The one artist Elton John “looked up to the most”
The music of Elton John has felt almost omnipresent in the world of pop.
Even if there was a world where people didn’t yet hear tracks like ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ or ‘Your Song’, his way with melody has remained one of the most singular foundations on the pop charts ever since he started. There are thousands of people that could only hope to make a fraction of what he continues to make, but John knew that there were many writers that were able to cut to the bone every time he heard them.
If you were to look at John’s record collection, though, no one’s going to necessarily find the same retro records that everyone goes back to. Sure, he has a refined palette for the best classical musicians, but he has always kept his ears open to new music, and it’s not all that strange for him to talk about whatever’s happening in music now and then go on a tirade about what the best classical compositions he ever heard were.
While that musical diet did help give his music a lot more depth in the beginning, he was never following in the footsteps of Bach or Brahms. He wanted to be a pop singer ever since he saw Elvis Presley sing, and even if he wore some of the most outlandish costumes of the time, it was worth it to hear every single note of ‘Tiny Dancer’ or him banging the hell out of his piano during ‘Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting’.
John was more than happy to follow in the footsteps of some of his idols, but no one ever dreams that they could actually be friends with one of them. But when he first started to make waves with ‘Your Song’, John did have a friend in John Lennon, and once he started hanging out with the former Beatle, he discovered what made ‘The Intellectual One’ tick beyond being the one most jaded about the band’s legacy.
No one could take The Beatles’ legacy away from Lennon, but John was the one that helped him discover pieces of pop music that he missed for years at a time. His ‘lost weekend’ was bound to make him even more jaded about the music industry, but when working with John during what would become his final live appearance, he sang like he had the same kind of fire that he had when he was working in the Cavern Club all those years ago.
But John probably didn’t know the kind of friend that Lennon was until he suddenly wasn’t there anymore, saying, “I didn’t show any emotion whatsoever [when he died]. Everybody else had a great effect on them immediately. There’s nothing I could say about his music. His music speaks for itself. Of all the people I’ve met in the entertainment business, he was the one I looked up to the most. The biggest compliment I could pay is that he was one of the most humble people I’ve met and he taught me a hell of a lot and he was also one of the most fascinating and kindest.”
While John was certainly going to have a different version of events than the remaining Beatles, it was going to be hard not to think about Lennon’s death as like losing a family member. There are countless Beatle fans who thought about him in the same way, and even if they were miles away from him and would likely melt into the floor if he was in their presence, it’s easy to relate to someone on a very human level when connecting through songs like ‘Imagine’.
Because of all the accolades that Lennon has received over the years, the biggest contribution he gave to the world was showing everyone that an artist could be human. Yes, he made the best pop music that anyone has ever heard, but he was also going to make sure that everyone knew about the person underneath those glasses.
