The forgotten song Elton John and Bernie Taupin wrote for Ringo Starr
If there’s one thing charity gigs are good for, it’s bringing pop and rock stars together on stage who wouldn’t usually be seen together. Such events have brought some of our biggest stars from different corners of the musical map together in alluring instances of social chemistry. Strangely enough, it didn’t take such an event to bring The Beatles’ Ringo Starr, T. Rex’s Marc Bolan and rocketman Elton John together in the early 1970s.
Following the breakup of The Beatles in 1970, Starr embarked on a solo career graced with diverse collaboration. As George Harrison, John Lennon and Paul McCartney ventured off on their solo journeys, telling songs suggested dissonance and rivalry between the three. However, all three seemed to be on good terms with their beloved drummer.
Notably, Starr worked with all three of his former bandmates – though at different times – on his third solo album, Ringo. With Bolan, Robbie Robertson, Billy Preston, Nicky Hopkins, and more appearing among the star-studded cast, it was clear that Starr didn’t rely on his fellow Beatles’ influence in his solo endeavours.
Though he’s not commonly associated with the glam rock wave, Starr became particularly close with Bolan and Elton John in the early 1970s. When Starr was looking to direct his first movie without The Beatles, he took on a project to collate concert footage of T. Rex performing alongside himself and Elton John. The film, titled Born to Boogie, housed the first glimpse of a T. Rex classic.
At the time, Marc Bolan was rising to international fame off the back of 1971’s Electric Warrior and had just penned ‘Children of the Revolution’. While the most well-known version of the hit would appear on 1973’s Tanx, its first studio recording took place in Ascot Sound Studios for Starr’s Born to Boogie.
In 2020, Starr eulogised Bolan while inducting the late star and his band T. Rex into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. “People knew him as a great musician, a songwriter, a guitarist, but he was also a poet,” he said. “He was always telling me that he was the number one-selling poet in Britain. In fact, his poetry was as important to him as his music. He had great style and was really unlike anyone else I have ever met.”
The unlikely collaboration began in 1971, when T. Rex returned to Top of the Pops with the hit ‘Get It On (Bang a Gong)’ and Elton was invited to mime the song’s piano parts. At the time, Elton was preparing to release his classic album Madman Across the Water and had established himself as a promising pop act on the London scene. It wasn’t long before Bolan and John established a glamorous friendship.
When Bolan wanted to record a new version of the song ‘Children of the Revolution’ for the Starr-directed Born to Boogie, he invited John along to participate. “He was a good friend of mine, and he was the punk at the time, of course, because we were well established,” Starr recalled of his friendship with Bolan in 2011.
Prior to making the concert movie together, Bolan and Starr hung out a lot, and the latter wrote one of his solo songs after being inspired by Bolan’s idiosyncrasies. “We’d hang out, and I wrote ‘Back Off Boogaloo’ because he came to dinner, and that’s how he spoke,” Starr added. “So I said to him one day, ‘Why don’t we do a movie?’ He was very proud of his poetry. Every time he came to say hi: ‘Oh, I’m the number one selling poet in Britain!’. And it was important to him as his music”.
The movie brought Starr and Elton together for the first time. Elton was a huge Beatles fan in his youth, but as soon as he overcame the butterflies, the pair entered a warm and long-lived friendship. Following their work on Born to Boogie, Elton John and his lyricist Bernie Taupin wrote ‘Snookeroo’ specifically for Starr. The drummer recorded the song for his 1974 album Goodnight Vienna, with Elton recording the piano parts.
