the lifestyle doesn’t suit me,” says Elton.
“But I said, ‘This boy we met was trying to
tell me something.’ He was trying to say,
through God or someone else, ‘Bullshit,
you can be a dad, look at how much plea-
sure I gave you in an hour and a half.’ ” And
I said, ‘Let’s go for it.’ ” His son Zachary was
born to a surrogate in 2010, and Elijah in- He lets out a giant smile. “God, that
was the best decision.”
S
howtime at the wiltern has a
nostalgic Elton feel as tickets go for
almost $600. Elton is conservative-
ly dressed, for Elton, in a black sequined
jacket and a light-blue shirt. His band
knows him in an almost telepathic way,
and it rips through the new and old songs
with precision and vitality, a quality often
missing in the groups backing aging su-
perstars. Elton even jumps onto his piano
during “Bennie and the Jets”, before gin-
gerly slipping back onto the bench. It is
obvious, despite his talk of coming of the
road, that Elton’s passion remains play-
ing live. Before songwriting and activism,
Elton is an entertainer.
“I’m still in the game, I love playing live
more than I’ve ever done,” Elton tells me a
few days before the show. “I have wonder-
ful musicians – there’s nothing in my life
to complain about.” He pauses and shrugs.
“But, boy, do I ever fi nd it.”
Elton is a benevolent vampire – he keeps
young by collaborating with artists a third
his age, including Lady Gaga. Tonight isn’t
any dif erent. The three weakest numbers
are when he’s joined onstage by three Is-
land Records stars: Shawn Mendes is out-
classed on “Tiny Dancer”, Demi Lova-
to dances spastically during “Don’t Go
Breaking My Heart”, and Patrick Stump
tries to come of as hard during a game
but futile “Saturday Night’s Alright for
Fighting”.
Still, if the duets weren’t actual success-
es, they did seem to re-energise Elton. His
deft fi ngers sweep through a Bowie-tribute
“Space Oddity” instrumental into “Rock-
et Man”, a version so moving that it sends
Burnett and his wife into an extended ca-
noodling session.
Elton closes the show with the Taupin-
John signature number “Your Song”, and
kids from seven to 70 sway to the music.
But if anyone thought Elton was going
soft in his old age, the Bitch is back after
he introduces the band. He thanks Tau-
pin, who is watching from somewhere in
the wings, and then dedicates the show
to his husband. “This is for darling David,
who has weeded out all the horrible peo-
ple in my life.”
Fans in the audience turn to one another
and give “WTF” shrugs. But it doesn’t mat-
ter to the piano player. Elton John waves
and bows to the crowd. He walks slowly
of the stage. There are a few more inter-
views and promo shots to do, but soon he’ll
begone.It’stimetoseetheboys.It turns out, according to Elton, that his
husband is right about a lot of things.T
he night before elton john’s
big Wiltern show, he’s back at the
theatre to do a small concert for Sir-
ius listeners and a question-and-answer
session moderated by Rolling Stone’s
David Fricke. Elton is at his most charm-
ing, slagging on Mick Jagger and Keith
Richards for rarely producing new music- “I don’t think they like each other very
much” – and his aborted ef ort to hook
Jagger up with Burnett. “Mick said, ‘No,
he uses all that old-fashioned equipment’,”
says Elton.
He addresses David Bowie’s recent death
with sorrow and a subtle admiration for the
way he lived, a way that is the antithesis of
the carnival that has been Elton’s personal
life. “We know David Bowie, the singer, the
outrageous performer,” says Elton, “but ac-
tually we don’t know anything about him.
And that’s the way it should be in music.”
The band runs through new numbers as
well as a rousing, funky “Bennie and the
Jets”, clearly one of Elton’s favourite clas-
sics. A well-groomed man with a goatee
and a pinstripe suit stands in the shadows
and takes notes on his phone. He doesn’t
mingle, just keeps a tight, small smile on
his face. It’s David Furnish.
Back at the house, Elton proudly refers to
Furnish as Yoko and also says he has saved
his fi nancial life.
“David came into my life, and in the last
two years has been very involved in sort-
ing out the dross that we had surrounding
me,” says Elton. “We had so many people
who were earning vast amounts of money
that weren’t pulling their weight.” Later, he
adds, “Every year at this time, we’ve been
looking for money to pay our taxes, but this
year we’ve already got the money.
“David doesn’t mind being Yoko Ono,”
says Elton, “but he’s doing it on my behalf.”
The stated goal is for Elton to bank
enough money in the next couple of years
so he can maintain his lavish lifestyle and
spend more time with his two boys. Their
path to having children was a long and
winding one. In 2009, they became at-
tached to a Ukrainian boy named Lev
while visiting an orphanage for HIV-pos-
itive children. Lev and his brother came
from a destroyed family; Elton says his fa-
ther is in jail. They tried to adopt him, but
the government ruled them too old and,
more to the point, too gay. (Elton says he
and Furnish still provide for Lev and his
brother. “We got him to the grandmoth-
er, and we surreptitiously look after them,”
says Elton.) During Christmas, Furnish
came to Elton and asked him what he
wanted to do moving forward. Did they
now want to start their own family? The
short time they’d spent with Lev had up-
turned their world.
“I always said no to having kids, because
I’mtooold,toosetinmyways,tooselfish,
since the two paired up
as suburban-London youths bunking in
Elton’sbedroom.Their unorthodox writ-
ing technique may explain their long-
time partnership: Elton tells Taupin that
he’s ready to do another album, and Tau-
pin writes up a batch of lyrics that John
doesn’t look at until he’s sitting at the
piano in the studio. For years, Elton was
still obsessed with commercial success.
Then his old friend Bob Dylan came along.
Elton listened to 2006’s Modern Times,
and it changed his creative world.
Says Elton, “I thought, ‘You know, this
is an amazing record by the artist who I
probably respect more than anybody who
is living, and he’s still breaking the mould
of what he’s trying to do, and he never
cares about singles, because he’s always
been Bob Dylan.’ ”
Elton has recorded three albums since
then: The Union, a collaboration with
longtime hero Leon Russell; the intro-
spective The Diving Board; and now Won-
derful Crazy Night. T Bone Burnett has
helmed all three. Each has been recorded
in Burnett’s old-timey live-to-tape style. “I
just try and make him feel comfortable,”
he says. “He’s an artist like Dylan – you
just try and point him in the direction he
was already going.”
As usual, Elton didn’t start thinking
about the sessions until he was in the car
on the way to the studio. “I know it sounds
mad,” he says with a shrug. “I’m read-
ing the lyrics, and it inspires me to write
something. It’s like when you’re writing
something for a movie, and you’re seeing
the image on the screen.”
For Wonderful Crazy Night, Elton used
longtime touring band members Olsson
and Johnstone. (Johnstone looks exactly
the same, with fl owing long blond locks,
and Olsson has aged gracefully into the
drummer version of Batman’s Alfred,
playing in a suit with white gloves.) Elton
told Taupin to keep the songs upbeat. The
lyricist put on Van Morrison’s happier re-
cords to get in the mood. “I listened to
‘Wild Night’ and ‘(Straight to Your Heart)
Like a Cannonball’ many times,” says Tau-
pin. But as proud as Elton is of the record,
not everyone was happy with it, most no-
tably Capitol Records, his label. Elton
knew something was going on, because he
hadn’t heard anything from Capitol exec-
utive Steve Barnett.
Finally, the call arrived. “Steve Barnett
said to David, ‘You know we love Elton,
but we don’t want this record’,” Elton says.
He admits he was angry at fi rst. “I would
have chewed his head of that fi rst day,”
Elton admits. “But he’s a good record
man. David said, ‘These things happen
for a reason.’ ” Elton’s husband was right:
They shared the record with Island, which
snapped up Wonderful Crazy Night im-
mediately.
May, 2016 RollingStoneAus.com | Rolling Stone | 105
[Cont. from 59]
ELTON JOHN