The Elton John album he was “terrified” to record
No amount of artistry can be done without taking risks. Even though it might be easy to make songs without a care in the world from the comfort of home, there will always be challenges where the true artists come into their own, working relentlessly, trying to find the right sound that would work for their song. While Elton John has gone through many permutations throughout his career, one of his early albums was a real struggle to record.
When first taking jobs around the club scene, there was a good chance that John would be a forgotten songwriter of the early 1970s. Even though he may have been fantastic on the piano, his knack for writing lyrics would never work alongside the traditional songwriting format, facing one rejection after another when finding a label.
Once an executive took pity on John, though, a chance exchange got him lyrics from a songwriter named Bernie Taupin, who would become his partner-in-crime throughout the rest of his career. From the first meeting, the two men would become musical kindred spirits, as John would complete songs by putting music to the tone poems that Taupin would write.
While the pair had everything down to a science, John’s debut, Empty Sky, quickly met a deaf ear upon release. Even though the album featured styles that would be recognisable of his signature sound later, fans weren’t ready for the pseudo-psychedelic sounds that John was making around this time.
Needing something else to save their career, John’s self-titled sophomore release would become one of the biggest successes of his early career, featuring the soon-to-be-legendary track ‘Your Song’. Even though John had become a seasoned veteran on the road, he admitted to getting cold feet when working out the arrangements of the songs with session musicians.
When talking about the experience, John felt intimidated by the musicians he was working with in the studio, recalling, “Recording Elton John was a terrifying step because I had to play live with an orchestra, and we had a £5,000 budget, so we had to do three tracks in the morning and three in the afternoon. I was really frightened, I didn’t want to mess up, and that steeled me. It gave me great fortitude for the rest of my life.”
Even with the shaken confidence from the session musicians, the performances on tracks like ‘The Greatest Discovery’ and ‘Border Song’ sound like a songwriter, wise beyond his years, with John putting together melodies that fit somewhere between the pop stylings of The Beatles and almost classical compositions.
While John would be happy to keep going throughout the rest of the 1970s, the real successes would be just around the corner. Working with producer Gus Dudgeon, albums like Madman Across the Water and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road would become landmark fixtures of 1970s pop, taking the basis of rock and roll and bringing a certain sophistication from behind the piano. Elton John may have been a young kid when cutting his teeth on Elton John, but in just a few years, he didn’t need to impress anyone anymore.
