When Prince walked out on Elton John mid-song: “Without a word”
There’s an old phrase that tells you you should ‘never meet your heroes’, and while it’s often tempting to try and prove this adage wrong by having a fortuitous encounter with someone you admire so much, some of Elton John’s encounters with a musical idol of his were bizarre to say the least.
Given how popular John is as an artist in his own right, it wouldn’t be unusual for someone to find the prospect of meeting with someone of his stature to be quite daunting. If most ordinary people were to find themselves in his presence, they’d probably find themselves feeling somewhat inferior or unworthy of his time, owing to the immense levels of fame and success that he’s achieved throughout his illustrious career.
However, his own fandom of Prince drove him to try and make a connection with the multi-talented Minneapolis musician, and while their shared status as pop rock icons may make you think that there’s little that would prevent their rendezvous from going well, both attempts to link up with him went awry much quicker than John would have likely hoped.
In the foreword to Prince and the Parade and Sign O’ The Times Era Studio Sessions: 1985 and 1986, a biography written by Duane Tudahi in 2021, John revealed that he first tried to introduce himself to Prince after a Grammy Awards ceremony in the 1980s, but that upon stating that he was a huge fan of his work, Prince chose to walk away without so much as saying a single word.
“As you can imagine, that was quite a deflating experience,” John recalled, although he acknowledged that there must have been an additional reason behind Prince’s sudden decision to abscond from the scene. “I knew how shy he was – everyone knew how shy Prince was – and I loved his music so much that a few years later I tried again.”
It wasn’t until Prince was playing a residency at the Rio in Las Vegas in 2006 that John found himself with another opportunity to introduce himself properly, with John coincidentally having been performing a residency of his own at Caesars Palace in the same city, and on this occasion, he wasn’t going to let this chance escape him.
Fortunately, Prince was much more candid on this occasion, and even invited John to perform a cover of The Beatles’ ‘The Long and Winding Road’ on stage with him, despite both parties admitting that they didn’t know the words. Prince decided to have the lyrics written out on the stage floor in front of the duo, and the performance was, as far as John was concerned, going to go ahead.
“So I went onstage with him,” John continued, “and we started playing ‘The Long and Winding Road.’ It’s sounding great. Midway through the song, I looked around. No Prince: he’d just walked off again.”
You can’t fault John for trying, and he likely did much better than most would be able to in terms of wrangling the infamously unpredictable maestro, but Prince always played by Prince’s own rules, and John wasn’t about to be afforded an exception to his confusing set of rules. The duo would eventually find themselves completing a performance of the very same song the following year, but it’s the failed attempts that stick out to John as being more representative of the enigma he looked up to so much.
