Talk Scandinavia

 

British Musician

Elton John

 

LH: Lorraine Hahn - U.P.
EJ: Elton John

 

BLOCK A

(LH) (under VO): This week on Talk Scandinavia: A music icon who still reigns supreme after more than three decades. This, is Talk Scandinavia.

(LH) (on cam): Welcome to TalkScandinavien. I'm Lorraine Hahn. How does one even begin introducing Elton John?

(Under VO) A living legend. A survivor, who found fame in the late 60's. Enraptured the world with his flamboyance, imagination-and pure talent, in the seventies and eighties. And despite some hard times including drug and alcohol abuse, coming out of the closet, and losing loved ones... Elton John-at 57- is still at the top of his game.

(LH) For the next half hour, you're going to hear Elton speak about matters closest to his heart. As well as a sneak preview of his latest album. Elton and I spent some time together during his recent Asia tour. I began by asking him-to what does he owe, this enduring popularity?

(EJ) That's a good question, I think basically because I play a lot of concerts. I mean record sales can fluctuate, they can go up and they can go down, but I think the secret of any artist longevity is to be able to play before an audience. And I think if you look at all the people that are my peers, of the same age group, who are still going up there and are still selling concerts, because we've learned our craft and we still love to play. We are still musicians and we like to entertain people and we like to play live. Of course you still have to make the records, and I like doing that, but I think the real success is a) writing the songs and having the songs to be able to sing and having the ability to write songs. But I think mainly it is to be able to go out in front of an audience anywhere in the world and to be able to entertain them.

(LH) Right. We've heard your melodies, we've also heard Bernie Taupin's lyrics, what makes both of you such a magical combination?

(EJ) It's a bit of an Enigma, because we've never been in the same room when we've written a song. We are like brothers, but we live very far apart -- he lives in California, I live in England. We've never been, never had an argument over a song. It just seems to be something that works that I've never ever questioned. It's an unusual way of writing, he writes the lyrics first and I write the melodies afterwards, and it seems to have worked and I think because we're not living on top of each other -- that is to say next door to each other, I think the relationship has lasted because there is space between us.

(LH) But you know what's amazing, you get something like Bernie's for example lyrics, which probably don't even rhyme -- what goodbye yellow brick road, dogs of society howl or something -- and all of a sudden you put music to it.

(EJ) For me that is... I am a team player. I like to look at a printed page and visualize what it would be like with music. It's fun for me, the song comes to life, the lyric comes to life when I put the melody to it. You can usually see when you've got a new lyric in front of you whether it's going to be a slow song or a fast song or whatever. And you know Bernie's been brilliant throughout my whole career, he's never questioned anything, he's never said I don't really like that. I mean there must have been some songs, he really didn't like what I had done to them, but he didn't really say, and that sort of a really wonderful relationship to have, to be part of that kind of team.

(LH) But aside from Bernie Taupin, who else has been a great influence on your life, do you think?

(EJ) Well my mother, I mean my mother especially, you know encouraging me to follow the path that I had chosen, to become a musician, to do something that I really wanted to do, which was an incredible understanding thing for her to do.

(LH) That's interesting, because most parents would say no, go to school, get a degree, you know, do something that's going to bring some food on the table.

(EJ) Well my father, bless him, he wanted me to be a banker or join the air force, and I didn't want to do that, I wasn't cut out to sit behind a desk. I knew from an early age what I wanted to do. I didn't know that I would become Elton John the singer because I was just an organ player in a band, but I would have been quite happy working in a record store -- anything to do with music. When I left the band, to write songs, I didn't envisage becoming a singer, although I'd had sung a couple of things with the band. And because nobody initially recorded the songs that we wrote, I was press-ganged into singing them, recording them, and by accident I become Elton John, Artist. And that made it even more interesting and surprising, because it wasn't planned. There was no great master plan that I'm going to conquer the world and be a big star -- that just happened accidentally.

(LH) You know when we watch your concerts; you often find that people just go crazy when you play the old songs. And when you play the new songs, they sort of, listen, very intently. Do you find that difficult for somebody who's trying to grow and...(Elton laughs)...do you know what I mean?

(EJ) Yeah, it's a conundrum. It is difficult, when you have a large back catalogue and you've had a lot of hits, you play a concert and you have to play hits because people want to hear them -- they pay to hear them. But you have to, as an artist, try and slip new songs in, we still play about three or four songs from the last album on stage. And last night in Hong Kong, we debut a new song, which is the first single in America called "Answer in the Sky". -- and you know that people aren't going to respond to it the way they respond to "Daniel" or something like that -- but you have to, you have to try. I've made the mistake in the past of having, what I thought was great integrity of playing the whole of the Captain Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy album to the audience in Wembley Stadium 75- 80,000 people. Nobody had heard it and I played it from start to finish, and by the fifth song I was just hoping that the ground swallow up and I would fall into it, with open-eyed and would swallow me up. Because it's all very well for you to think, well I'm an artist and I can do that, but it's awfully hard to concentrate - it's not too bad if you're in a 200-seater club and you're previewing something. In an 80,000-seater stadium it's not possible, it's just not possible.

(LH) What do you think has been the greatest song you've written and do you think that particular song also had a very very great impact on the audience as well?

(EJ) Well, if you had asked me that about five years ago, I'd have had to say "Your Song" and I would probably still say it's the song that I've sang at every concert that I've ever done since I've written it. But there are two songs that have crept in, "Candle in the Wind", obviously because of the tragic circumstances under which it was re-recorded, and recently "Sorry seems to be the hardest word" which has been a huge hit in Europe by a band called Blue. But I would have to say Your Song, it's a perfect love song and I never tire of singing it and if I had to choose one it would be that one. I am always trying to write a song as good as that.

(LH) Just ahead on Talk Scandinavia- Elton travels down memory lane.

Bump out: "Your Song"

BLOCK B

Bump in: Candle in the Wind

(LH) Welcome back to Talk Scandinavia and our intimate conversation with British music legend, Elton John. He's won multiple Grammies and an academy award. But he too, used to be a struggling musician, like any other aspiring artist. I asked him what he remembers most, about those early days.

(EJ) Just the fun -- the actual joy of actually being able to do what you wanted to do, being in a van with several other musicians, going up and down the motorway in a very crowded vehicle, unloading your equipment. It doesn't sound glamorous and in fact it wasn't it was extremely hard work for such little pay, but we were doing what we loved and we were so thrilled to be able to do that. And that really gave me the backbone and the experience, so that when I started out playing as Elton John, I had enormous amount of experience backing great singers -- I had over 1000 gigs under my belt. And that really was so much fun - it was hard, but you know you don't get anywhere in this world without hard work, it's called paying your dues in the music business

(LH) Now, you've had your life has been up and down and up and down what would you say was the darkest point in your life and how did you get out of it?

(EJ) Well I mean it's well detailed and well recorded that I took drugs for a long time, and alcohol, not continuously for sixteen years but on and off during that time, gradually spiraling into a very bad way. Around about the funeral of Ryan White -- who died of AIDS - I was in a pretty bad way, you've only got to look at the footage of me playing at the funeral to see I look like a 70 year old man. Shortly after that I got sober and put myself in a hospital for food-addiction, drug-addiction and alcohol-addiction. Since then my life has changed, I've put an awful lot of work into learning to walk again, and learning to be off stage -- I didn't know how to be offstage -- I had to learn and I had to listen and I had to trust what I was being told and I trusted the process and the process worked. I've been sober now for 14 years, and clean, and my life has changed considerably -- my tastes have changed, the things I like to look at visually have changed, my priorities have changed. I don't have to wake up in the morning in a completely irrational way, I actually do wake up in the morning and get up. Those days when you look back, you can't believe you actually did that. It's something I regretted, but on the other hand if I hadn't of done that I wouldn't be the person I am today I wouldn't have done the work on myself that was necessary to become the maturing adult that I think I am now.

(LH) Do you think the untimely deaths of Gianni Versace and Lady Diana-Princess Diana-also had a very strong affect on how you saw life and how you saw your life?

(EH) I've always lived my life as far as, my tenet is "live life to the fullest, you never know what is going to happen", but when something like that happens within six weeks of each another...I was in the house in the South of France, it was our first summer in our house in the south of France -- with my partner, David -- we spent the whole of that summer looking after Gianni's partner Antonio d'Amico and it was thank God for my sobriety, thank god I was strong enough to be able to get through those things and not run away. Addiction is all about running away and not being able to deal with what is happening in your life, and thank god because I'd done all that work and I knew there was no solutions in running away from things that I had to be there and I had to be there for someone else and look after them and play a supporting role. It was a very difficult time but those kind of things reinforce the idea you should live life to the full, and I do live life to the full I live a lavish lifestyle, I love to buy art, I'm very generous, I collect things passionately, I'm a very wealthy man but I like to live life - and Gianni Versace taught me that -- to life live to the full, to see everything, to be a sponge to soak up everything that you can see visually, everything that you can read, everything that you can listen to -- to be a sponge, to be a cultural sponge -- and I've done that since I got sober.

(LH) What did Princess Diana teach you, what has she left with you in your heart?

(EJ) Her compassion towards people, she had a great ability to walk into a room of people and put them all at ease and talk to everyone on a par -- whether they were famous or not famous -- and to be genuine about it.

(LH) Humility, maybe?

(EJ) Humility, absolutely. Humility and the courage to fight for the underdog and the people that don't get a fair deal - through my aids foundation we're still carrying on the work that she would have wanted us to carry on. She was obviously a big advocate for AIDS and she was a fighter for the underdog, and I am too.

(LH) How difficult was it, I can't even fathom really, for you to play the re-make of 'candle in the wind', to control yourself, be composed, and I'm sure up until today you must sometimes think back...

(EJ) It all comes back to all those times spent in the van, all those trips all that experience that I gathered in my life, musically, to that I knew that if I made a mistake at that funeral, to be given that opportunity to be the first artist of my type to play at such an event -- such an important event -- that I couldn't afford to break down and be emotional, as that's not what you're there to do, you're there to provide comfort for other people, to sing it well to sing it heartfelt, and to also have a teleprompter because if I'd have sung 'Goodbye Norma Jean', they would have strung me up and taken me to the Tower of London! Because the words were very new, I had the teleprompter and that was my safety net. I didn't really need it -- as far as looking at it -- but I had it there, just in case. I don't know, you just gritted my teeth and you had to get on with it. I just called on all my professional experience and I was doing it for her and for everybody who was watching that loved her and it was a very special day. The music throughout the day was sensational, then I had to go from there and record the song with George Martin and do it live, and then went home and watched everything else and watched it all back on television and then cried. I couldn't afford to be emotional; you had to be stoic and you had to be professional. --

Fade to Black.

BLOCK C

Bump in: "All that I'm Allowed-(I'm Thankful)"

(LH)That's a peek of Elton John's first international single "All that I'm allowed-(I'm thankful)", from his latest album "Peach Tree Road". It's his first self-produced album, after three decades in the industry. But music, isn't his only love. He talks passionately about the Elton John AIDS foundation, and about his life-partner, who he calls "his lightening rod".

(EJ) Well we do a lot of funding in Asia, we're still a very small organization, and I've kept it like that because I can keep a handle of what's going on. In America and in Great Britain, we're only still like a 4-piece organization. I think we've given over 50 million dollars away, and we've been responsible with matching funds for over 350 million, which is tremendous. We know where everything goes to, we investigate every project that we put money into and I know that the AIDS epidemic in China is serious (LH: is serious), very serious, and it's something that I want to try and investigate and find out about because it's an area that we will have to start funding.

(LH) Sir Elton, this is election year in the United States, and we've had some press about different singers being worried about their political stance and that going through in their music, how do you feel about that?

(EJ) I think it's outrageous that people can't express themselves, whether they are singers or everyday people, without fear of censorship and I've spoken out about this. You know, it's all very well...you can support...you have your democratic right as a singer and an artist, to vote for whoever and support whoever you like. If you support the president, it's ok and if you don't support the president it's deemed to be not ok. That is a sad state of affairs, we have an election coming up in Britain next year and we have an election coming up in America -- they are two big elections -- I am not, in any way shape or form, for the war in Iraq, I think we were misled, I will not be voting for the people that misled us into the war in Iraq.

(LH) Another controversial issue obviously is same sex marriages, something you've also touched upon, how do you feel about that?

(EJ) Well I was a bit on the fence about it to be honest with you, I thought 'well, do I really want to get married?' but I have to look at my partner, David and myself, and what would happen to him if I died? I've been through so many situations with same-sex people where one of the partner's have died and the family have come and stolen everything the partner has been left with nothing. When the president said that he would try to amend the constitution, and I leapt off the fence immediately and I said 'everyone who loves each other should have the same deal' I know some people would find it offensive don't understand that, and I can understand that, but as a person who lives with a person, and we've been together for eleven years I want to have the same rights -- my partner have the same rights -- as a married couple would have because that's how we live our life.

(LH) And talking about David, is he balance in your life now? (EJ: Totally) Everything's cool, you've found peace, you've found...

(EJ) Well, he doesn't take any old rubbish from me, I wasn't mature enough! At 43 I found finding a partner, who I loved, I wasn't really ready to have a relationship I was too immature. I didn't know how to have a relationship, I didn't know how to give and take, and I found a balance. He's a very good lightening rod for me, he knows how to handle me and he knows how to confront me and he understands me.

(LH) Sir Elton, last question to you, what do you think will be your greatest gift to the people of this world?

(EJ) Well I hope my music is a great gift and it will last, songs have a great ability to last and last and last, if they could. And I hope I can do some good things philanthropically for people, and not just with aids, but for other people who need things. I hope I can give back and touch a person, that's all I can do.

(LH) British music legend and icon-Sir Elton John, and that is Talk Scandinavia this week. Thank you very much for joining us. I'm Lorraine Hahn. Let's talk again next week.

Bump out: 'I'm Still Standing