Elton's tip sheet

INGRID SISCHY: So, Elton, this time we'll be talking for our August music issue. I wanted to speak with you about the role that music plays in the culture. There was a moment when rock 'n' roll was new. There was a moment when pop was new. Going back, there were moments when classical music and jazz were new too. But since hip-hop came along more than two decades ago, that shock of the new in music hasn't really been felt. What has to happen now for something truly new to come along and shake things up again?

ELTON JOHN: Hip-hop is really the only thing over the last couple of decades that could possibly be called a new thing that had an impact on music. It was a huge movement. But after a while, like everything, it leavened and became part of the mainstream. So what's the next thing around the corner? God, I wish I knew. One of the greatest things about music is that you can never know what's going to happen. I remember being at school and somebody giving me a Beatles single and saying, "Listen to this. Listen to this." It was "Love Me Do." I listened to it, and it did sound incredible. But I had no idea of the sort of impact it would have on my life. It was a single that came out, and it was mildly successful--then everything exploded. So you never know what talent is lurking out there that's going to have a huge impact. It always happens--although a phenomenon like the Beatles will probably never happen again.

IS: Why do you think that is?

EJ: Because back then we had records and we had the radio, but when it came to where you would get your music, that was basically it. The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan--they all broke through that way. Today people can get music from so many different sources.

IS: So what you're saying is that part of what made those acts so powerful is that the distribution system was much more monolithic. There weren't a thousand alternatives.

EJ: Yes, exactly. Look at television back then. When the Beatles were on The Ed Sullivan Show, we all tuned in. It was an event. There were three channels in total on American television; to see a band like the Beatles on one of them was a very big deal. Now, though, there are hundreds of channels, not to mention all the video channels and on-demand services and satellite networks. The choices are infinite. People can see clips of virtually anybody anytime they want. Then you factor radio and the Internet into the equation. We live in an extremely fractured world today, so it's much more difficult to galvanize an audience now than when the Beatles first broke through.

IS: One of the great things about experiencing art is when you look at something, and it pisses you off to the point where you go, "That's not art!" That's the moment when something really happens. When you think of moments like that in music, like when people first heard jazz or rock or pop or punk or hip-hop-

EJ: The older generation was outraged.

IS: And part of that fury was fueled by the idea of "That's not music!"

EJ: Because they'd never heard anything like it before. The one thing that all of those movements that you mentioned have in common is that they really challenged popular notions of what music could be. Improvising in jazz--that was a radical act. So was scratching records on a turntable. Part of the problem is that people just don't leave enough to the imagination anymore, and imagination is what allows artists to do original work. In order to read a book, you have to use your imagination to piece together what's going on. Everyone has a different idea of what's happening when they read Moby Dick. Everyone has their own vision of it because that's what reading a book demands. But processing all of the information we have access to today is different. There is television and the Internet, but then there are also computers and cell phones and e-mail and iPods and handheld video devices. There are huge amounts of information that we are constantly being bombarded with from every angle. I think that you need to be able to be alone in order to be imaginative, and in order to do that today, you really have to work to cut yourself off from everything. You cannot possibly create something new by channeling all that is available to you, because you're going to be subconsciously influenced by what you see in a million different ways. Plus, I'm a firm believer that if you see rubbish, you're going to make rubbish. Of course, there are people doing great work out there; it's just harder now to avoid the mediocre stuff. For example, in the early '70s, there were at least 10 albums released every week that you could buy that were fantastic. Now you're lucky to find 10 albums a year of that quality--and there are exponentially more albums released each week now than there were back then.

IS: I wanted to touch on something you said about people needing to be alone in order to be imaginative. In a crazy way, music is interesting because it's one of the few art forms in which the greatness doesn't have to come out of being alone--it can be a group of girls and guys working together as a band. It's a form where great things can come out of the collective. So, in fact, music is a very important medium for the times that we live in now, because it is a group form. But also, great explosions in art and music cannot happen in isolation. There needs to be the right social atmosphere for them to occur. In the '60s, when the Beatles came along, the world was in revolution.