This story was originally published in the June 30, 1977, issue of Rolling Stone.
“It was so good to play in front of real people,” Elton John said in his dressing room, looking tired but exultant after the second of six concerts — May 2nd-7th — at London’s Rainbow Theater. “That first-night audience just looked so intimidating. I’ve never been so petrified in my life.”
With one notable exception — a solo performance at the Edinburgh Festival on September 17th, 1976 — the Rainbow concerts mark the end of Elton’s first retreat from public view. It lasted nearly a year. In August of ’76, at the end of a seven-night stand at Madison Square Garden, Elton John announced that he was disbanding his group and giving up performing for an indefinite period of time. Since then, he’s maintained a low profile while producing albums for Rocket protégés Kiki Dee, Blue and China.
The Rainbow shows — just Elton and his piano, with occasional percussion by Ray Cooper and a few fleeting appearances by Davey Johnstone — were prompted by the success of the Edinburgh performance. “I really enjoyed the freedom to get up and play without having to worry about what the band was doing or to do any of the things expected of me. I thought it would be a good idea to do that again. It gives me a chance to do songs I’ve never done onstage before, like ‘Ticking’ and ‘Where to Now, Saint Peter.’ It’s good to perform without feeling you’re just going through the motions, which is what I felt I was doing toward the end of the last bout of touring.”
Being “fed up with what I stood for” was, Elton said, the principal reason for his decision to stop performing. “There comes a time when you know you have to change; I’d reached the crossroads, and I just couldn’t go on doing the same thing indefinitely.”
His own predicament was, he believes, symptomatic of one that’s afflicting rock music in general. “Most rock albums sound so boring to me now. I can play through a whole stack of records and very few of them knock me out; all the big, established acts in particular seem to have got into a dreadful rut. It’s just become a business, and that’s so evident. I know I contributed to that in the first place by being the first artist to sign a multi-million-dollar contract, but I think it’s more money-bound now than it ever was. I had become a little bit of a commodity myself, and I just didn’t want to exploit that.”
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In keeping with those sentiments, Elton kicked off the Rainbow performances with a gala charity event for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Fund. Tickets were priced from £10 to £25 and evening dress was obligatory (for Elton this meant blue track trousers and a red jacket embroidered with white piano keys). Evidently nervous, Elton fluffed a few lines and forgot some chords during his performance, but he did get the audience clapping and singing along on “Crazy Water” and “Bennie & the Jets.”
The evening was not without incident. The Rainbow is located in a decaying, low-income neighborhood in North London. When the guests (which included all of the Eagles and Queen, as well as members of the English aristocracy) arrived, they were greeted by shouts of “parasites” from demonstrators outside the theater who were protesting government cuts in public spending. After the show Elton was presented to Princess Alexandra, Queen Elizabeth’s cousin. The princess reportedly asked Elton how he could play for two and a half hours at a stretch: did he take cocaine? “I couldn’t believe it,” Elton said later. “I was so stunned I’m not sure what I replied.”
The next night, Elton told the crowd: “I got great reviews, but I thought I was lousy. Now we can dispense with the bow ties and get down to business.” And he did, with a faultless performance that vindicated his decision to return to the stage alone. Against a backdrop of white and silver art-deco panels, Elton spent the first 90 minutes of the set on a nostalgic journey through some of his more subdued material, including “Your Song,” “The Greatest Discovery,” “Sixty Years On” and “Daniel.” He performed with a range and sensitivity his bands had never allowed him.
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For the last hour Elton was joined onstage by Ray Cooper. Billed as “extra odd attraction,” the elegantly besuited Cooper bobbed flamboyantly behind an arsenal of percussion devices, drumming up the energy level for a finale so rousing that Elton shrugged off his contemplative mood and kicked over his piano stool.
John insists the Rainbow performances do not mean he’s returned to live performing on a regular basis. He recently turned down an offer to play a solo concert at the Los Angeles Amphitheater, and he’s giving every sign of keeping his options wide open in every respect. “I dare say I’ll be performing more in the future,” he said, “but exactly when and where I really don’t know. It certainly won’t be on the scale it has been in the past. I’m not going to play stadiums again; I’d like to work in smaller halls — 3000- to 4000-seaters — where there’s more intimacy with the audience.”
Elton also has no intention of re-forming the old band. “I don’t want to work with a group that size again; I think I’ve exhausted all the possibilities of that for now. If I did work with a band in the future I’d like to go back to a four-piece, the same sort of lineup we had on Tumbleweed Connection, but maybe using different musicians.”
Neither does he have plans for an album to follow Blue Moves, although he has a handful of songs — “ultranew in every way” — ready for recording as singles. Four of the songs mark his debut as a lyricist, but, he emphasized, this does not signal the end of his partnership with Bernie Taupin. (The pair will be working together in July for studio dates in Europe.) “There’s no question of us falling out; it’s just very difficult to write songs together while he’s stuck on the other side of the Atlantic, and I can’t write by post anymore. I’ve done that for too many years.” And the lyrical content of his new songs? Elton dismissed the subject with a wave of his hand. “Silly one-liners, that’s all.…”
Rising to change out of his stage clothes, Elton the fan commented on the intense airplay Weather Report’s new single, “Birdland,” had been receiving in England, and the possibility of the record actually making the charts. “Wouldn’t that be great ?” he said. “Those are the sort of people whose music I listen to all the time —Joe Zawinul, Stanley Clarke and Keith Jarrett — an amazing pianist.” Could he see himself working with such musicians in the future? “I’d love to. I know a lot of people think I’m not good enough to do that, but I know I am.” Elton flashed a tired smile:
“Really, at this point in time just about anything is possible.”
