Fresh Air - Someone Once Told Elton John He Would Never Be A Pop Star

Episode Date: December 15, 2024

Pop sensation Elton John wrapped up his farewell tour in 2023, only to pop up in a surprise concert at the October 2024 New York City premiere of the new documentary, "Elton John: Never Too Late." Still, as John reduces his public output — and as that documentary drops on the Disney+ streaming platform — we thought our listeners might like to hear again from the British music legend himself. Weekly bonus episodes like this, curated from our vast archive, are usually only available for our Fresh Air+ supporters. But today, in the spirit of giving, we're making this episode available to all. Not a Fresh Air+ supporter yet? Find out more, and join for yourself, at https://plus.npr.org/freshair. Listen to Elton John in 2013: https://n.pr/3BoEEYT| Listen to Elton John in 2019: https://n.pr/49ssSJG | Listen to 40+ years of Fresh Air's archives at https://FreshAirArchive.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, it's Terry Gross here with a special bonus episode. It's the season of giving and in that spirit we thought we'd give all our podcast listeners something extra. Bonus episodes like this one, curated selections from our archive, are usually only available for our Fresh Air Plus supporters. Today we're giving everyone a chance to hear it. If you're already a Fresh Air Plus supporter, thank you so much for your ongoing support of our show and of NPR. But if you haven't signed up for Plus yet, we hope you will. You'll get weekly bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening for every episode of our podcast, and you'll be supporting the NPR shows you listen to, including Fresh Air. You can find out more at plus.npr.org. Now to the show. Today we have two interviews I recorded with Elton John.

After a career of more than 50 years of extravagance and extraordinary popularity, Elton John finished his farewell tour last year. But he performed at Lincoln Center in October of this year at the premiere of the documentary Elton John Never Too Late. That documentary just started streaming on Disney+. Elton John's music spans genres and generations from Rocketman to the soundtrack for Disney's animated feature The Lion King. In 2019 he executive produced a biopic of his own life called Rocketman. It was a box office hit and won John and his longtime

collaborator, the racist Bernie Taupin, the Academy Award for Best Original Song. I spoke with Elton John twice on Fresh Air. We listened to excerpts from both interviews starting with the more recent one recorded in 2019, when he'd just written his memoir titled Me. We talked about an early lesson John learned about handling stardom, his difficult childhood, how he became addicted to shopping and collecting, and his early musical influences. So the book has a very candid description of your life. Before we get into some of the candid details that you write about in the book, you were in the band early in

your career as the keyboard player in Long John Baldry's band. The band was called Bluesology. You tell this really funny story at the beginning of the book where he had just had a big hit. So now he was famous and you know young women were coming to the concert and kind of like really getting excited and screaming And he he says on mic he says why don't you say what he said? Well, he said if you they were grabbing the microphone He said if you break my microphone, you'll pay me 50 pounds and I going Oh John that's not the way to handle the situation What did I do about stardom and how to handle it? Not how to handle it.

Not how to handle it. Yeah. Because I got to this point where after Rocketman came out, which was my first really big hit, about two years into my career after your song, I got screaming girls at some of my shows and I just thought that was rather funny because I wasn't David Bowie and I wasn't Rod Stewart and I wasn't Mark Bolan and I wasn't Mick Jagger. But I was at the piano and I got screaming girls. But I thought, I'm not going to, luckily they couldn't reach my microphone because I was

playing the piano. You accepted it and you loved it and you just went along with it. I think John didn't know how to cope with it. He just really didn't know how to cope. For all his life he'd been playing in clubs, playing the blues, and suddenly young girls were screaming at him, and I just think, he just never knew how to handle that. Of course, also with you, when you had young girls

screaming at you and everything, like you were gay, they didn't know that. No. Well, he was gay too. Oh, and he was gay too, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's right, that's right.

So what was it like for you knowing you were gay, knowing they didn't realize you were gay, and they were probably having all these like sexual fantasies about you? Well, I didn't worry about it. It's like, well, I'm not interested in you or not. You're interested, but I'm not. But it was very sweet. And they were very, I've still got a lot of, most of my audience is a lot of women as well, a lot of girls and a lot of females. And I'm very grateful for that. But I just kind of think that once they did find out, I think a lot of girls still wanted to mother me and, you know, we can make you straight. We love

you. We love you. And it's very touching. Well, speaking of you and John Baldry being gay, when you decided you were going to marry a woman when you were in your early 20s, he said to you, John, you're gay, you can't marry her. And what was your reaction? Because I don't think you had acknowledged that to yourself yet. I hadn't, and I just thought, oh my God. I remember where it was at the club,

it was in Carnaby Street. And that's when Bernie and I came home that night and we were so drunk and I told Linda, the girl I was going to marry, that I wasn't going to marry her anymore because I'd never had a sexual experience. I didn't know anything about sex. I'd never had a sexual experience at all. I didn't have a sex until I was 23, which was portrayed in Rocketman. That was the first time. I didn't know anything about it. I presumed that you had to marry a girl because that was the way things were done. But I didn't have sexual feelings for Bernie.

I just had great love for Bernie. And I wanted to cuddle him and I wanted to give him a hug. I didn't want to go to bed with him. But I did love him more than I did love Linda. And when he said that, I suddenly start thinking, oh, because I had no one in my family who was gay. I had no yardstick to measure my gayness on. Except I worked for Long John Baldy for so long, and he was so, when I look back now, he was so outrageous, and I didn't know anything, didn't think he was gay. I didn't know about

anything. I didn't know about it. I was so naive. So that night, thank God, the epiphany came that night, and I went home and dodged the bullet as it were. But I still didn't have sex for a couple of years, two or three years later. It's remarkable that you could be like a rock musician and remain a virgin until you were 23. You might be the only person. Well a lot of rock musicians go into rock music to pull girls. That's one of the big attractions.

Well, we can play on stage and we can flirt with the girls and then we can go backstage and then we can have them, we can take them home and we can have sex with them. That was never my motive. I was just wanted to play music. Sex wasn't anything I was thinking about. I was just wanting to play music. I was so obsessed with music, nothing entered my head apart from that. You said you wanted to play music, but on the other hand you write that, you know,

early on, like when you were a sideman with John Baldry, that you thought what you really wanted to do was write songs. And you had auditioned for Liberty Records and they told you you were not ever going to be a pop star, you weren't pop star material. So did you think like star you weren't pop star material. So Did you think like you really weren't cut out to be a perfect? Maybe they were right that you weren't cut out to be a performer that your job should be behind the scenes or as a sideman Well, I I was getting fed up with long jump boarded playing to cabaret people who were eating chicken and chips and not caring about

The music and I thought I didn't become a musician for this Maybe I'd written a couple of songs for blues ology that Were recorded and the lyrics were awful, but I wrote the melody and this audition for Liberty Records was just I thought Maybe I can be a songwriter. I had no I know intentions of being a Elton John superstar or whatever I just thought maybe I can write music. I I went to the audition I said I do sing but I don't sing much but I can write music. I went to the audition, I said I do sing, but I don't sing much, but I can write songs, but I'm a terrible lyricist. And hence he gave me the envelope, which was, you know, could have been any envelope. And it was Bernie's lyrics, which I read on the train going home. I didn't have any ambitions at that time to become

someone who made their own records and became a star. I just thought, well, maybe if I leave the band, I can become a songwriter and that'll be fun. I'm still in the music business. So it was just part of the process of the serendipity that happened to me that if I hadn't have gone to that meeting I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you now. Then you look back and think, how did I have the courage to go to that meeting when I was chubby?

I had no self-esteem, I was shy, but anything was better than playing to people who were eating chicken and chips while you were playing. You said you had no self-esteem or low self-esteem. Were the costumes that you like, the crazy clothing that you wore, the big glasses, all that, was that in part armor to cover up your low self-esteem? Like something to call it? No. It was because in my teenage years, I wasn't allowed to wear anything fashionable at all. No pointed toe shoes, no chiseled toe shoes, no fashionable coats. So when

I actually left home and started, you know, I think that was the leap, leaving home and beginning to earn my own wage and keeping myself and supporting myself, then I decided to live my teenage years in my 20s. And I, you know, I made up for lost time pretty quickly. And I just, I went hell for leather for it. And I just had such a great time because I was cocooned in boring clothes. It sounds like a lot of your childhood years weren't great. Your parents bickered all the time. Your mother remarried and you liked your stepfather, but they bickered all the

time. They got married when she was 16 and he was 17. You wonder if they were ever, if they ever should have been together in the first place. And your mother sounds like she was a very moody and frequently angry person who could hold a grudge. And you even describe how when you, you don't remember this, but I think it was an aunt who told you that when your mother was toilet training you, she'd beat you with a hairbrush until you were bloody, and she'd beat you until you used the potty. So is that kind of typical of what your childhood was like? That was my mother who did that.

My father and my mother should never have gotten married. They got married very quickly after the war, which a lot of people did. They were totally unsuitable to each other. My dad was in the Air Force and was away a lot. My mom worked very, very hard in shops and also later in life at the Royal Air Force as well. And I was the product of—I don't know how many times they must have had sex. I don't think they must have had sex very often, but I was the product of their marriage.

The 50s was an incredibly tough time to grow up in. It was after the war. It was very conservative. So if you were in a marriage and you wanted to get out of it, it was very tough to get out of it because divorce was frowned on socially. I can remember my uncle Redd coming when my parents were thinking of getting divorced saying, you can't get divorced. What will the next door neighbors say? That was what it was like. I knew nothing about sex. Nothing I was seen or not heard. Children were seen or not heard. I had the wonderful upbringing with my grandmother. My mother

could be so much fun, but she was mercurial. And they were like oil and water, the two of them. The nice thing about it is that they got, when they did get divorced, and my mother found Fred and my dad found Edna, is that they found the love of their lives. And that I'm very happy about. But the bit in between was hard to take because I dreaded my dad coming home because that it would be a row immediately and then I would retreat to my room and You know look at my books look at my records look at my toys and Funnily enough. I mean, I just I found love of inanimate objects

Because inanimate objects which I kept in pristine condition couldn't harm me or talk back to me So I always loved collecting things Books records, you know Toys don't get dinky toys But mostly records and books which you know, I never lent out to anybody because I therein I still have my books Well, you became you became an obsessive shopper later in life and you collected everything. Yeah, I'm an addict. It was the instigation of being an addict. But it was because I felt safe with the objects and not with my parents. And so, and it gave me a determination, you

know, with my dad not wanting me to be anything to do with rock and roll when Elvis Presley came in, that I would be determined to prove to him that my mother who took my side and said, yeah, he should do what he does and let him do the music because he loves it, and was very supportive. My dad, of course, hated it. And I've been trying to prove to my dad that it's been okay ever since. So it gave me the determination to make something of myself. And it's just prolonged in my life. He's been dead for over 30 years. And I'm still kind of doing that. It's like, well, dad, I hope you're proud now.

And it's crazy. He was an amateur trumpet player, wasn't he? He was a trumpet player in a band, yeah. Yeah. So why was he so set? I realized he didn't like rock and roll, but still he must have appreciated that you were such a talented musician and you were studying classical music too at a conservatory. I know he just considered he's there was an expression in called

wide boy which meant crook. He said if I became a, Elton is, my mother read the letter to me, it's in a thing called Tantrums. Elton would become a wide boy if he carried rock and roll, there's no future. He wanted a solid future for me in a bank or in the Air Force or doing a proper job. It was all down, you grew up in the 50s, you knew what it was like. When Elvis came, it was a revolution. It was a social revolution and people were horrified and people who in England were horrified who had you know conservative opinions of what was good and what was bad. If I became a rock and roller my life would fall apart

to a certain extent he was right. You could say that but it also, let face it, you've had an amazing life. He must have been so proud once you became famous and hopefully a little embarrassed that he tried so hard to discourage you from doing what you do. No, not really. I never came to my shows. He never wrote a letter saying, well done. He didn't even try to capitalize on your fame.

Like, that's my son. No, no, no. He had four other sons that he had with his married to Edna. He was a tactile father to them and loving. He just, you know, I've done so much therapy and rehab and I just look back at it and say, this was an unfortunate meeting of two people who should never have met each other. I'm just curious, how much do you think of that is like the music, that it was rock and roll, and do you think any of that estrangement was because you were gay?

I think it was a musical snob, yeah. Okay. And you know, I grew up, I'm so grateful for, I mean, I always had music in the house, Terry. I grew up with, you know, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, George Shearing. This is great music. All great music, I mean, all Sinatra, George Shearing. This is great music. All great music.

I mean, all from America, obviously, but great music. When I was like nine years old, I think I got Songs for Swinging Lovers and my Christmas present by Frank Sinatra. And I loved George Shearing. He was a jazz player, pianist who was blind, who came from Pinner, where I came from. When I first became successful in the early 70s, I went to New York and I phoned him and I said, thank you. I grew up with your music. And it was fantastic. And I was only six or seven years old when I heard your music, but I loved it. And it made me want to play the piano like you, although I couldn't play as

well as you. But I was very grateful to the music I had. But when Elvis Presley came knocking on the door and little Richard and Jerry Lewis who? started jumping on the piano then That was what I wanted to do that was an excerpt of the interview I recorded with Elton John in 2019 Now we'll hear an excerpt from our 2013 conversation when he was in Vegas during his million dollar piano conversation when he was in Vegas during his million dollar piano residency at Caesar's Palace. In this excerpt we talked about how he was influenced by the flamboyant pianist Liberace. We are recording this on Thursday September 19th right before you perform at the Emmy Awards. And our listeners will be

hearing this after you've performed at the Emmy Awards and you're doing a tribute to Liberace Because the movie about him behind Beyond Behind the candelabra is not nominated for like 15 Emmys and who knows how many if any it will have won by the time this was broadcast But anyways, you know, he was You could say oh you'd look at Liberace and of course you'd think he was gay but you know, he wasn't publicly out, and I think it was an era when it was like,

it was okay to be gay as long as you didn't mention it, as long as like, no one had to hear it. Yeah. Liberace came to England, and there was a columnist in the Daily Mirror who said he was gay, a guy called Cassandra, well, that was his pseudonym,

and Liberace sued and won. He said, I'm not gay, and he won the, and he won the Leibov case. When I was young and I watched the Liberace show or any show that came from America that, you know, was musical, it was pure magic. The Americans did things on a bigger scale. Liberace, of course, he played the piano. I was very much interested in. He was a, he was a good pianist, but he was not a great pianist. And I was enchanted by him and I loved him. You know, his dialogue with the audience was very, very funny, especially when he did live shows. And I did get to meet him. I did the Royal Variety Show with him in London, at the London Palladium.

And I planned my two big outfits and I thought, well, Liberace, I've got to do something special. So I had two fabulous Lurek suits made in red, white and blue. And they were hanging up, you know, very proudly in the dressing room. And then Lee, who he liked to be called Liberace, Lee walked in with trunk after trunk. He wore that outfit with the light bulbs in it. And, you know, so my attempt to, my attempt to go one up on Liberace failed absolutely miserably, but he was so charming and so lovely, and very, very funny, and very, very intelligent.

And he was a huge influence on me. I was like, he was being who he was. He wasn't publicly out, but he didn't give a flying monkeys about what he was wearing, he just went for it. And that was who he was. And that of course influenced me when I started wearing the clothes. And subconsciously, if you're stuck at a piano,

and you're not a lead guitarist or lead vocalist, you're kind of at a nine-foot plank, and you have to do something about it. So my thing was to leap on the piano, do handstand, and wear clothes that would attract attention to me, because that's the focus for two and a half hours or two hours. I'm not walking around the stage, I'm not moving. So he gave me that idea probably subconsciously, because before then I'd never seen anyone dressed like that.

You know, I was reading a 1973 Rolling Stone interview with you in which you said that your act is going to become a little more Liberaceized. And I thought, wow, 1973, you were thinking about making your act more Liberaceish. Well, it was all my stuff has been done with firmly tongue in cheek. I wasn't a heartthrob David Bowie or Mick Jagger or Rod Stewart in those days. I was Elton at the piano. I just had to turn the attention onto something comedic or even more outrageous than it was. Of course, with those kind of things, as is my want in everything I do, I took it too

far and it became, in the beginning it was natural. I didn't think about it. It was like, oh yeah, let's do this, let's do that. And then it became like, oh, what am I gonna do next? And that's the dangerous side. It's like, you think about it too much. In the end, it became tired and it became too much. And it became less fun.

I think a lot of the critics, the costumes, put people off me. They weren't listening to the music, it was more or less looking at what I was wearing. I was singing great songs, but I was also wearing a giant chicken outfit at the time and being helped on stage by Mr. Universe on his shoulders. So, anything like that, it was all down to me. It

was my fault. If anything, you know, if they didn't like what I was wearing, then I couldn't really do much about it. But I had to take responsibility for it. That was Elton John speaking with me in 2013 from Vegas during his million dollar piano residency at Caesar's Palace. I should note here, the piano really did cost one million dollars. It lights up, you can show films on it, you can show video. It was a suggestion from Yamaha who made my piano, said, you know, we're coming up with an idea for you. And, you know, the first show I did in Las Vegas was the Red Piano. I had a Red Piano. And then we had to think, well, if we're going to go back,

what can we do? And they came up with this idea before we ever thought of going back to Vegas. And I thought, well, if I go back to Vegas, this sounds like a great idea. You know, and it's, I introduced, the piano has a name. She's named Blossom after Blossom Deary. Oh, I love Blossom Deary. We'll link to the full versions of both my 2013 and 2019 interviews with Elton John in our show notes. Our Fresh Air Plus bonus episodes are produced by Nick Anderson. Our engineer for this episode is Adam Stanaszewski. I'm Terri Gross. Thanks for your support of our work here at Fresh Air.