The 1960s artist Elton John hailed as the last “proper songwriter”
Elton John saying he was influenced by an artist who was largely reclusive and didn’t find fame until after their death seems hilariously at odds with everything he has ever been.
Are you trying to say that a man who has made an entire decades-spanning career out of the bedrocks of glitter, sequins, and feathers could be at all reserved? Put it this way, if there is a shy side to John, he should be able to add an acting Oscar to his cabinet of trophies for the performance he’s put on over the years.
But yes, believe it or not, there is a point to all of this. Underpinning it was the boy who came from London and an upbringing that spared him so little opportunity to make his life a success. It was grabbing on to those fine glimmers of hope when he saw them emerge from the fray that was the true testament to the flight of the Rocketman reaching lift-off.
Yet in the same sense, being a trait that he was so familiar with in his own career, this was something that John could instantly recognise in others. At the end of the day, you could have all the pomp and regalia you could ever want, but if you couldn’t create a good song when the moment called, then the costume was merely a cheap illusion.
If anything, given that John started out in the late 1960s when The Beatles were in all their swirling, technicolour glory, you could easily see how he could lift inspiration from that muse, at least in a fashion sense. But it was his ability to look beyond the main headliner and find the true gem hidden in a backroom that taught him the most lessons.
And that teacher was Nick Drake. “At that time, I did some cover versions for Island of Nick Drake songs to make them more commercial and see if people would record them,” John recalled later down the line, “It was the last leg of proper songwriters before the singer-songwriters came in.” In this sense, he knew his path was clear.
Keeping a partnership with Bernie Taupin alive for so long might have seemed like handing over the reins, but it was perhaps the striking memory and legacy of someone like Drake that remained in John’s mind for so long. This was a man whose songwriting was at the forefront of everything, so for his own career, John wanted the best of both worlds.
Indeed, in those early days when he was still performing demos for record labels, his own rock and roll fortunes were less than in certain sights. However, it was a tenacity to keep going, honing his craft, and naturally, he put on a bit of a show that got him there. Drake was the opposite of every aspect of that: he just wanted to write the songs.
But nevertheless, it proved that although two artists can come across as chalk and cheese on the face of it, there is more that unites them than what divides them. At the point when Drake had withdrawn from performances and preferred to hide from the world, he could never have imagined influencing one of the biggest rock music divas, but the universe works in mysterious ways. The ‘River Man’ and the ‘Rocket Man’ had a lot more in common than you’d think.
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