The Elton John concert that Ringo Starr walked out of: “We didn’t know”
Every rock star usually knows how to be diplomatic when it comes to their favourite artists. Even if someone isn’t playing their best or is clearly going through a rough patch in their career, it’s easy to look at them and empathise when you’ve gone through the same bout of performance anxiety or bad show years before. Although Ringo Starr had grown into the kind of musician who could get applause simply by standing onstage by the 1970s, he wasn’t going to bother sticking around when he saw a performance taking a massive dip.
Then again, Starr didn’t necessarily need to be playing the industry game much after the late 1960s. He was already one of the living legends in music history, and despite The Beatles’ story ending with a lot of bitter feelings towards each other, Starr actually managed to be one of the first members who earned success right out of the gate when he started notching up hits like ‘It Don’t Come Easy’.
But listening to a Starr album is like grading on a curve half the time. Some of the best records he ever made got there through a lot of good tunes and a fun-loving atmosphere, but sometimes the heavy lifting on his lifting came from the guest stars, whether that was Harry Nilsson working on tunes or him getting a little help from his friends when the former Fabs contributed to the odd single like ‘Photograph’ and ‘I’m The Greatest‘.
And while a lot of 1970s stars managed to rub elbows with the former Beatles, Elton John was practically one of the few standing in their orbit half the time. Aside from notching up nearly as many hits as the British legends, the English piano man had already turned in time working with John Lennon and had helped bring Starr’s singles to life, so it wasn’t like they didn’t have a good relationship or anything.
When someone is that far ahead of everyone else in the industry, there comes a point when they’re going to want to stretch beyond what they can actually do. And despite John’s persistence in celebrating the album Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy upon release, most of the audience was not prepared for him to play the entire album in full at one of his first concerts of the tour.
It’s understandable to want to spotlight a few songs, but anyone coming to hear the hits was bound to be disappointed, which included Starr, remembering later, “He came on and said, ‘I’m only going to do the new album.’ Me and his mother left after three tracks because we didn’t know them.”
Given how Captain Fantastic has become its own John classic at this point, though, it’s strange to think that anyone would have had too much of a problem with it. After all, John had been playing songs like ‘Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting’ before it came out on Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, but the thought of a band playing through the lion’s share of their tunes before the album is out was bound to get them some dirty looks from people who only wanted to hear ‘Rocket Man’ or ‘Your Song’.
Even though it probably wasn’t the best move for John not to play the hits, the whole thing does look pretty hilarious in retrospect. Because, really, how could anyone go to an Elton John show, listen as he’s playing ‘Someone Saved My Life Tonight’ and realise that it’s time to start making their way to the exit?
