Elton John; his brand new album: a pure dose of why the world fell in love with him in the first place - Interview

ANN POWERS: In your public life, you're like the goodwill ambassador of pop. But for Songs From the West Coast [Universal], you were able to pull back and go inside. How has that process worked for you?

ELTON JOHN: Bernie [Taupin, John's longtime collaborator] came down to France last year, and we spent five days together. We were planning to do an album and wanted to talk about it first, an approach we haven't really taken for a long time. We usually just get to the studio, and then there's a bunch of lyrics. And I said, "I am fed up with the fact that every time I read about myself, I read about my spending habits, all my flaws, the sexuality, the hair, The Lion King, blah, blah, blah..."

AP: Your glasses ...

EJ: And nobody ever mentions my music anymore. So we said, "Have we made an album that we can honestly say we focused our energies on for a long time?" And we said, "No." And so we said, "Right. We're gonna do this."

AP: I know you're a ravenous music fan, and you must have wanted to feel that you were producing something that stood up with all the other stuff you loved.

EJ: I can honestly say that the album has been inspired by listening to people like Ryan Adams. In fact, one of the dedications on the album is: "To Ryan Adams, who inspired me to do better."

AP: So he's a friend as well as someone you admire.

EJ: Yeah. I bought [Adams' album] Heartbreaker last year and I gave it to Bernie and said, "Listen, this man's made this album in 14 days and it sounds so beautiful, and we used to do things like that."

AP: How do you step away from Elton the icon and get back to Elton the musician, the guy at his piano?

EJ: Well, over the last two years I've been doing piano solo shows. I've done over 200 now, and I'm onstage for at least two-and-a-half hours, just me singing and playing the piano. My fans, fondly enough, have been saying, "We come to your concerts and we love the piano and everything, and we buy the records and there is no piano on them. Please play more piano!"

AP: You and Bernie have worked together for so long, on and off. It's really like an artistic marriage. How can you even stand to work with the same guy for so many years?

EJ: We've always given each other freedom. We didn't suffocate each other by saying, "You can only write with me." I think we were both a little hurt when we wrote with others, but to survive you have to give people their freedom. Also, we're not like normal songwriters: We don't write every day, we never write in the same room, so we don't really get on each other's nerves.

AP: Songs From the West Coast was recorded in the style of your early albums, like Tumbleweed Connection, but it is also a mature album. It's an album by someone who will be 55, not 25.

EJ: I feel very comfortable that this is the sort of music that I want to make now. I don't want to make any sloppy albums again. In the '90s we had so many distractions. This album was done without any Lion King in the background, any [Road to] EI Dorado, any Aida. And it was done with a lot of love and also a lot of fear.

AP: Fear of failure?

EJ: Yeah, because if you set your standards high and you go in and write that very first song, that usually sets the standard for an entire album.

AP: And the first song was "American Triangle," your song about the murder of Matthew Shepard.

EJ: Yes. When that happened [in 1998] I was outraged and so upset. And I went and played at the University of Wyoming; I wanted to do something for Matthew's memory. I also wanted to say to the public in America that everybody in Wyoming is not the same, you know. It shouldn't be tainted because of these two guys who did what they did. We had fourteen-and-a-half-thousand people packed into this arena, and I did the benefit for four anti-hate groups and to start a scholarship in Matthew's name. That's when I met his mother, Judy, and his father. So it was a subject that I was really really keen on doing and Bernie felt exactly the same way.

AP: Your song is compassionate toward everyone involved. That's its real beauty.

EJ: It says, "Two lives ruined, one life spent." It's no good, after two years, coming up with something angry. Bernie nailed it right on the head.

AP: The song's approach is rather like your decision to perform with Eminem at the Grammys. You reach out with compassion rather than condemning.

EJ: Yeah, you have to understand the cause. Having spent time with Eminem and seeing where he came from, how his childhood was; the fact that he can write these lyrics, it's just astonishing. If I thought he was a hateful bastard I would never have done it, but I looked at him and I thought, You're not hateful, you're really shy. I saw a lot of him in me.

AP: You had a similar encounter with Axl Rose, years before.

EJ: Yeah, again Axl had got slagged off because he'd made homophobic remarks. And at the Freddie Mercury tribute at Wembley Stadium in England, Axl and I did two songs together. He had asked me to do that. He inducted me into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, you know.