The singer Elton John called “one of the most interesting” in England
Elton John never liked the idea of being tied to one sound for too long.
He wasn’t going to be David Bowie by any stretch, but when looking through his catalogue, hearing him work with Leon Russell or try on his best disco impression isn’t the first thing you think of when you picture the glamorous version of him from back in the day with the biggest glasses that money could buy. Granted, that’s only because John was constantly looking for the next great song that inspired him to keep himself moving all the time.
He had already grown up in the era of the best singer-songwriters of all time, and when he wasn’t working with Brandi Carlile to go back to that sort of sound, he could sing the praises of those that were looking to tell the next great story, whether that was going back to those old James Taylor songs or hearing what else Bob Dylan had to say as he reached the next stop on his drifting journey.
But at this point, music isn’t decided by someone with just a piano or a guitar anymore. The true geniuses of their time are the ones who are willing to go out on a limb and work with the kind of people that no one would ever expect, and while John was always up for a challenge, he was blown away by the kind of work that Damon Albarn had been doing with Gorilla long before he started working with him.
Because, really, John was cut from the same eclectic musical cloth that Albarn was to a certain degree. He didn’t necessarily need to be around when Albarn was making some of the biggest hits of the Britpop era, but his mentality of working with whatever struck his fancy was what John had been doing since playing sessions. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for him to work with everyone from Alice in Chains to Kanye West, so he only saw ‘The Pink Phantom’ as yet another challenge for him.
When John did eventually hear what Albarn was doing, though, he had a much greater respect for the kind of musician he always was, saying, “Damon is an incredibly talented artist with one of the most diverse and explorative careers. For me, he’s one of the most interesting British musicians. The way he weaves together my vocals with 6LACK’s lyrics in this track gives a mix that I haven’t really heard before and I found the whole thing fascinating.”
That might be high praise, but the kind of diversity that John is talking about was almost second nature to Albarn at that point. He had been working with some of the greatest emcees of every era when he made Gorillaz records, and while it was strange to see people as diverse as Schoolboy Q and Peter Hook on the exact same album, he was using every one of his favourite musicians the same way that a painter looks at their paint.
They were all different sonic colours, and you needed to work with as many people as you could to get the kind of masterpiece that you were looking for. And while John’s voice does end up sticking out when it comes in on ‘The Pink Phantom’, the fact that it manages to fit in the best way off of 6lack’s Auto-tuned vocal is like listening to some forgotten gem from the 1970s take over for a few seconds.
But even if John was only giving a few bars to the final product, the important part wasn’t about what any individual person was doing. Gorillaz has always been about making music that was greater than the sum of its parts, and it would have never worked quite as well unless every single person was in place on any of their tunes.
