The Immortals
The Greatest Artists of All Time: 49) Elton John
Elton John defines himself as a rock star, and he really lives it.
More like a Roman aristocrat rock star. I've noticed when we've
toured together that backstage you'll see young men with togas,
dressed as centurions, with little fig leaves around their heads.
Inside Elton's dressing room there are a thousand pairs of
sunglasses, a hundred pairs of shoes and about fifty Versace suits
laid out. He's fucking royalty, and I love it. My dressing room
looks like the back of a deli. I have one of those meat platters
that sea gulls circle around.
Elton kicks my ass on piano. He's fantastic -- a throwback to
Jerry Lee Lewis and Fats Domino and Little Richard. His
spontaneous, improvisational playing always challenges me. And that
is his contribution to rock & roll and pop: his musicianship.
Before him, rock was a bunch of James Taylors -- guitar-based
singer-songwriter stuff. Elton brought back fantastic piano-based
rock. Elton knows what his instrument is capable of. The piano is a
percussion instrument, like a drum. You don't strum a piano. You
don't bow a piano. You bang and strike a piano. You beat the shit
out of a piano. Elton knows exactly how to do that - he always had
that rhythmic, very African, syncopated style that comes from being
well versed in gospel and good old R&B. Elton and Bernie Taupin
did some brilliant songwriting during the first part of his career,
from Elton John to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.
The first time we met we were in Holland, at a hotel in
Amsterdam. It was in the mid-Seventies, and he was at his peak --
it was the height of the Elton John era -- and I was just starting
out as the "Piano Man" guy. We went into a private room and we just
talked. I told him what a fan I was, and he said he knew my stuff.
I thought this was so cool: There were a thousand guitar players,
but there were only two of us. The English piano player and the
American piano player. And, seminally, rock & roll was not just
guitar. Elton gave a funny-looking guy like me -- and so many
others -- an opportunity to be a singer-songwriter. When Elton was
in his first band, Bluesology, he never thought he could be a rock
star. Same as me. I didn't look like Mick Jagger or Paul McCartney
or Jim Morrison. Sure, we thought we'd be piano players for big
rock bands, but funnily enough he ended up with big, silly glasses
and crazy outfits, and I ended up with my dopey stage behavior,
both of us rock stars. To this day we laugh about that. And he
keeps going on and on. I haven't written a song since 1993, and he
asks me, "Billy, why don't you write some new songs?" I say,
"Elton, why don't you write less new songs?" At $200 a ticket, you
can't shove new stuff down people's throats. So much of his stuff
is amazing, though: "Rocket Man," "Crocodile Rock," "Bennie and the
Jets," "Tiny Dancer," "Your Song" and "The Bitch Is Back." That's
what they want to hear.
Any melodic songwriter owes a debt to Elton John, the supreme
melodist. John Mayer, Five for Fighting, Alicia Keys. Christ, I
don't know shit about new bands, but anybody who plays the keyboard
and likes melody must give a nod to Elton. Like Cole Porter,
Richard Rodgers, Carole King and the Beatles, he carried on the
rich tradition of writing beautiful melodies.
BILLY JOEL
