Elton John’s awkward first meeting with Stevie Wonder
There’s always been an adage about not meeting one’s idols in the entertainment industry. Even though it might be interesting to see what makes your favourite artists tick, there’s also a good chance that a celebrity could be ruthless in real life, either not having time to interact with fans or catching them at the wrong time in their personal lives. Although Elton John was on top of the world throughout the 1970s, he met one of his idols under poor circumstances.
Granted, John barely had a second to take in any of his celebrity throughout his career. While he may have started as a humble singer/songwriter interpreting the lyrics of Bernie Taupin, things started to move insanely fast once hits ‘Rocket Man’ flew up the charts. Taking the foundation of glam rock and putting lavish pop orchestrations behind him, John was turning himself into one of the most successful musicians in the world.
Although John could get the job done behind the piano, Stevie Wonder had pioneered that playing style for years prior. Compared to the Motown tracks that Wonder was used to spitting out at an alarming rate, his recent separation from his original contract led to him making the greatest R&B and soul music of the decade, catapulting his stardom into the stratosphere with the album Songs in the Key of Life.
John would even consider Wonder a favourite, thinking he could have gone toe-to-toe with composers like Dizzy Gillespie and Duke Ellington. When Wonder got the opportunity to meet John, though, John wasn’t exactly in the right frame of mind to be having one-on-one discussions.
Considering the rigorous schedule and the copious amount of drugs in his system, John was beginning to crack under the pressure of being one of the biggest stars in the world. While aboard Led Zeppelin’s hallowed aircraft, The Starship, John locked himself in the bathroom for hours and refused to leave.
As he describes it in his autobiography ME, John was cursing out his American publicist Sharon Laurence when he accidentally met his idol, saying, “[She] started knocking on the door and pleading with me to come out. I told her to fuck off. She kept coming back. Eventually, she burst into tears – ‘You have to come to the bar!’ – so I angrily opened the door and did as she asked, with a lot of huffing and eye-rolling en route. When I got to the bar, Stevie Wonder was sitting at the organ, ready to play for me. Had I not been cruising at 40,000 feet, I’d have prayed for the ground to open and swallow me”.
While John was able to make amends and remain friends with Wonder throughout the years, this would prove to be the start of his emotional downward spiral. Throughout the latter half of the 1970s, John would often fluctuate with how he thought his work was going, often indulging in cocaine-fueled exercises leading to what he would consider his worst album, Leather Jackets. Even though nothing could bring someone down from the heights of success, something has gone drastically wrong when you’re not interested in Stevie Wonder playing the organ for you.
