues me is that I'd never heard of most of the musicians that play on it.

Bernie: Most of them are studio musicians.

Terry: That's the impression I got.

Elton: I've been friendly with Caleb Quaye for years; he's a really fantastic guitarist and he's got his own group in England. He played on our first album, which was not released over here. All the other people--Diana Lewis is married to Paul Buckmaster; Paul arranged the album, Diana played Moog...

Bernie: The rest of the people on it are kind of the top session people.

Elton: People like Terry Cox, who's with Pentangle, and Barry Morgan, the other drummer, is with an English group called Blue Mink--they've had about three hits there. All the other people are really sort of the top session guys, the backup singers are all the best backup singers. On the new album, we've got Dusty Springfield singing backup vocal. The new album is less orchestrated; there are just three tracks with orchestra on them.

Terry: Are you completely satisfied with the album you've got out here? I'm always afraid to ask that question, because sometimes you tell musicians how impressed you were with their album and you find out later that they absolutely hate it.

Bernie: Well, you know so many people release albums today that they're not happy with, but we wouldn't do that; we wouldn't ever release anything we weren't happy with. We've always liked everything we've done.

Elton: The first album is very basic and simple, and I still like that, apart from one track which we always explain to people. We say, "Listen, there's a track on that called Hymn 2000--really, just have a good laugh at it, because it's bad lyrically and it's bad musically, but the rest of it is great." It only cost about 1200 dollars to do the whole thing; very basic,but I love it. This one we planned, and we had twelve tracks for it. Two of them weren't quite up to standard, so we left them off. I'm really happy with the new one; it will be out here in January [1971], and in England in about two weeks. There is an interesting thing about our albums: you see, we are surrounded by a team. Gus Dudgeon is the producer, Paul is the arranger, Steve is the coordinator--he gets things together. There are five of us directly involved, and we are all very open and honest. If there's something that isn't exactly as it should be, someone out of that five will say forget it, do it again. We've never done anything that hasn't turned out right.

Terry: Very few people are surrounded with a team like that. Too often people will go into a studio with a producer who says do this and do that, and they end up with a product they're ashamed of...

Elton: I'm very lucky. I must be one of the few artists on the whole scene who's got a production team like it. I'm happy with my record companies, both the American one and the British one, happy with my agency, happy with my management--nobody can believe it! They say, "Come on, you must be unhappy with something," but I'm not. I'm sort of tied to Dick James for everything, he's such an honest man and he looks after us both so well.

Bernie: One of the reasons for that is that Dick is a small company.

Elton: If I wanted to see him, I'd just go up and knock on his door; I don't have to wait. Uni is a small company within a big company as well. I hate big conglomerates; being part of a big wheel doesn't interest me...

Bernie: And we have a say in everything that we do. We have the most expensive album cover ever produced in England, and Dick just said OK. He never knows when we're recording, he just asks how things are getting along. We haven't any pressures on us at all.

Elton: We were asked if we wanted to release the last album over here because people were importing it, but I said no--I don't mind it coming out eventually, but we have that other album coming out in January and a film score coming out in February, so where would they fit it in?

Terry: Tell me a little more about the film score.

Elton: It's a film called Friends, a Lewis Gilbert film. He's really known for his big production epics like You Only Like Twice and The Adventurers. He's had a lot of box-office success. They approached us, or rather his son approached us; he used to manage The Family in England, and he's sort of into music. He had heard our album and said we must do the track for this film. Bernie read the script and wrote one of the songs before I even saw it. We decided to do it because we both want to get into different things.

Bernie: It's an interesting film. There's no style really, which appealed to me--just two kids. It's quite well done, I think, perhaps a little saccharine, but...

Terry: What company is releasing it?

Elton: Paramount. They will have the album, but we will have the single. There's one thing that's very interesting about it: there are two sequences, one with a tape recorder and the other with a radio, where the music only plays for ten seconds each. But on the album, the entire composition is there, so people will really be getting their money's worth. Most soundtracks are really draggy--you'll have a minute and a half of a motor car, and then something else, and you'll say I don't remember that at all. But here you get an entire piece when you've only heard a bit of it in the film. There's my songs on one side which lasts about 22 minutes, and then Paul Buckmaster has written a fugue and variations on themes--it's very beautiful, the way he's orchestrated them. So you have one side that's orchestral and one side that's Elton John. I can't wait to see the film with all the music dubbed in.

Terry: Films are a very lucrative business to get into.

Elton: Yes, I suppose so--I really don't know.

Bernie: Since we've done this one, we've been inundated with script offers.

Elton: We've gotten one hilarious script, which I really want to do. They wanted me to act in it, but I really don't have the time just now. And I haven't acted, so I would have probably failed my screen test, but...

Terry: Would you like to do that sort of thing--act?

Elton: I'd love to do the sort of thing that this is. It's sort of a bizarre comedy called Harold and Maud, about a 20-year-old boy falling madly in love with an 80-year-old woman. I'd love to be in it, but we'll just do the music, I think. There was another one that somebody sent us called Run The Length of Your Wildness. When I read the title, I knew I didn't want to do it; that one had twelve naked bodies on the first page and I said nope, nope, not doing that one! [Laughter]

Terry: Do you find it easier or more difficult to write soundtracks than other types of music?

Bernie: Yes, it's quite hard to write that sort of thing.

Elton: It's his baby, really, because he has to write the lyrics, which are the most important thing--and he writes them first.

Terry: It's not exactly like writing for yourself...

Bernie: That's what we mean. But this film was perfect as a starting point, because it was a very simple story. It was easy enough to write for because
there wasn't anything complicated in it that you had to get across.

Terry: Is it true that you usually write the lyrics first?

Bernie: Yes. We don't collaborate at all.

Elton: He writes the lyrics and then I run off with them.

Terry: Now, about your road show--how did you decide on Dee Murray and Nigel Olsson?

Elton: I'd been badgered to get a group together, but I'd travelled with a band for four years and I was just too lazy to want to go on the road again. I just wanted to sit back and let the royalties come in, right? After a year and a half of this badgering, I decided to do it. Nigel and Dee had left Spencer Davis, and hadn't been doing much of anything. I had gotten Nigel a job with a group called Uriah Heep, and he had been working with them for about a month when I asked him to join me--I felt kind of badly about that. Dee hadn't been doing anything and we just started to rehearse. They're great--I'd known both of them quite a while.

Bernie: Dee played on the original demos that we did.

Elton: They both have been working on their own albums; Nigel has just finished his. That's good, because they have the freedom to do whatever they want.

Bernie: They have access to the studio and a lot of people use them on their sessions.

Elton: They're not just another drummer and another bass player; they're too good.

Terry: I'd like to know something about your musical background. Did you have any formal training?

Elton: I picked up playing the piano when I was about four, playing by ear, and then I had lessons. I went to the Academy of Music for about five years on Saturday mornings. I had won a scholarship there, but I was useless. I bluffed my way through my examinations; I passed, but I hated to practice. However, I have quite an adequate background as far as theory and things like that are concerned.

Terry: What kind of music do you like to listen to?

Elton: Everything.

Terry: Everything?

Elton: Pretty much everything, aside from easy listening and traditional jazz.

Terry: What do you mean by traditional jazz?

Elton: [imitating Dixieland band horns] You know that sort of thing. I like the stuff Miles has put out, and Charles Lloyd and Chick Corea and some of the stuff Sun Ra does--and I like The Band and Neil Young, and Burt Bacharach is a genius.

Terry: So you really are into a great many different kinds of music...

Elton: Yes, because I feel that if you are choosing music as your thing to do, or to be into, then you should be able to appreciate its many forms. Because there's really something valid in each of them.

 

Jazz & Pop, January 1971.