Why Elton John refuses to perform his song about John Lennon
During the mid-1970s, Elton John established a friendship with Beatle John Lennon, describing it as a “whirlwind romance”. John even told Lennon’s son, Sean: “We did a lot of naughty, naughty things”. Describing Lennon as “kind and as generous and sweet, […] we just hit it off immediately,” John has always looked back fondly on his friendship with the star.
In 1974, the pair recorded a duet called ‘Whatever Gets You Thru The Night’, which landed Lennon his first and only number one outside of his work with The Beatles. John told Lennon that if the track hit the coveted top spot, he would have to join him on stage at his Madison Square Garden show later that year. Little did he know that this performance, which included a rendition of ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, would be Lennon’s last before he was murdered in 1980.
John hugely admired Lennon, not just for his music but for his personality. He once shared: “I used to wear dark glasses and I used to use them as a real shield because I was very shy, and I know people think with your stage manner and all those things, how can you be shy, but I was, the other side of me was and still is to a certain extent very shy.”
He continued: “John had the wonderful ability to go into a room full of people that he didn’t know and had nothing to do with, they could come from any background in the world and be nice to everybody. Just take a general interest and be genuine about it. And I thought, ‘Oh my God, I wish I could be like that.'”
Talking to Sean, John explained that he was “very, very much affected by the death of your father, as everybody was. We couldn’t believe it.” Furthermore, he added: “Just you know, there was no health issues. It was just a blatant, awful homicide.”
After John heard the news of Lennon’s tragic death, he decided to write a song in his memory. Working with long-time collaborator Bernie Taupin, he penned ‘Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny)’. Discussing the song, John shared: “About a year after, Bernie said, ‘I’d really like to write a lyric about John, if you think that’s a good idea?’ And I said, ‘I would love to.’ And I love the lyric and I love the song.”
The moving tribute has rarely been played by John, who finds it too painful. “I played it when I was in Vegas [on] the million-dollar piano and there was a video with your mum and your dad walking through Central Park. It’s very hard for me to sing it, I get quite emotional singing that song and it moves me so much because it reminds me of how…god if your dad was alive today can you imagine what he’d be doing?!”
John has performed the song only a handful of times, such as during his Saturday Night Live debut in 1982 and at a Madison Square Garden show in front of Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon.
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