ELTON JOHN INTERVIEW - 1995

well first of all where do I start we're gonna start without in John I the man he's probably been the most influence my life so thank you very much for your music thank you very much thank you congratulations on your Oscar that was just wonderful yeah that was very exciting for someone who's in the music business and not in the film business to actually go there and get one was pretty pretty amazing yeah I mean you've won I mean everything that you've done your career you've won Grammys you've been inducted in Tulsa Bay but you've never won an Oscar and what was that like for you to be up on that stage it was pretty it was very exciting just to be at the actual show was exciting um I wrote a film score in 1971 for movie called friends and then I said never never again will I do one and then I got to talk to him to their liking which actually wasn't a film score it was just running songs so the whole thing with an incredibly pleasurable experience and I'm gonna have one negative thing to say about it and then to cap it off by winning an Oscar I'm very lucky and and you know I mean I never expected when I started writing so that I'll never get an Oscar all I wanted was a gold record it must be very exciting for you also because I have a two and a half year old son who is now growing up your music I mean he runs around the husband I come to my yeah well it is funny cuz I get accosted at airports by young kids who love the Lion King and that you know when Tim and I wrote the songs and that's what we wrote before we run them for kids and then and the fact that they like them and they like them in droves is we achieved what we set out to do and it's great because you know I do get kids coming out any time we love The Lion King and that's terrific that's what are we rolling for and then the adult kids like it too is it more of a pressure on you to write something for a film where I get to myself a deadline or something as opposed to writing an album um well actually it with a cartoon like The Lion King or Animated Feature as they call it and it takes four years to make it I wrote those songs when I was recording the one album in Paris in 1991 most of them anyway because they have to have the songs when they start the movie because they build a lot of it scenes around the songs in fact ironically the song that won the Oscar can you feel the love tonight at one point was taken out the movie they came down to Atlanta to show me where they done and it was about 60% finish and they've taken that song and you do that and they were very good though and they listen to what I said and they put it back in and so that I mean for me it was easy because I I mean once the melodies in place it's okay Tim Rice on the other hand had to write we write songs about 50 times because as a storyboard changes all the time so he had all the donkey's where I actually had the easy easy deal here let's talk a little about your new album which is fantastic it's really great I really really enjoy it and I was listening to an interview recent interview that you did and you said it's kind of going back it's like sort of your career over what do you mean by that well on this album I went back to how we used to record in the mid-1970s which was I was wrote songs around on a grand piano or a piano a non electric piano and the band were in the studio they were picking up the song as I wrote it learning the song and then we put it down in the last few albums we used a lot of drum machines and electronic stuff which has its place but you know the thing is when that happens and you lay down a drum track it takes about five or six hours to get it down I tuned out and then you lose your attention span and I go shopping or I play tennis or do something that it's not connected with the album and I wanted to stop that because I didn't think that I was keeping all the albums that I was making my a hundred percent attention I have no criticism of the production and stuff like that but I just wanted to make an album or I felt I was 100 percent involved and then this one I was I was there for everything that was played I was there for every it was it was it was hard for me because I had known for so long I think the last album I did that I'm was blue moves which I've been called in Canada in 1976 in Toronto so I just wanted to go back then I was 47 I thought I can make albums very easily for the rest of my life and this coast and I don't want to do that I don't want to coast anymore and and I just wanna put so much more effort into this one and we got Paul Buckmaster back to do some of the orchestrations and I used my band so that we can go out on the road and just play the album which we will do this year tonight it's a different sort of show the Billy show we do one of them you do the single and we don't do anything else because we need another guitarist we've got another guitarist but we couldn't use it for this toe because he's busy but there's so much guitar work on the album we need two guitars and so that'll be fun adding a new member to the band when when we go out on tour which starts in May in Europe but I just feel that if you know there's more energy you know and I've changed my lifestyle and I get up in the morning since TEDA going to bed in the mornings and that has that helps too so and I just feel there's a lot of energy on the record I mean maybe I haven't got the physical energy that I had when I was 23 but I certainly got the enthusiasm yeah what was it like you were just signing records and signing autographs my records at midnight and I mean the crowds are around the block I've only ever done that once I did it once it sound good is in New York and we changed record companies we went to island record company on the album's on rocket through Island and I wanted to do something at our records in Los Angeles because I've been going there ever since I came to America I went to America in 1970 I didn't know it gonna take so long and we were there from 11:30 till quarter before and it was fun and kids were sweet and we must have signed on in the album's for the pictures and stuff like that we must have signed about five or six thousand items each Bernie and myself so that was fun yeah they want me to do it in France too when I go to France I don't know yeah I say you have me because people keep up you want unit you don't want to let anybody down and you're gonna say well after two hours both sorry you've waited here and we're off now and I can't do that oh it's no secret that over the last few years you've straightened out you stopped taking drugs and alcohol and I wanted to know what it was that made you decide that you had to clean up your act I took me long enough took me 16 years to find out I mean that's a long time to go you know through the things that I did I mean it started off okay but it really it spiral downwards in the 80s I don't know I mean maybe a combination of events really I just was so fed up with living that lifestyle and I was ashamed to look at myself in the mirror I was ashamed I mean my family my mother had moved to Spain you know everybody had told me what a fool I was making of myself and what a waste of my life this was this kind of behavior the Ryan White episodes being there for his funeral and made me change my values of it I know it was a combination of a lot of things the person that I was living with at the time decided to get clean I was very angry about that because he was doing something good and I wasn't it was just for half of me to say I need help three words and change my life once I said those words everything just the floodgates out and I knew I would get well there was a lot of work I had to put in but I didn't mind that I was just some miserable being miserable you know and I just assumed that because I was successful and rich and and fairly intelligent then I could do it on my own I knew I had a problem I mean but I just couldn't fix it myself I need other people's help and advice so my pride was killing me in fact the fact that I didn't want to admit that I had a problem so in the end I dropped my pride and the whole lifestyle changed and you know everything that's happened to me in those four years most things that have happened to me have been good I mean stuff bad stuff happens but bad stuff happens to everybody else but I can deal with it now without closing my door I'm running away from it and you know I've enjoyed it tremendously it's been just nothing but I'm also your moment with the Elton John AIDS Foundation which is just fantastic and you're so generous with this and how do you know that the money is going to break well that when we started the foundation that was the reason I started the foundation was because I was doing so many things for other people and I wasn't sure about where the money was going to that I decided that hey you may let's put something back and let's start something properly I mean I had experience running a soccer club in Ealing I was chairman of a soccer club Watford Football Club I knew had experience about running things but is fair it was very easy for me to raise money and do a concert or do something but then when you've raised that money where did it go that was we didn't know so we enlisted the help of the National AIDS Fund which was called encap actually at that time NASA called the National AIDS Fund in Washington which is a foundation funded by the Ford Foundation they have 30 or 40 areas that they're experts on I mean that they set up areas in America they know if we would say we want to give $100,000 to the New York area they will send a list of places that need the money and we as an Executive Board will make that decision and then we know that the money is going there so we could not have done it without the National AIDS Fund we get independent grant requests but that only really makes up for about 20% of the money give away most of my 80% of the money that we give away goes through the places recommended to us by the National Eitan we wouldn't know otherwise I mean North America is such a huge continent and you know in England it's so much mommy no patty all the organizations in its much smaller place so we've had help and it's been done you know we've given it over four million dollars away in two years and our four million dollars has been matched by other people which probably be near at the ten million dollar mark we you know with our money and the money that's matched by the communities we're responsible for ten million dollars out there so that's great I have to ask you about the teaming with Billy Joe how did that come about it was entirely Billy's idea rod and I have talked about doing this for a long time and that never kind of came together and then Billy said you know wouldn't it be fun and I having known Billy for a while to have two pianos that's what really appealed to me having the two pianos nestling to in each other on the stage that that really kind of sold the idea was sold to me by the two pianos and and it was totally his idea and we started it last year and we had great fun and we stopped in September because Billy wanted to see his daughter and we kind of started again and then we may go to Australia and it Far East with it I don't know but it's fun and it's the only opportunity that you probably want a few opportunity people get to see to people like us play on stage together and it's it's been fun it's kind of like a party you know it's it's most of our a lot of hits and a lot of fun and it's like a big party time I mean the last time I played here I mean I had a really miserable experience in this building and I criticized yet from the stage but I know they've improved it so I'm looking forward to tonight I have those wedding songs on the album please you say what really is our left proof what you want to do well I'm embarking on some other things and having done the liking I want to continue writing for film maybe writing for stage just continuing to make good music carrying on with my personal life as I have done for the last four and a half years I'm always setting standards and my Sana's they're never good enough for me I'm too much of a perfectionist that's one of my bad points so I'm working on still working on changing myself there's a lot to prove I mean I've still got a long way to go I mean four and a half years I've changed and I don't drink and I take drugs I'm still working on myself and the bad habits that I have and trying to change 43 years of bad behavior it doesn't happen overnight so career wise and there's lots of other things to do I'm just very competitive and I'm enjoying myself so why not I'm forty forty eight and they said forty seven I'm 48 now and I know I feel full of energy and when I've got that energy I might as well put it to good use well thank you so much thanks Ari it's great to be back in Canada thanks thanks would you mind

Channel: Bonnie Laufer Krebs

Views: 5,672

Rating: 4.9083967 out of 5

Keywords: Elton John, Music, Rocketman, Oscar Winner, Musician

Id: rjHsLIMYjUI

Length: 11min 21sec (681 seconds)

Published: Tue May 28 2019