The Making of Elton John: Madman Across the Water

This programme contains some strong language

The gentleman you have all been waiting for,

the biggest, most colossal, gigantic,

fantastic Elton John!

Sir Elton Hercules John, flamboyant piano man, campaigner,

collector and a national treasure.

Possibly the most successful male solo artist of all time,

he's squeezed a lot into his 63 years.

But this is the story of the Elton we sometimes forget,

the singer-songwriter who quietly emerged on to the music scene exactly 40 years ago.

To the bemusement of his songwriting partner, Bernie Taupin,

he shot to fame in America and in a few crazy years became the biggest popstar on the planet.

It is kind of tragic that when you ask the general public the question "Elton John"

they think of big glasses and The Lion King and Crocodile Rock. It's all quite wrong, really.

But now Elton's heading in a new direction and that's back, back to where it all began.

To go forward in my career as a recording artist, I've got to go back.

I've got to revisit what I did. That's where my heart was, in the soulful, joyful, country,

gospel, funky rock 'n' roll, that element of the South, that's where I am. That's my true spirit.

# Saturday, Saturday, Saturday

# Saturday, Saturday, Saturday night's all right

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Hugh Nurial from Harrow draws the train.

On and on north-westwards.

London far away

and stations start to look quite countrified.

Pinner, a parish of 1,000 souls

till railways gave it many thousands more.

Growing up the only child of a troubled marriage in post-war Pinner,

young Reg Dwight used music as a way of escape from his solitary life.

I used to find solace in music. When my parents used to argue,

I used to go in my room and listen to Radio Luxembourg.

Radio filled my head with dreams.

I had a few friends, I had my cousins and stuff like that,

but music was my best friend and I lived and breathed for it.

PIANO PLAYS

I grew up playing by ear at a very early age.

I could pick up any tune and play it.

And when I started playing the piano by ear, it was Winifred Atwell and people like that.

SHE PLAYS FAST-PACED JAZZ

My parents, thankfully, asked me to have lessons when I was seven

and I did and I won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music.

11-year-old Reg joined the academy's junior exhibitioner scheme

for state school children who showed an exceptional gift for music.

It's funny, I've had hundreds of pupils

and yet I remember him so clearly.

He was a dear. I was very fond of him.

He had such a marvellous ear.

But I do remember that he couldn't read music.

So I gave him these books to catch up on being a pianist.

Also at the academy, he learnt how to construct music.

He learnt about the chords and phrases

and how different composers constructed their music

and everything that would help him if he wanted to write his own music.

THEY PLAY FAST-PACED ROCK 'N' ROLL

But by the late 50s, British teenagers had other ideas of how to tinkle the ivories.

Rock 'n' roll arrived and changed the world. It changed my world.

# Well, come on over, baby

# We got chicken in the barn, whose barn, what barn, my barn

Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Ray Charles, Fats Domino came into play

and so it was a whole new ball game.

# Whole lot of shaking going on

He hadn't been showing such enthusiasm for the last year, I should say.

I didn't know that he'd formed his own band

and that he had a quite different love of music from mine.

# Shake

# Shake

# Shake, baby, shake, baby

I formed a band at 15 called Bluesology with a couple of friends.

I still didn't know what I wanted to do. I knew I wouldn't be a classical pianist. I didn't want to be.

I just wanted to be in a band and play rock 'n' roll.

Bluesology were a collection of like-minded lads

from the Pinner and Northwood Hills area of Northwest London.

# Getting tougher than tough

# This thing's getting rougher than rough

Reg was square compared with the other people that were in our band.

Very short hair, little round glasses.

He didn't look the part at all.

We didn't see a great deal of him socially.

But when he got down and played, everything else was just put aside.

He was... He obviously had an immense talent.

He could do anything. He could sit down with a stack of music

and work his way through it, he could play rock 'n' roll,

boogie-woogie, jazz, you name it.

We couldn't have done what we did without him.

Because of his musical knowledge, he was the person to knit it all together.

I always got the impression that he wanted to progress his career

probably more than other members of the band

and this was just a stepping stone.

By the age of 17, young Reg

was set on his path as a musician and school had become something of a distraction.

My headmaster at Pinner County was Mr Westgate-Smith. I was petrified of him.

And I knocked on his door and I told him the story of why I wanted to leave and he said,

"I know how much music means to you.

"I give you my blessing but make sure you work hard at everything you do."

Taking the lead, Reg set to work writing Bluesology's first single.

I wasn't the lead singer but they didn't like the lead singer's voice so I had to sing

which went down well with the lead singer.

# Come back baby

# Come back to me, yeah

Now armed with their first seven-inch,

the band's next step on the road to turning pro was to pay their dues

backing R'n'B acts for the infamous Roy Tempest agency.

Tempest had hit on the wonderful idea

of importing acts into the UK whose careers were a little bit on the downward slop

because they could get them cheap and by the time they got here

they were in for two weeks of solid hard work.

# I give you all I have baby

# But when you leave my arms I know...

These gigs turned out to be a master class in stage craft from the seasoned veterans.

Patti LaBelle and Billy Stewart, Major Lance, The Ink Spots,

they were all great. Major Lance. Billy Stewart,

one of the greatest underrated R'n'B stars of all time, enormous big man.

HE ROLLS HIS TOUNGUE

-The way he carried himself and the way he sang...

-HE ROLLS HIS TONGUE

In the summertime. He was fantastic.

# Summertime

# And the living is easy

It was that era of R'n'B where they all did the movements

and they knew how to do a show, whether it was 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour or ten minutes,

they knew how to get the audience. You just watched.

# Get enough then I'm going to Hollywood

Nothing's better for you than to go out and play live, even to 20 people.

It gives you resolve, it hardens you up and it makes you a better songwriter,

it gives you the experience, the backbone.

# Well, you know the night time

# Oh, the right time

Having made a name for themselves as a backing band,

Bluesology's next gig came from a little closer to home.

We joined Long John Baldry. John was a blues singer

so we were doing Della Reese and Nina Simone songs. Great.

We're talking about Mr Long John Baldry!

He was pretty well established on the blues scene, Baldry.

And subsequently he had a big number one hit in 1967.

A dreadful toe-curling record.

Let The Heartaches Begin. HE LAUGHS

# So let the heartaches begin

Consequently, dates changed. We were playing in supper clubs and it was cabaret.

And I was playing and I was getting more and more depressed

and I thought, "This isn't the reason I wanted to play in a band, I hate this."

There was one time we were playing in this club in London

and Reg got so hacked off with it, we were in the middle of a song

and all of a sudden you can hear this racket going on at the back.

And I turned round and there's him just completely lost his bottle,

tipped the organ up, he's fuming around, "I've had enough!"

And Baldry's still trying to sing... # Let's the heartaches begin

HE LAUGHS

It was time to go then, yeah.

If I don't go, I'm going to be stuck here or work in a record shop.

There's no future in this.

There's no future whatsoever.

So I answered that infamous advert from Liberty Records in the NME

wanting talent and songwriters.

Another response to the talent-wanted ad came from a lonesome poet from Lincolnshire

with aspirations of making it as a songwriter.

# If you're travelling in the north country fair

Bernie came down from Lincolnshire and he was this very young boy with long hair,

very attractive, big reader,

huge Dylan fan.

He got me into Dylan far more than I was before.

And we started writing together and it felt comfortable straight away.

It was like a hand in a glove.

I just remember that we were both very shy, you know?

Being an only child, I think, gave him a certain way of being

and for me, being a country kid in the big city,

I was sort of out of my depth, so I think we were both swimming in deep water

and basically trying to find something to hang onto and we found each other.

Bunking at Reg's mum's house in Pinner, the new best friends settled into a daily routine.

Commuting from the suburbs to swinging Soho.

# I live on the corner of the 99th floor of my block

Denmark Street, on any given day,

you could see pretty much anybody going through there.

So bands like The Kinks, The Stones, Donovan,

they'd be doing publishing deals and recording demos, so there was all this activity going on.

In contrast to this youthful scene, Reg and Bernie's destination

was an apprenticeship in the old world music biz Mecca known as Tin Pan Alley.

"London's Tin Pan Alley, birthplace of melodies which have kept Britain singing to good times and bad.

"Just 60 yards of plate glass windows..."

The pair were fixed up with a job as staff writers at the Beatles' veteran song publisher

Dick James Music.

It was a very old-school environment. Dick was a hard-line

Jewish music-business man

and he ran an office that was a little bit old-fashioned in a way.

It was like the changing of the guard.

It was so funny cos a lot of the guys that had these office cubicles within Dick James' office,

they were like artefacts of the music hall days, you know?

We'd hang out in the pubs and listen to all the old cronies talk about the good old days

and have them point fingers at us and say, "You're not professionals!

"You've got to be around for a long time to be called a professional!"

And now, ladies and gentlemen, A Song For Europe.

And tonight, song number four,

written by Bernie Taupin and Elton John.

Lulu sings I Can't Go On Living Without You.

# I once said I could go on

# Without your love

# I would be strong but things have changed

# And heavens above

# I know that I need you

Bernie and I started off as songwriters that wrote hits for other people and we were terrible.

# I can't go on living without you

# Oh, no, my love

Reg and Bernie spent two fruitless years trying to churn out hits

for popstars like Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck.

They never quite got it right.

# Living without you, ohh

Bernie and I had so many times where we felt like jacking it in.

We would come back on the train to my parents' flat

and we'd sit down with my mum and say, "Oh, no-one's covered our song, I think we'll chuck it in."

She said, "You get paid every week. Go and work in the greengrocers, then. What would you rather do?"

Since their partnership began, Reg and Bernie had been recording demos of their own songs

for Reg to one day perform himself.

Reg came into my office one day and said,

"We've more or less laid down an album

"and we're looking to release it on the DJM label."

I said to him, "We can't put it out under the name Reg Dwight.

"It's not a very awe-inspiring name."

Simply combining the names of Long John Baldry and Elton Dean, the sax player in Bluesology,

Reg came up with Elton John.

# Fly away skyline pigeon fly

Empty Sky was released in June 1969 but went largely unnoticed.

Empty Sky did have a proper release

and I'm sure review copies were sent around,

but nobody paid any attention to it at all.

And in musical terms, it was really not much more than demos.

Reg's creation Elton John was still a work in progress.

He's not really Marc Bolan, is he? That was my immediate thought.

I thought, "He's a bit short and a big chubby

"and I don't know whether he's got the wherewithal

"to be an artiste."

Taking all his musical experience,

a batch of new and improved lyrics from Bernie

and the production team behind David Bowie's hit Space Oddity,

Elton was about to seize his moment.

Elton told Gus and me explicitly and specifically,

"You have carte blanche, we want you to do your own thing."

Gus came in with my father and myself

and asked for quite a high budget.

And having heard the songs, wanted to orchestrate them.

We were looking at a very high budget

and we decided to take the gamble.

ORCHESTRA PLAYS

We were very careful to create a beautiful soundscape,

knowing that it was going to sound really nice.

Maybe lovely is a nice word.

# Peering out of tiny eyes

# The grubby hands that grip the rail

# Wiped the window clean of frost

# As the morning air

# Laid on the latch

It all went very smoothly.

Dick James was overjoyed and we just got more and more excited

as to the prospects of the success of this record.

Here was Elton John reborn as the profound singer-songwriter,

complete with orchestral arrangements, heartfelt lyrics

and now the look to carry it all off.

# I have been removed

Singer-songwriters at the time were fairly moody characters

and Elton seemed like quite a shy little fellow when you met him.

And Bernie's words were very much in this singer-songwriter mould at the time, so that suited him.

I was on the undercurrent. I hadn't had a chart success but I was on the verge.

# Been removed

We got some airplay. I don't remember it breaking into the top 30.

And we, to be blunt, were struggling.

# I have been deceived

The Elton John album wasn't selling in Britain,

so desperate to secure any return on his investment,

Dick James hawked the record to his contacts across the pond.

In the post comes this Elton John album.

So I take it out and I put it on my turntable

and I listen to this great album

and I said, "Thank you, God! This is incredible!"

It was one of the greatest...pieces of music I'd ever heard in my life!

# He's my brother

# Let us live in peace

So then I said, "We have to bring him to America

"and break him here in America."

This enthusiasm from the Americans was enough to persuade Dick James

to fund one last attempt to launch Elton

by sending him and his band to LA.

Dick sent them over there

and it basically was sink or swim.

This was the last... This was it.

Touching down in Los Angeles was the stuff of dreams for Elton and Bernie

and a far cry from their shared bedroom in the London suburbs.

I was just interested in going because it was America.

I'd always wanted to come here. It was a dream.

The band were met by a welcoming party intent on presenting Elton as someone who was already a star.

We were driving from the airport down the freeway

and then we got to the Sunset Strip and it was like being on parade.

It was just unbelievable. The California sunshine

and pretty girls all over the place. It was amazing.

There was still a transition from the 60s going on.

There was still the singer-songwriter era

and flower power and that whole summer of love and all that stuff.

It started in LA. So he came into a very vibrant scene.

The US label men made sure the great and the good of LA's music scene

were assembled for Elton's week-long stint at the Troubadour Club.

It was brilliant that Russ Regan, the head of UNI Records, put him in this club rather than The Whisky

cos the rock acts were playing The Whisky.

This was the songwriters' club. This was where you sat every week

and you saw Joni Mitchell and James Taylor and Tim Hardin and those guys.

So he was putting Elton John in that company.

# Senorita play guitar

# Plays it just for you

# My rosary has broken...

Elton fitted right in at the Troubadour

but had a lot more to offer thanks to his apprenticeship in rock 'n' roll and rhythm and blues.

All of a sudden, he jumps up from the piano,

he kicks the thing and I go, you're always relating to things, "This is Jerry Lee Lewis!"

I was having a ball. And we rocked. Had a great three-piece band

and I came out and did 60 Years On, but it wasn't really like the record,

it was more like an extended jam version.

# 60 years on

He had terrific songs of a wide range. He was not copying what other people were doing.

So by the end of the evening, the place was a buzz!

It was like, "Can you believe what you just saw?"

And I couldn't wait to run to the typewriter and write.

That one night and that one review saved me a year's work.

I mean, there was no internet, but it flew, word of mouth.

# Burn down the mission

Overnight, Elton had gone from the last chance saloon to the talk of the town.

It was so exciting for us.

We could see in the audience these people. Steve Stills was there.

Some of the Three Dog Night guys were there. I think even Diana Ross was there.

Hey, Leon!

Also in the crowd was the songwriter and piano man of the times that Elton admired the most.

The second night at the Troubadour, I was halfway through Burn Down The Mission

and then I saw Leon in the second row,

the long grey hair and the aviator glasses, and I totally froze

because he was, at that particular time in my life, he was my idol. Without question.

# Please don't ask how many times I found you

Leon Russell was a cult figure on the American music scene,

a sought-after session man and songwriter.

I was petrified meeting him afterwards cos I thought he was going to tie me to a chair and say,

"This is how to play". And, of course, he embraced me and was very complimentary.

He was quite a beautiful soul singer,

had a huge blues awareness that I found interesting.

I thought my career was over

cos he was a lot more active, a lot more showmanship.

So I figured I'd had it.

That's what I was getting in those early shows at the Troubadour,

musicians that I respected coming up to me and saying, "This is really great".

So I knew I was doing the right thing. And my music at that point was more American anyway.

APPLAUSE

Ladies and gentlemen, a few months ago, a young man came over from England

and he shot right to the top of the pop music field.

His first album is hit, his first single is a hit

-and I hate him.

-LAUGHTER

-No, I really like him. I mean, I really like him.

-LAUGHTER

Elton didn't fight his way in, he just exploded into the charts. There was a door waiting for him.

The 60s were winding down and you didn't know what the 70s were going to be, you know?

The Beatles are breaking up, right? Was rock 'n' roll over? Where was it going to go?

# It's a little bit funny

# This feeling inside

# I'm not one of those who can

# Easily hide

# I don't have much money but...

Your Song was just one of those songs that came at a time when people were reaching for something that felt real

and Your Song was such a sweet song, it was like expressing love

with the inarticulateness of young people.

# So excuse me forgetting

# But these things I do

# You see, I've forgotten

# If they're green or they're blue

# Anyway, the thing is

It was written out of pure innocence. I mean, when you listen to the lyric of that song,

you can tell that it's written by somebody who's very naive and very young and I was.

I mean, I was 17 years old, never been kissed.

Well, I don't know about that, but pretty much.

# And you can tell everybody

# This is your song

With Your Song, Elton and Bernie finally found their voice

and back home it became their first top-ten hit.

"Elton John, a remarkable man from the world of pop

"who some would claim to be Britain's newest musical superstar."

The boys who'd shared a room and a dream of becoming famous songwriters returned home men

where they were now being compared to their heroes.

"Songs like 60 Years On are prompting American as well as British critics

"to suggest that Elton John and his partner Bernie Taupin

"could well be the most inventive and original team of songwriters since Lennon and McCartney."

# How wonderful life is

# While you're in the world

Elton, once the shy and retiring songwriter, now had a new air of confidence.

When it happened, it happened so fast and I was surprised myself

at how he suddenly took off and became this other person.

I happened to be, it must have been about 1970, 1971,

and I was watching TV

and they introduced him as Mr Elton John

and I didn't take... Then I peered at the television set

and I thought, "That's not Elton John, that's Reg Dwight".

# Well, my baby left me and never said a thing...

There was now little of the old Reg Dwight on show

and Elton's stage presence had also grown.

I always say I was a bit like the Jimi Hendrix of the piano

because I was just... I had freedom. I could do exactly what I wanted. I couldn't throw it in the air,

play it behind my back, but I could certainly fly on it and do handstands on it.

# All right

He loved all that early success and it was just so much more fun

and he was having a good time and he was making a few bob.

And there's nothing like a bit of success, is there? You know?

It's a pretty good drug. HE LAUGHS

When he became Elton John, he was rebelling against everything he wasn't allowed to do as a child.

So it was like he was escaping this repression

that was forced upon him when he was younger.

Thank you.

By this time, he had come out.

Not publically but to himself.

So that made him more comfortable in his own skin.

And by this time he had met John Reid and they were a pretty formidable team.

They were out to conquer the world.

John Reid, a precocious young record label exec,

became Elton's partner and manager through the most prolific period of his career.

Alongside constant touring, Elton would release seven albums in the next three years.

I look back on it now and I think

it's a lot of young adrenaline and you only have that adrenaline for a certain part of your career.

But the most important thing was that we had to do, under contract, two records a year.

The follow-up to the Elton John LP was already finished and ready to release.

Tumbleweed Connection, born out of Elton and Bernie's shared love for all things American,

seemed perfect for their new audience stateside.

# I pulled down the Stage Coach Times

# And I read the latest news

I don't know if we knew when we started doing the Tumbleweed album

that it was going to be such a conceptualised Americana piece.

That album was recorded before we even went to the States.

Bernie's inspiration for this ode to America came from a childhood spent dreaming of the promise land,

a world of wide-open spaces and saloon-bar shoot-outs.

GUNSHOTS

# I won't run

# I'm tired of hearing

# There goes a well-known gun

He was someone who was destined to become American.

Even though he lived in Owmby by Spital in Lincolnshire.

From the day I met him, he was obsessed with Americana, the Wild West, Marty Robbins,

and, to be honest, he's never changed.

# And it's good old country comfort in my bones

# Just the sweetest sound my ears have ever known

Bernie's lyrics were straight out of the Wild West

and were complimented by Elton's bluesy southern-rock style.

The music was so different. It was a combination...

He locked into that southern thing and the rock thing, the soul thing.

But he put his own unique take on all that music.

# Just the sweetest sound my ears have ever known

Gospel and soul and country, basically, that's my favourite kind of music.

American music that embraces all those three, like Elvis Presley did.

He came from R'n'B, gospel and country. You fuse those together

and you've got a pretty soulful combination.

# Yes, it is, country comfort

# In a truck that's going back home

# Yes, it is

# Country comfort in that truck that's going back home

If Tumbleweed Connection was their American dream,

the next album became a document of their new reality

as Elton and his band took to the road.

The next song is about travelling in America.

# Boston at last

# And the plane's touching down

# Our hostess...

Being on the road was wonderful. He was very well received whatever city we went to.

The press were really smitten with Elton John.

So it was a very, very happy time.

# It's a ten-minute ride

# To the Holiday Inn

# Boredom's a pastime that one soon acquires

# Where you get the stage where you're not even tired

We were always in the studio or on the road and it just got bigger and bigger and bigger.

When we were coming over and doing these tours,

I was always regarded as part of the band, only I just didn't perform.

HE LAUGHS I was just a hanger-on, man.

I don't know. I was sort of a groupie, I guess.

# Slow down, Joe

# I'm a rock 'n' roll man

It was such a whirlwind that I don't remember ever having time to breathe.

It was just an extraordinary time.

Elton became part of a scene that found him rubbing shoulders with many of his rock 'n' roll heroes.

You go to a party on the Sunset Strip

and I go into the party and it's Bob Dylan singing on the piano.

All the English bands were coming into town

so there's just energy.

On my second trip, Bernie and I went with Danny Hutton to meet Brian Wilson.

So you can imagine! We met Dylan and he said, "I really like that song Ballad Of A Well-Known Gun".

We were like... We couldn't hardly speak.

You have to realise that I was meeting, within a period of two months,

some of the greatest names in the world and it was joyous.

Ever the fan, Elton was in his element

and new friends also brought his first taste of the decadent rock star lifestyle.

I'd become friends with Danny Hutton, who was in Three Dog Night,

and I went up to his house in Laurel Canyon with his girlfriend June

and had dinner with him and Van Dyke Parts.

# This is the craziest party there could ever be

It was like a little funky Laurel Canyon house with a great vibe

and Elton played piano all night.

I left at 7:30 in the morning and I thought,

"I've never stayed up till 7:30 in the morning but I feel really good"

and I drove back to the Sunset Hyatt House in my rented car.

And years later, Danny said, "Well, we put cocaine in your food".

# Mama told me not to come

-HE LAUGHS

-We all indulged

and he was just part of indulging with us.

I might have forgot to tell him.

# That ain't the way to have fun

It was a free-wheeling wonderful time, you know?

-I think it certainly didn't hurt him.

-HE LAUGHS

He went on to be quite successful.

# We've moved on six miles

Despite Elton making new friends in high places,

his true companion remained by his side,

taking everything in as they toured the States.

I think Elton was a lot more ambitious than I was.

I was just riding along on the back of the saddle.

I was definitely the Tonto, you know?

He may have felt like the sidekick,

but new experiences fuelled Bernie's writing,

ensuring a healthy flow of lyrics for Elton to turn into songs.

The songwriting thing is very 50/50.

I mean, he's the artist, but you have to remember, he's singing my thoughts.

I love getting the lyrics from Bernie. I love seeing what he comes up with.

I love going into the room and creating something musical

to his imagination. I've never gotten tired of that.

I just sift through them. There's one here that I've done the other day called Tiny Dancer,

which is about Bernie's girlfriend.

Look at the words, "Blue jean baby, LA lady,

"seamstress of the band, pretty eyed, pirate smile,

"you'll marry a music man, ballerina..."

When you get to the word ballerina, you know it's not going to be fast.

It's got to be gentle and quite slow.

They were so different in terms of a songwriting partnership

cos they never actually sat down together.

Lennon and McCartney sat down around a piano or guitar

and worked stuff out together.

Extraordinary when you think about it.

We've been together for 43 years now, Bernie and I,

and still haven't written a song in the same room.

# Blue jean baby

# LA lady

# Seamstress for the band

I think there was a substance to him. He was a terrific songwriter

and Elton could take that song and put it together in a way that just made it seem irresistible.

# Ballerina

# You must have seen her

# Dancing in the sand

We've never had an argument over a song and that's to his credit

cos there must have been instances where I've written melodies to his song that didn't go.

I don't tread on his toes and he doesn't tread on mine.

And it's a matter of trust and love. The love we have for each other and a respect.

And if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

# Hold me closer, tiny dancer

# Count the headlights on the highway

# Lay me down in sheets of linen

# You had a busy day today

# Oh, oh, oh

Elton and Bernie had mastered the art of the rock ballad.

But in late 1971, there weren't many sensitive singer-songwriters on Top Of The Pops.

Here is the only group to have two number ones last year.

You saw them singing on Christmas Day and here's the other one, T-Rex and Get It On.

APPLAUSE

While Elton was across the water,

back in the UK, Marc Bolan had paved the way for a new kind of garish glittering glam rock.

# You're dirty sweet, clad in black, don't look back, I love you

# You're dirty sweet and you're my girl

And Elton had his own glam side just itching to get out.

# Bang a gong, get it on

# Wahh

After Tumbleweed and Madman, we went in a whole different direction

and suddenly overnight we went from being these American FM darlings of folk rock

suddenly morphed into this other character.

Elton basically became a popstar.

# And I think it's gonna be a long long time

# Till touchdown brings me round again to find

# I'm not the man they think I am at home

# Oh, no, no, no

# I'm a rocket man

# Rocket man, burning up the fuse up here alone

Rocket Man was the first big pop single.

Up to then I'd had Your Song

and Levon and Tiny Dancer weren't big hits at all.

So, yeah, that changed everything.

# Oh, no, no, no

# I'm a rocket man

He loved it. He loved it. He had money to spend.

You see his wardrobe started to become more embellished.

Oh, no, he took it all in his stride, this is what he wanted. He always wanted to be a star.

He went from here to here very quickly but he became very flamboyant also.

All of a sudden, he became this wild and crazy character.

I think that's what really took him to the superstar area.

# I remember when rock was young

# Me and Suzie had so much fun

# Holding hands and skimming stones

# Had an old gold Chevy and a place of my own

I thought he suddenly jumped out of his skin

and became a giant show business character. He was larger than life.

And some of the clothes he wore were unbelievably funny.

-This...is probably the most outlandish one.

-HE LAUGHS

# La-la-la-la-la

I felt that I could have carte blanche to do what I want and I did.

I took Legs Larry Smith on tour. Larry would come and tap dance

wearing a crash helmet with a wedding couple on

and then we'd use midgets, we had a band of midgets dancing with us. We did all sorts of potty things.

People would come and think, "What's he going to do now?"

Elton was having fun.

The fancy dress and rock 'n' roll pastiche of Crocodile Rock

were a far cry from the sombre songwriter he appeared to be back in '69.

And it wasn't to everyone's taste.

I shook my head and rolled my eyes and thought...

I don't know if I thought maybe he'll grow out of this. He'll move on. Yeah, it was ridiculous.

I mean, you don't sing Your Song in a Donald Duck outfit in Central Park.

It's beyond awful.

But nobody was really going to tell him no at the time.

People say, "If you sing something like Your Song, you shouldn't wear this." Fuck off, why not?

And I think then you become a law unto yourself

and you say, "There's nothing I can't do or can't get away with."

When he took off, it was at the same time that

the music business as a whole was taking off. It was like a rocket.

Whoosh. Everything was getting bigger.

More and more money was being made by everybody and nothing was denied you.

By this time, Elton had become Elton, you know? Spend a lot.

So everything backstage was always palm trees and God knows what else.

Lavish.

# Hey kids, shake it loose together

# The spotlight's hitting something

# That's been known to change the weather

We had this one private plane called the Starship.

It had a sitting room with a fireplace in it

and it had a bar on it with an organ.

Elizabeth Taylor was on there one time.

Elton was in the back resting.

That's him in his bedroom in the plane.

You can see how big the bed is. It took the whole back of the plane.

And somebody started playing the organ.

And he shouts out, "Shut that racket up!"

And he came out and it was Stevie Wonder playing the organ.

-HE LAUGHS

-On our jet.

It's just insane.

# B-B-B-Bennie and the Jets

If you talk about the private planes and the touring parties

and everybody having their own limousine and their own security,

yeah, we did all that, but undoubtedly at some point you're going to go,

"Where do you go from here? I mean, where do you go from here?"

"In the space of four frenetic years, he has come from total obscurity

"to three Rolls Royces in the garage of a house named Hercules.

"Four years, six million records and then they stopped counting.

"Four years of moving relentlessly across the Never Never Land

"of sudden wealth, instant failure

"on a train that never stops except to throw people off."

At the height of his powers, every night was Saturday night for Elton

and there was no let up from the relentless live shows.

Right, I want all you to sing along with me. Come on.

# Saturday, Saturday, Saturday, Saturday

Problems do come later on when you've had a bit of success for a long while

and then all of a sudden you get used and you get tired, because it's a bit of a treadmill.

I want you to sing really loudly, 80,000 of you,

and we'll make as much noise as we can on stage. Come on, now.

After four. One, two, three...

CROWD: # Saturday, Saturday

There was a price. The price, although I had a house and I bought art, I learnt all about art,

God knows when I slept, but it didn't take a toll at all

until I started maybe dabbling with drugs.

And I didn't really start dabbling with drugs seriously until '73, '74.

The cocaine crept in.

I was quite surprised at how quickly it came to be a part of the landscape.

Whoo!

When you become that big that fast,

you stop listening to criticism and you stop listening to the people

who may have been around you at the beginning who could tell it to you straight.

And that's when you start to lose your friends.

In April 1975, Elton sacked the bassist

and drummer who had backed him since the beginning.

"It was a rage of egomania. Elton has come to believe his press clippings.

"He's convinced he's the most powerful...

"..and almighty...performer in the history of rock.

"He feels he doesn't need anybody."

CROWD: We want Elton! We want Elton!

A few months later, complete with new band,

Elton returned to play the city that made him a star

and received the full Hollywood welcome.

I now want to present a proclamation

which declares this week Elton John Week!

The venue he'd sold out for two nights that week

was a far cry from the cosy Troubadour Club he'd played five years earlier.

John Reid told me, "I've got to get over to LA to shoot this gig

"cos it's the biggest outdoor gig ever."

The first time they'd reopened Dodger Stadium

to be used for rock concerts since 1966 when they'd shut it down

at a Beatles concert. So this is a historic event for Los Angeles.

I mean, everybody you can think of just showed up.

Cary Grant's walking around backstage with his grandson.

-It was like, "Whoa!"

-HE LAUGHS

Every celebrity under the sun was there. It was just off the chart.

There was a carnival atmosphere in the Elton camp.

The star himself was putting on a brave face

but underneath, his personal life and particularly his relationship

with his manager and partner John Reid was in turmoil.

It's very hard to maintain a lifestyle when you travel so much,

where you're away from people so much.

You take hostages, you take them on the road with you

and then they hate you and it all ends in tears.

And any relationship that you bring drugs and drink into,

drugs especially, is doomed to failure.

There was media coming around and wanting to do interviews with him and cameras and fans lined up

and there was a trailer and he went there by himself

and sat in that trailer rather than talk to people

and shake hands with people and that stuff.

I thought he was handling it all really well, but beneath that,

he didn't realise the darker side of what was happening.

You run away with this thing and enjoy life.

I don't stop touring or making records.

But then, at the end of the day, what have you got in your life? You go home to an empty house.

You go home to your empty house so you get a lot of people down and you do drugs.

Is that fun? Not after a while, it isn't, no.

The night before the show, as his family and friends were gathered at his LA home,

Elton attempted suicide, taking an overdose of pills.

We didn't know. We were up all night... I mean, everybody...

It was a very emotional time. And his mum and his grandma were over there at the time,

he'd brought them over to see this gig.

That was a touch and go time.

He never showed it on stage.

You know that expression "the show must go on"? He did it.

He got on stage, you would never have known he was depressed or anything.

It was a wonderful performance.

-CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

-How are you, all right?

# What do you think you'll do then

# I bet they shoot down your plane

# It'll take you a couple of tequila sunrises

# To set you on your feet again

# You know you can't hold me forever

# I didn't sign up with you

# I'm not a present for your friends to open

# This boy's too young to be singing

# The blues

# Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah

The parallel highs and lows of 1975 marked the end of an era for the 28-year-old Elton.

In just five years, he'd gone from shy and retiring Reg

to the Rocket Man, the biggest popstar in the world.

Elton would never quite match the creative streak of those first five years

but he and Bernie could still write a hit.

# Don't go breaking my heart

# I couldn't if I tried

1976 brought them their first ever UK number one.

# Baby, you're not that kind

I'm certainly proud of our back catalogue. We made a lot of crap, too.

You know, there are things that I find that are sort of fluff in our can,

things like Don't Go Breaking My Heart.

But they all served a purpose at the time.

But do I sit around listening to them? No.

# Whoo-hoo

# Nobody knows it

I think, at that time, he did lose sight of his own talent and his own energy,

cos the energy was fuelled by drugs and it's a different energy.

It's not your energy any more, it's substance energy.

I took a lot of coke and I still worked. I didn't stay at home taking coke.

I still went out there and played and made records.

I wasn't on drugs all the time but there were certainly records I made where I was on drugs.

I wrote on drugs. And you think what you write is much better than it is.

# Well, look at me, I'm coming back again

# I got a taste of love...

The hits were more occasional now but the go-getting 80s suited Elton's new image as a survivor.

# Don't you know I'm still standing

In 1984, Elton took his team, Watford FC, to the cup final.

And surprised many by getting married to Renata Blauel,

a German sound engineer he'd met the previous year.

Having come out as bisexual in the 70s,

Elton was no stranger to speculation about his sexuality

and by 1987 he became the tabloids' number one target.

I mean, he went through a lot of upheavals with the tabloids.

It got very unpleasant.

Elton sued The Sun and cleared his name

but had yet to win the battle with his own demons.

You could see the road that he was on and I could see it.

His mood swings were pretty drastic.

He got really... He went very Judy Garland on us.

# Goodbye Norma Jean

# Though I never knew you at all

# You had the grace to hold yourself

I was very confused, pretty down on drugs

and you can't think straight when you're doing that amount of drugs.

There's got to be a balance. When I became an addict and an alcoholic and went to rehab, blah, blah, blah,

one of the things that was pointed out was that my whole life was Elton John. There was no other person.

# It seems to me you lived your life

# Like a candle in the wind

# Never knowing who to cling to when the rain set in

When I met David three years after I got sober, when I was 46,

I was ready to have a relationship. I wasn't looking for it but I was ready to have a relationship.

And I was grown up then. I didn't grow up till I was 43.

Sober and settled with his new partner,

Elton explored new avenues as a musician

and ways to put his celebrity to good use.

"Whether selling off part of his extravagant wardrobe

"or singing before invited and extremely rich guests,

"Sir Elton's Aids Foundation has raise £25 million since it was set up a decade ago."

Elton's dramatic journey, played out in the eye of the British public,

left him strangely qualified for the role of the Nation's agony aunt in 1997.

# Goodbye England's rose

# May you ever grow in our hearts

# You were the grace that placed itself

Candle In The Wind seemed the perfect epitaph for Diana.

But written in 1973 about Marilyn Monroe,

an icon hounded by the press, a life cut short in its prime,

its story could easily also have been Elton's.

Instead, as the soundtrack to England's tears,

it completed his redemption. Sir Elton, a national treasure.

# And it seems to me you lived your life

# Like a candle in the wind

# Never knowing who to cling to

# When the rain set in

# And I would've liked to have known you

# But I was just a kid

# Your candle burned out long before

# Your legend ever did

I've made a lot of records in my time and the last few records I've made have all been really good.

But they've always been with the same band, my band. So they've sounded fairly similar.

And I thought, "I've got to approach making records differently.

"I've got to make a record when I was to make a record and not just for the sake of it

"and when I make a record, I want it to sound different.

# I've been so many places

# In my life and times

Last year, a voice from his past inspired Elton's new musical direction.

David's playing Leon Russell on the iPod and I'm getting ready for lunch

and he came in and I'm crying, sobbing, and he said, "What on earth is the matter with you?"

and I said, "This just takes me back to the most wonderful period of my life."

I don't know whether I suddenly had a touch of mortality ringing in my ears, I don't know.

But it brought back so many great memories and I said,

"To go forward in my career as a recording artist, I've got to go back and revisit what I did."

Having lost contact soon after they first met, Elton tracked down Leon to make him an offer.

And he called up and said, "Let's just do a duet album together

"and write some songs for that".

And I said, "What kind of songs do you want me to write?"

-He said, "Up-tempo, baby!"

-HE LAUGHS

# If you're looking for the glory

Elton drafted in the first-choice producer for any band in search of an authentic American sound.

I thought, well, we'll probably do something like Tumbleweed Connection

because that's something I can relate to and he can relate to

and Bernie Taupin can relate to and Leon can relate to,

it's something that was a touchstone for all of us,

but it ended up being a flat-out gospel record.

I went out to the piano and started writing a song

and Leon came out and started playing with me. That was the first time we played together.

And everyone's face lit up and we knew this was going to work. The combination of the two pianos

and his voice and mine, it was fantastic.

# It's a constant struggle getting up...

And what of Elton's search for his roots, for his own true spirit as a musician

beyond his celebrity status?

He wanted to reconnect with Leon

and I think he wanted to reconnect with that part of himself.

I think this record's probably closer to him than anything he's ever done.

He's not putting on any fine jackets or any flashy glasses, you know?

It's stripping it of all the trinkets and trappings

that have tampered with our musical heritage in the past

and I think he's come full circle.

Hallelujah.

In reuniting with Leon Russell,

Elton has also reached out to the man he was when they first met in 1970.

Before the hits, before the money, the drugs and the fame.

And who knows where music will take him next?

-HE LAUGHS

-I really like that.

-Amen and Amen.

What keeps me going is also the unknown.

The unknown that comes into your life that changes your life.

Like the Liberty Records thing with Bernie's lyrics,

like going to the Troubadour, like David putting Leon on his iPod.

The wonderful little surprises of life. There's always something great round the corner.

And without music, my life would be nothing. It's given me everything in my life.

It's nearly taken away everything. But it's given me everything.

# Beyond the yellow brick road

# Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah

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