“You’re still trying to learn as an artist”: How Tony Bennett inspired Elton John to sing better
The number of singers who spend a long career sounding exactly the same is vanishingly small. While the likes of Robert Smith, Aretha Franklin and Tom Waits are outliers, who should be applauded for their achievement, having your singing voice change as you age is not necessarily a bad thing. Sure, we all saw those videos of Jon Bon Jovi “sing” in concert and fair enough, they were very, very funny, but there are some singers whose voices age like wine. Becoming richer and deeper with age. Chief among them is Elton John.
In fairness, his voice basically had to change. As anyone who’s ever done ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ at karaoke can tell you, his songs are hard to sing, and the elastic falsetto he had as a young man was a complete one-off. Honestly, it’s something of a miracle that he was able to keep it for as long as he did, still hitting the high notes well into the late 1980s, and some of those notes were Willie Nelson high.
However, for most singer, it’s the tide of time that changes their voice with age. For the man born Reginald Dwight, it was something altogether different and a lot more frightening. He detailed this in an interview with Billboard from 2004, saying, “My voice is the thing that’s really improved the most over the last few years. There’s more resonance to it. It started to change when I had the operation in Australia… because of the nine cancerous… whatever it was on my vocal chords.”
A truly frightening thing for anyone to go through, whether you make your living with your singing voice or not. However, that change to his voice’s timbre began a process that went much deeper than that, as John elaborated in the same interview. He said, “I get live reviews now that say, ‘He’s lost his falsetto.’ To a certain degree, I have because it changed the timbre of my voice and made it deeper… I still sing certain songs in the same key, I haven’t taken them down, but I just have more resonance in my voice and I’m much happier with that.”
More than that though, John wasn’t just adapting to a new challenge but improving his craft altogether. The singer noted: “I’ve learned to breathe properly, I’ve watched other people singing, I’ve become a much better singer.” He’s not alone either, several of his classic rock peers like Roger Daltrey and Stevie Nicks credit the slight loss of power and range that comes with age as making them better at their craft. John, though, has a particular influence on that.
In the interview, he says “I saw Tony Bennett last year, and he was singing at 72 better than I’ve ever seen him sing. It’s that kind of thing, you’re still trying to learn as an artist, trying to play better, sing better.” The veteran crooner would remain active for nearly two decades after this interview, and that velveteen voice never aged a day in that time. It is fitting that it would inspire multiple generations of pop icons at that time, from Elton himself to Lady Gaga.
Proof, as if it was ever needed, that it’s never too late to make great art and to make great music. There’s always a way to hone your craft, whatever that may be!
