Elton John: The Raw & Uncut Interview - 1987

when you're a little boy were you made to take piano lessons not initially because I started playing by ear I was about three and as my auntie Nguyen used to play the piano and I used to live with my mum and my auntie and my grandmother and so there was always music in the house in some form or other records and a piano I played by air first of all no I was about six five six or seven my current members so long ago then my parents of you should have piano lessons much against my will I hasten to add but I had a nice music teacher when I was young so I was alright but I was really I still am very much Anna a year taught person but I thought you I've read somewhere that you're a bit of a sort of infant prodigy and you went to these oh I went to the Royal Academy music for five years and on a Saturday it's called a junior exhibition of scholarship very much same as Annie Lennox so she went there a new years after me but yeah when every Saturday morning so I meant I went from school to Monday DeFries sadly was robbed ketamine Sonny was homeless I kind of resented it in the way but I scrambled through everything I got my great aid but I always wanted to play rock and roll so I wasn't I mean at the academy unless you were a brilliant pianist there really wasn't much go for you if you were I could never play with the orchestra now so I was really I flunked most of my exams I just just got enlightened enough word to party were you always a flamboyant sort of character growing up was that inside waiting to burst that well that was well in a sign waiting to burst on it I said I lived my twenties in my job my teenagers will live through my twenties really Mama's always kind of very meek and mild and insecure and when I got my first slice of success oh hell it was really you said you always wanted to play rock and roll man were your early ambitions purely musical did you actually want to be a world famous pop star no I just but I just wanted to want you to do something didn't you sir I mean working in a record shop would have been sufficient in fact even when I first started to make it I was always a big record collector in there stairs nice to collect imports a lot and the two major stores anything at that time a one-stop or London rather one-stop music land and two of my friends used to run music men on even when I had the album's on albums out and was a success way to go no setting and just help serve because I just love records so I'm just watching records go around as a kid fascinated me so no I never I mean I was just a very average organist in a very average band and I left that band which was bruise ology because and I think about oh now it's kind of why our death the initiative to do it but we were playing cabaret with Long John Baldry I just hated playing to people that just like more eating and stuff so and that's how I met Bernie so fates played a great part in my life I was made about five or six major decisions in my life and they've turned out to be winners that was one of them it sounds if you became a totally different person oh I did I did you know I would never say boo to a goose I was very shy at a Terrill inferiority complex and when I became Elton John it was like a new lease of life I didn't really like being rented white it had too many unhappy memories and sort of I hated the word reg anyway I mean it's just horrible name to kill Joaquin so I could only somebody cuff but or Eggbert or somewhere that so um as soon as I was Elton it was just great I was like new personality reg is kind of coming back into my liver look that I so relented back on him a bit and it's not so bad now but at the time I was just delighted and I'm delighted to become somebody else this is like Elvis Costello becoming Declan McManus again yes it sort of is yes it's not so bad now I've had I'm making my peace again with reg but are you legally out and John oh yes I've been forever since I've thought of Elton John I was I changed immediately I was so delighted not to be reg anymore I mean you I mean 20 years of reg is quite enough I saw all those Reggie's at there but at the time it was all for you know I mean on poor things it's not being Wally now I suppose is like poor thing did some writing come more easily than ever to you know or is it actually harder to come up with something actually and I can see people groaning okay my music it's actually easier folks and I mean for example we when we did the leather jackets album gasps adore what he picked gust out of my producer we picked the songs that we were going to do and he said for Christ's sake don't write any more songs while because otherwise we'll never get you know some of the stuff was still on the new albums from the ice on fire sessions as well so I tend to write more than I record or more stuff than needed for one album and when we'd actually finished all the stuff for the album I wrote 17 songs in three layers which will appear on either the next album or other people's albums whatever I just it comes much easier and I'm fine I think I'm far pickier than I ever was before and it's just it's much easier than it ever was I mean it was easy anyway I've no really had that time of felt like drying up or anything like that but it is it's just as easy imply easier do you still write in a very kind of old-fashioned way I mean sort of picking over things on the piano or do you have tons of hardware and stuff you know I just I've had more I mean I'm not Electrical by any means I'm useless I mean I mean I can't even put a plug on a bloody lead and I've got one synthesizer I called a gs1 a Yamaha and a couple of other I call them revita ones you know they love us or silly thin ones which are very useful but I mean I put a like something firm between my legs and a piano provides that and so does a Yamaha gs1 yeah between your legs yeah well I mean I like playing I'm not very good at playing is you have to have these feet you have to have technique to play a synthesized like at one of those revita ones I could Depeche Mode's are very good at it because I mean people may last out somebody good but here's a lot of technique going into it and it's it's not easy and I just don't have the patience to cope with it I do play a lot of stuff but I mean I'm broke when it comes actually to playing that sort of the rive eater since I'm not that good so I've got this gs1 which is like a grand piano and you put parking meter tickets in it and it plays certain things and it has a little bit of soul in it it's like a Hammond organ you it doesn't record that well but it has a little bit of humanity in there somewhere so and it's also helped me to write differently because writing rock and roll songs on piano is very difficult you're limited and also if you're a piano player technically you tend to write more chords than needed I was never very good for cord songwriter and even my simple songs like Saturday nights all right the find it aren't for called rock and roll songs but sometimes can be the best I would have loved to played the guitar but as to layout I play on stage a moment that's only a two chord song side sheet really who did you write the new LP there's a jackets with but about nine songs we've barely talking one sonic Gary Osborne and one song was Cher no that's an unlikely relationship isn't it that first song ever flash that you might have in common yes I mean I sort of songwriting and then it is like writing me Hilda Baker bless her soul she's dead no well you know David Jacobs or something there she just sent me this lyric and I wrote the song - it was supposed to be for her up and she's doing an album in the year and she didn't I sent another song she didn't think it was suitable her which I was quite pleased with because I thought it was quite a bit over for me um that's the beginning of a new share lady choc-ice might be this beginning of a new songwriting partnership but it's mostly talking and I've got a lot of songs written the Gary Osborne as well which I'm hoping to to give to other people to record because one point once thing in my songwriting thing is I've never had a hit with anybody else Bernie now has branched out in Burnley lives in Los Angeles and has had number-one hits this year with Jefferson Starship and heart so I mean I have the to wish he thought I would probably write hits with other people he's done it and I haven't so there's still one thing I'd like to do and with Gary that's us with writing the music first with Gary and he was finishing off the lyrics it Gunnar gives me that scope but over the new songs written of seventeen I mentioned about ten over talking his seven would carry all those stories in your early days true that you and Bernie Taupin used to sort of write songs by post that he was placed in the very center we learn in like six months after his dying writing because he was lived in Lincolnshire it's true I mean like and also I mean I still find a lot of his lyrics that I've forgotten about it and night initially this new lot in 1982 lyrics and he'd forgotten about him - yeah we did yeah it was we've never actually sat in a room collaborated on a song ever we tried to in Hamburg recently on the European too and I could have killed him and I think he could have killed me as I do I know you can I want the course to blasted I know man I'm just trying to find the right chords to go with so I don't think enough is enough I think well we're just we weren't Christian how it works we just keep it like it is and it's basically lyrics first always mostly unless I suggest a title - don't go breaking my heart was one of the few that I wrote the melody first and he had to write lyrics to it you know it's not this greatest lyric because I suggested the title do you have much of a personal relationship then always it always been a car yes were like brothers I mean like were just like did you have a big falling-out so at the time we no no no that was you know because we just happen to have it now I had an album out with Gary Osmond songs which is a single man and at the time he had an album out with Alice Cooper songs when she wrote without his Cooper no we'd never had we had a sort of like easing off as far as writing together because he was in Los Angeles I had no desire to go to Los Angeles he didn't had no desire to come here so it was obvious that even though we write by poet sometimes but we didn't write so much together but it was necessary after so much product coming out to have an easy no but I can't ever see us ever not riding together I mean we're 20 years together next year which is quite extraordinary I don't quite believe that and if I'm 20 years old let alone being writing with him for 20 years but it's true no I think we were a pretty firm combination I don't know if you're able to sort of look back on your career in these kind of terms but is there a period that you think was like your most fruitful songwriting period I mean songs I wrote like a fruit obviously you know in the early 70s or in the mid 70s when we could do no wrong is kind of you kind of get if you're successful you get to a point where you can't do any wrong it's like Madonna goes through that period of the moment Phil Connors has been through you can't fail they wouldn't necessarily be what you thought we are the best no they not known some of the best songs I'm most of some of the most of obscure and bizarre songs I think I think I this period I'm writing now is probably it's just I'm mighty just more than many songs now as I have done in that period of time in fact more but the some of the songs as that where hits aren't necessarily my favorites by in bending the Jets is not one of my favorite songs always not one of my choices among my favorite songs no sadly Night's Alright for fighting Ireland girl but some of the other stuff bloom moves which is considered to be one of my least successful albums it's one of my favorite albums and it's the most sophisticated am I ever made apart from Captain fantastic and it has a lot of my favorite stuff on and you know you just sometimes I fight tooth and nail about what comes out of singles and I'm constantly surprised what is a hit and what isn't I really am a very bad judge of singles the only one I was ever really good on the song for guy which nobody wanted to put out and I was very much up for that because it was meant a lot to me and it was you know everyone said you can't Pat Howard instrumental I thought yes you can why not and in the end the discharges put it we forced it out and I was wrote please I spat the only time up in Ryan do you think you write better when you're happy or when you're unhappy well I'm you know when you write tapas lyrics on exactly the are Napa I mean somebody pointed out and yet a bit road even is having one really positive song and his lyrics and in on Blue Moose example I had to reject some of the things I mean that's a Down and I fired him anyway but he was going through his marriage was breaking up at that time I never really think about lyrics and I've made the record and then I think oh yeah that's what it's about is it probably kill me for that I know he writes the lyrics but I mean even from the point of producing music I mean lots of people think that the whole thing of like you know putting out really marvelous artistic works of any sort is all to do with like you know in a torment and all that and I can write I love writing sad really like funeral istic music I just love it I mean I could write that all day long so I mean I could and that's very very self-indulgent but I could I could write things like funeral for a friend song for Gaia forever cuz I love that sort of music I always take my Enigma Variations wherever I go and sit there and sob and land of open glory and I'm off that sort of person I am sorry I do have to control that side of me a little bit but we talk as do it sometimes it's not easy because they're they're very very sort of self-destructive lyrics and so remorseful Lewis as well what has been your least happy period isn't I think well my least happy peer is my personal life I mean I went I think you know things I was always happy with my music and I was very fortunately my success it was less commercially successful yeah I mean I just I think my own happiest times even when I've been unhappy with my personal life and things you know I've been going wrong that way I've always been happy with my music cuz I've always believed in what I've done I mean some of its not as good as others I was but there have been I think you can pinpoint some of the high points unless you just look at some mother Fox album came out for example there wasn't particularly happy point in my life and you can tell the album wasn't the greatest Caribou is another example the album wasn't the greatest it kind of reflects in your music sometimes although in blue moves was a peer where I was very unhappy and that's one of my favorite albums but it would depend as I mean there are points I never realized that our songs stupid boy that I am boy man question mark and how our songs affected people because I mean I always I'm not in love I was particularly in love at that time and that record I'm at playing a million times and like they're so to sit in the cargo and various other records at certain times of my life and when people come up to me and say all your songs really touched when I thought oh really and I get kind of embarrassed but that's obviously tell me I never really thought about too much but they do touch people and I forgot about that as I never realized our songs did that which is stupid but there are certain times in my life where certain records really mean a lot to me that when I especially when I was down in the dumps blowing away by Bonnie Raitt there's ooh knives there's a razor blade time I'm a very sentimental person I cry easily Whitehouse hello I'm Peter Jamison anybody here called Peter Jones I'm sorry he's he's just popped out for a turkey sandwich thank you no so I think we're okay with that that question is it fair to say that your lifestyle in the 70s was that other sort of typical 70s rock god overindulgent the orgy pride and all that it was a time of wild excess wasn't it music is wild except I mean I got prints now what's that if that's not wild exert you're making films and fantasizing and being sick authentic laughs yeah it was I mean was completely over-the-top why didn't I didn't know I'm gonna think about it look about it now I've got other costumes and everything at home I'm thinking what how much work I did in six years from 1970 to 76 there were 17 albums separate singles tours and and I just I just went over the top I mean like people said you can't way that I thought yeah yes I can but then by the time and then the punk thing made me looking you know I mean if I'd have been my successor what happened during the punt year I would have had the highest hairstyle you'd have had to have a furniture van to attack me I loved that era it's just so wonderful I mean I've seen you see people running with their legs tied together for taxis and buses and the bus to you not even batting an eyelid good old England you know and go to Britain I mean great sense of humor I guess he probably was over the top of course it was so I mean I'm a very excessive person I don't do things in half measures what's your lifestyle like now then I mean are you one of these stiff born again like Mick Jagger who used it sort of epitomized that kind of over-the-top rock lifestyle and now all playing squash and going jogging and things like well I don't play squash I don't joke right I'm still very much the same I mean I'm pretty again if I do something I do it to excess although I mean on stage my current outfits on stage real areas but I just because I feel like being Alerus and I'm very happy and I think my stage so I was always reflected my mood to some and some what I mean when I came back in 1979 after not to him for three years and I did the Ray Cooper - were just two of us I was very somber embrace the date because I wanted to concentrate on my music and I was just petrified to gone staging it which was good for me that's what I needed to have but I think I miss is crazy you know so yeah I think you've slowed I think you don't you get out of excessive in other ways I mean I just I stood as crazy as I ever would I never I bought a badge on tourists and I don't I refuse to grow up and that's kind of one has to grow up in certain ways but on the other hand I still like to take I mean to take things a little under seriously it's being married changed you mean changed your lifestyle or changed your worth thinking about things on really it's made me much more tolerant and much but then I and Watford happened to do that in a way it's been good it's been you know it's it was I never went out with my wife before we got married I'm just like I knew we were gonna get married I knew I should get married to her and we never you know we went out for a curry and that was it we got married it was great to do it like that and but there was no sort of pre romance or in the end it was a great wedding and it's been great yeah but I've always gambled on things that have gut feelings in my career for example again leaving the band and when I was in resolve G kicking out my drummer and good guitars and bass guitars when Captain fantastic out and was number one and we have that we were the most successful live act doing certain things I just knew it was right and if I hadn't taken the gamble at that time I would have been very very sorry because I just wanted to I wanted to change my lifestyle what is it just I just wanted to make an F and see if I could do it and I just knew that it if I didn't seize the opportunity I'd probably regret it and it's worked out really well and it's getting better and better and it's three years next February and a lot of people I mean I knew I was so much oh wow I got someone or telegram you may all be on the floor you may be standing but we're all on this blank floor but I mean you have to expect that because my former lifestyle was and not that of one conducive to getting married [Music]

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Id: vy4J5STGcm4

Length: 18min 33sec (1113 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 25 2013