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- [00:03]
Terry Gross
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 supporters. Today, we're giving everyone a chance to hear it. If you're already a FRESH AIR 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, lyricist 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.
- [02:00]
Elton John
So the book is a very candid description of your life. Before we get into some of the.
- [02:06]
Terry Gross
Candid details that you write about in.
- [02:07]
Elton John
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 says on mic, he says, why don't you say what? He said?
- [02:31]
Bernie Taupin
Well, he said, if you they were grabbing the microphone, he said, if you break my microphone, you'll pay me £50. And I'm going, oh, John, that's not the way to handle this situation.
- [02:41]
Elton John
What did they teach you about stardom and how to handle It.
- [02:44]
Bernie Taupin
Not how to handle it.
- [02:46]
Elton John
Not how to handle it.
- [02:47]
Bernie Taupin
Because I got to the 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 gas. I thought, I'm not gonna. Luckily, they couldn't reach my microphone. Cause 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 girls, young girls were screaming at him. And I just think, you know, he just never knew how to handle that.
- [03:31]
Elton John
Of course, also with you, when you had young girls screaming at you and everything like you were gay, they didn't know that.
- [03:37]
Bernie Taupin
No. Well, he was gay too.
- [03:39]
Elton John
Oh, and he was gay too. Exactly.
- [03:40]
Unknown
Yeah, exactly.
- [03:41]
Elton John
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?
- [03:51]
Bernie Taupin
Well, I didn't worry about it. It's like, well, I'm not interested and you're 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, you know, wanted to mother me. And, you know, we can make you straight. We love you.
- [04:14]
Unknown
We love you.
- [04:14]
Bernie Taupin
And it's very touching.
- [04:16]
Elton John
Well, speaking of you and John Baldry being gay when you want. When you. 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.
- [04:35]
Bernie Taupin
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 gonna marry, That I wasn't gonna 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 sex Till I was 23, which was portrayed in Rocket Man. 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. But I did. 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 think he was gay. I didn't know about. 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, you know, dodged the bullet, as it were. But I still didn't have sex for a couple of years. Two or three years later.
- [05:52]
Elton John
It's remarkable that you could be, like, a rock musician and remain a virgin till you were 23. You might be the only person.
- [06:01]
Bernie Taupin
Well, you know, a lot of rock musicians go into rock music to pull girls to get. You know, they go. That's one of the big attractions. Well, we can play on stage and we can flirt with the girls, and then we can. 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 wanting to play music. I wasn't. 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.
- [06:24]
Elton John
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. You were not ever going to be a pop star. You weren't pop star material. So did you think, like, you really weren't cut out to be a. Like, 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 side man.
- [06:55]
Bernie Taupin
Well, I was getting fed up with Longue Boardie playing to cabre 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 Bluesology that were recorded and the.
- [07:08]
Unknown
Lyrics were awful, but I wrote the melody.
- [07:10]
Bernie Taupin
And this audition for Liberty Records was just. I thought, maybe I can be a songwriter. I had no idea, I had no intentions of being an Elton John superstar or whatever. I just thought, maybe 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 would be fun. And 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 gone to that meeting, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you now. And 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.
- [08:11]
Elton John
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.
- [08:27]
Bernie Taupin
No. Yeah, it was. Because in my teenage years I wasn't allowed to wear anything fashionable at all. No pointed toe shoes, no chisel toed shoes, no fashionable coats. So when I actually left home and started, you know, I think that was the leak. Leaving home and beginning to earn my own wage and keeping myself and supporting myself that I decided to live my teenage years in my twenties. 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.
- [09:08]
Elton John
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.
- [09:21]
Terry Gross
And he was 17.
- [09:22]
Elton John
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.
- [09:34]
Terry Gross
Who could hold a grudge.
- [09:37]
Elton John
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?
- [10:00]
Bernie Taupin
But 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 unsuited to each other. My dad was in the Air Force and was away a lot. My mum 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 might 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 Red 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 and not heard. Children were seen and not heard.
- [10:59]
Unknown
I loved.
- [10:59]
Bernie Taupin
I had the wonderful upbringing with my grandmother and 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. It's that they found the love of their lives that I'm very happy about. But the bit in between was hard to take because I dreaded my dad coming home because there would be a row immediately and then I would retreat to my room, 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.
- [11:50]
Elton John
What did you collect as a kid?
- [11:52]
Bernie Taupin
Books, records, you know, toys, dinky toys. But Mostly records and books, which, you know, I never lent out to anybody because they're in. I still have my books.
- [12:03]
Terry Gross
Well, you became.
- [12:03]
Elton John
You became an obsessive shopper later in life and you collected everything.
- [12:07]
Bernie Taupin
Yeah, I'm. I'm. I'm an addict. It was. 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 to me to be anything to do with rock and roll when Elvis Presley came in, that I would be. I would be determined to prove to him that my mother, who took my side and said, yeah, you 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.
- [12:59]
Elton John
He was an amateur trumpet player, wasn't he?
- [13:01]
Bernie Taupin
He was a trumpet player in a band. Yeah. Yeah.
- [13:03]
Elton John
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.
- [13:14]
Bernie Taupin
I know he just considered. 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 neuros. Elton would become a wide boy if he carried rock and roll is just. There's no future. He wanted a solid future for me in a bank or in the air force or doing a proper job, you know, it was all down. You grew up in the 50s, you knew what it was like. It was. 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, that if I became a rock and roller, my life would fall apart. To a certain extent, he was right.
- [14:00]
Elton John
You could say that. But it also, let's 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.
- [14:13]
Terry Gross
Doing what you do.
- [14:14]
Bernie Taupin
No, not really. He never came to my shows. He Never wrote a letter saying, well done.
- [14:19]
Elton John
He didn't even try to capitalize on your fame, like, that's my son.
- [14:23]
Bernie Taupin
No, no, no. He had four other sons that he had with his. Married to Edna, and 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 on it and saying this was an unfortunate meeting of two people who should never have met each other.
- [14:42]
Elton John
Just curious, how much do you think of that as, like, the music that it was rock and roll and do you think any of that estrangement was because you were gay?
- [14:50]
Bernie Taupin
I think he was a musical snob. Yeah.
- [14:52]
Elton John
Okay.
- [14:54]
Bernie Taupin
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.
- [15:04]
Elton John
This is great music.
- [15:06]
Bernie Taupin
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 of My Christmas Present by Frank Sinatra. And I loved George Shearing. He was a jazz player who. Pianist who was blind, who came from Pinner, where I came 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 Lee Lewis, who started jumping on the piano, then that was what I wanted to do.
- [15:51]
Terry Gross
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 residency at Caesar's Palace. In this excerpt, we talked about how he was influenced by the flamboyant pianist Liberace.
- [16:12]
Elton John
We are recording this on Thursday, September 19th, right before you perform at the Emmy Awards. And our listeners will be hearing this.
- [16:22]
Terry Gross
After you've performed at the Emmy Awards.
- [16:24]
Elton John
And you're doing a tribute to Liberace because the movie about him 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, of course it.
- [16:55]
Unknown
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. And you know, he said, I'm not gay. And he won the. And he won the libel case. When I was young and I watched the Liberace show or any show that came from America, the, you know, was musical. It was pure magic. The Americans did things on a bigger scale. Liberati, because he played the piano, I was very much interested in. It was. He was, 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 lurex 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, you know, go one up on Liberace failed absolutely miserably. But he was so charming and so lovely and very, very funny and very, very intell. And he was a huge influence on me. It's 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 you know, subconsciously must have, you know, if you're stuck at a piano and you're not a lead guitarist or a 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.
- [19:00]
Elton John
You know, I was reading a 1973.
- [19:03]
Terry Gross
Rolling Stone interview with you in which you said that your act is going.
- [19:07]
Elton John
To become a little more Liberace. And I thought, wow, 1973, you were thinking about making your act more Liberace?
- [19:16]
Bernie Taupin
Well, it was.
- [19:17]
Unknown
It was all. All my stuff has been done with firmly tongue in cheek. You know, I wasn't a heartthrob David Bowie or Mick Jagger or Rod Stewart in those days. I was, you know, I was Elton at the piano. And I, you know, 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, you know, 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 going to do next? And that's a dangerous sign. 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. And I think a lot of the critics. The costumes put people off me. They weren't listening to the music as more or less looking at what I was wearing. I was singing great songs, but I was also wearing, you know, a giant chicken outfit and being helped on stage by Mr. Universe on his shoulders. So, you know, anything like that, it was part. It was, you know, it was all down to me. It was my fault, if anything. You know, if they didn't. If they didn't like what I was wearing, then I couldn't really do much about it. But this is such a. I had to take responsibility for it.
- [20:36]
Terry Gross
That was Elton John speaking with me in 2013 from Vegas during his Million Dollar Piano residency at Caesar's Palace.
- [20:45]
Elton John
I should note here, the piano really.
- [20:47]
Terry Gross
Did cost $1 million.
- [20:50]
Unknown
It lights up. You can show films on it, you can show video. It was a suggestion from Yamaha, who made my piano, said, 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. It. I introduced the piano has a name. She's named Blossom after Blossom, dearie.
- [21:24]
Elton John
Oh, I Love Blossom deary.
- [21:26]
Terry Gross
We'll link to the full versions of both my 2013 and 2019 interviews with Elton John in our show notes.
- [21:33]
Elton John
Our Fresh Air plus bonus episodes are.
- [21:35]
Terry Gross
Produced by Nick Anderson. Our engineer for this episode is Adam Staniszewski. I'm Terry Gross. Thanks for your support of our work here at Fresh Air.