Paula and Michelle are stranded and nervous on the public side of the backstage gate at the Miami Sportatorium, imploring anyone within earshot to helps them locate the passes they strenuously contend were promised them. It's been coughing rain all day, and their floorlength evening gowns — a jarring off-note in this sea of jeans and sweaty t-shirts — are splattered with mud. It's obvious that their evening at the show is something very different from what they had envisioned.

"What makes rock & roll great is that somebody like me can actually be a star."

They claim to be stewardesses, and insist that Elton John extended his personal invitation to this concert on some coast-to-coast flight or other. What do these two very proper "fly me" girls know from Elton John or rock & roll craziness, anyway? Well, Michelle concedes, only what they've heard occasionally on the radio. She then launches into a breathless rundown of all the fabulous movie stars she's had the honor of servicing on her flights: Elliot Gould, Steve McQueen, Sally Struthers and once even (sigh) Burt Reynolds. With a list like that, who needs Elton John? "He certainly didn't look like a star," she freely admits, "but everybody treated him like the King of Spain or something. I just knew he had to be somebody important."

Though they patiently stood by the backstage gate through the entire Sutherland Bros. & Quiver set, none of the various authorities who were summoned could offer any recognition. Which left the two mud-caked Cinderellas on the wrong side of the fence, surrounded on all sides by countless thousands ot teenage barbarians, dope peddlers and screaming rock & roll lunatics. But halfway through Elton's set, they were observed to be tapping their feet, less and less self-consciously as the show progressed, and the last anybody saw of them they were just two more figures in the wave of flesh that broke toward stage during the final number. "I guess they found what they came looking for," shrugged one of the road crew.

It's mid-afternoon in Miami, and everybody's a little nervous. "Elton's gone out shopping," one of the entourage reported, "to look at cars. And knowing Elton, he'll end up buying one even if he doesn't want it? He'll feel obligated to buy one just because he took up the salesman's time.. Do you believe that? He can't say no to anybody. I do hope that someone went along to look after him. Do you suppose that maybe Nigel could've..." •

By that you'd think that Elton John was some madly impetuous troll with all the self-restraint of, well, -a raving music junkie given free reign in the world's biggest jukebox. Someone who needs to be watched over and protected. And Elton himself doesn't go out of his way to stifle that impression. He's a confirmed prankster, and all of his gestures and little performances are punctuated with the smiles and chuckles of a preschooler who's doing something cute and knows it. As for his impetuousness, consider the fact that every member of the caravan (the Sutherland Bros. & Quiver contingent included) woke up one morning to find a camera — the snappy numbers that develop the pictures right in your hand — in their stocking.

Despite his impulsive leanings, Elton John has a firm handle bn his lunacy. "One thing that depresses me," he moans when approached with the suggestion that he should tone down, "is that there are so many successful people that are so fucking miserable with it. It's. so important to have fun with your success. Jesus, I spend a lot of money — I can afford to spend a lot of money §|j but I spend it on other people, and I spend it having a good time. Those people who are so miserable with their success, most pf them just become recluses. I refuse to become a recluse. If you shut yourself away, that's the beginnings of the end. You have to keep up with things, see what other people

are up to. You have to,"

Cut to the previous week and Atlanta, singled out as home base for the Southern thrust of the Elton John plunder parade. We're in Richard's, probably -the best rock & roll bar in the country*f and it's jumping in fine afterhours style. Elton's over there in the corner trying to look , inconspicuous (though he's probably the only human in the bar sporting pink racing stripes in his thinning brown hair, and those glasses), having slipped in to satisfy his curiousity about the Stooges. "I was out with Alice Cooper in New York," he bubbles, *"and Alice spent an hour talking about how great Iggy was." Followirig the set — which featured Iggy swinging from the rafters in mid-song — his jaw was at ground level. Following a dressing room tete-a-tete with the boys, he was every bit as enthusiastic but slightly disturbed.

I've always looked like a bank clerk who freaked out!!! .

"The best thing I can imagine for me would be to have a record store and fust serve behind the counter. "

"They seem so defeated," he worried back at the hotel, "and they should be such big stars. There has to be something I can do for them." The very next night, when the Stooges were blistering through "Raw Power," Elton appeared from nowhere and jumped onstage with them. Which would've been a bizarre enough juxtaposition for the audience to. cope with, except that the mischievous EJ was cleverly disguised in a gorilla suit. So cleverly disguised, in fact, that nobody knew what was going on. Least of all the Stooges, who still shake their heads in dumbfounded delight whenever

the incident is brought up.

* * *

The role of minister of weirdness hasn't always been Elton John's generally accepted image. With his first American album, he was in-crowd for about two weeks, with disillusionment setting in almost perfectly proportionate to his level of mass saturation. He was renounced as another singer/ songwriter mistake, an opinion that was almost believable by the time of his third album and a string of undeniably pompous live exhibitions of piano ego. "One man shows are boring," he's quite willing to admit in retrospect, "I'll never do that again. I mean, who wants to see one guy up there for jtwo and a half hours? We got slagged for that, and I can see the point. It was boring. It's really hard, anyway, to pull it off with just piano, bass and drums. It becomes sorta like a psychedelic Ramsey Lewis."

The reason that Elton's popularity* as soil'd and formidable as it had been up to that point, skyrocketed with the release of Honky Chateau is simply that somewhere in there he suddenly got younger. The period of blatant striving for artistic self-justification — when he found easiest acceptance with college freshmen — was given the trap door by the simple notion that nothing should be more important than having a good time. And even when it comes from a pudgy (but thinning!) record fanatic of 27, it's an easy enough rationale to understand.

"As soon as I step on the stage, it's a whole new thing for me. Off-stage I tend to be quiet; I'm not a loud person. That's why I wear costumes. They help me. It's like an actor; when I put my costumes on I can assume the role and it puts me in the proper frame of mind. If I came onstage in levis, I couldn't get off on it. It's like getting dressed for an event. I consider each gig to be an event. It's gotta be an event. It's like, I knew exactly where we were going last night — to that depressingly awful hall — and the seediness of the whole thing was appalling. So that's why I wore a suit and a bow tie. I had to try and make it somehow special.

"But when the adrenaline starts pumping, it's more than special. No wonder Iggy leaps into the audience. It's a temptation. Last night I was tempted to just leap into the whole lot of "em; break down that distance. Cause at that point you're so in love with all of them that you think well come on... and you can really get lost in it. My attitude is that I'm going to gb out there and wring every fucking ounce of energy out of that audiehce. And myself."

* * *

The entourage was transported from city to city on the rented Starship 1, a renovated jet that caters to entertainers" road whims and is booked solid for the next year with nearly everyone from Bob Dylan to Sammy Davis, Jr. It's not so much an airplane as a cocktail party with wings; it's apartment-like layout offers all the comforts of domesticity, from beds to televisions to real food to a bar that never closes down. And few of the douse aspects of constant air travel: no electronic surveillance

devices, no armed guards to play mental search-and-seizure with every suspicious rock & roll character, no ticket to be validated or baggage checks to be mislaid. The only hard part is trying to distinguish the stewardesses from the rest of the herd.

Elton's up on one of the tables, straining as high as his toes'll push him to get something from the overhead rack. "Oh Elton," deadpans one of the fellow travellers, "do you always have to be on stage?" At which point Elton wheeled around with an impish grin spread across his face and launched into an impromptu tap dance on the table, singing in the most obnoxious Micky Mouse squeal imaginable the words to "Burn Down the Mission." Looney tune time.

But almost everything Elton John does is self-parody of the role he's simultaneously acting out. He's like a kid sitting in the audience watching himself perform. His only enemy is the possibility that he might one day take what he does seriously. It would reduce him to the level of the commonplace. When he makes records now, it's from the perspective of a kid who knows what he expects of his heroes. It might even be said that Elton John survives by the skin of his perspective. The stage foolishness and obvious parody are for the sake of self-preservation; it keeps him just far enough outside his role that he can see and control it. He's a member of his own audience, and what Elton John is and will become is defined by his audience at large. He merely owns 51% of the partnership.

TURN TO PAGE 72.

Elton John

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 37.

From the security of a shielded Miami Beach hotel suite and room service without end, Elton can comfortably recall the days when his was just another rock & roll, fantasy. "When I was seventeen, I used to stand in front of the mirror — I was very fat — and I'd mime to Jerry Lee Lewis records, thinking, "Fuck, I wish this could happen to me." f always thought I'd be a star, mind you, since the age of four or five. But I never really thought that I'd be a singer. Realistically, I thought I'd .probably be somebody like Ferrante and Teicher that kind of MOR flash pianiSf — and Wind up putting out records like Bent Fabric. Sort of dike an English version of the Ventures, only on the piano.

"But look, anybody can be a star if they put their mind to it. I mean, I don't look like a star at alL but that's what fascinates me about it. I've always

looked like a bank clerk who freaked out. That's what makes rock & roll so great; that somebody like me can actually be a star. The whole rock thing for me is a game, but it's a game I love playing. And I'll always be playing it, even if it should ever get back to just me and the mirror.

"Just before I made it — about the time the Elton John album had been released — I was doing nothing. Two of my friends, who had an import record shop in London, gave me a job there for eight weeks. And I had a ball. If I wasn't doing what (I do now, the best thing I could imagine would be to have a record store somewhere and just serve behind the y counter. Records fascinate me. I could just watch a record going round and round for hours, that's what I used to do when I was a kid. I'd watch it go around; I couldn't believe it. And the label... any record that had a good label was an instant winner. That for me is the magic. I mean, tapes are alright to take around with you, but there's no magic in watching a tape cassette,"

So Elton John is seeing that magic lived out, but the power of rock & roll is that the fantasy can always manage to stay one step ahead of the reality. "In lots of ways it's frustrating to be tied to the piano," he laments with slightly more melancholy that you'd think one in his position was entitled to, "cause you can't do anything with it. I guess I've always been a frustrated guitarist. I mean, I never will be a guitarist, but it's a tremendous sensation just to play three chords. I can play about four chdrds on a good day, and I've got an amp and a Les Paul at home, and I just stand there and blast out "bam bam ba bam bam." I can just play that riff all afternoon. And freaking out on feedback. .. wraangzzsklixxarruh! To be a great guitarist.. | like James Williamson of the Stooges. He looks fantastic anyway; he's got such an aura about him and when he's bashing out those chords... that's what Pete Townshend used to be into, and it's what made the Who so much fun. I'd give anything to be able to do that. What a release!

"Then again, I'd also love to do a really doomy album "cause that's part of me as well. A suicidal album; I really like listening to very depressing music. That's why I like Leonard Cohen so much, because he really depresses me and I really like it. I think everybody needs to listen to depressing music every so often. I'd love to do an album like that, an album so depressing that Nico would tapdance on it!"

One major pipedream that he's seen safely into execution is Rocket Records, a company which he partially owns and helps to control. "Most artists start off their own labels strictly as a vehicle for themselves, but Rocket

wasn't established as a vehicle for me." I'm not even on the label. It's so boring when all these people start their own record companies; and the Moody Blues are on Threshold, the Youngbloods and all these others. What's the point? It's just a name on a label, and you're still being manhandled by whichever major company lays claim to you. The idea that started Rocket was simply that record companies don't want to give a new artist a decent deal. They sign them , for 3-5 years at a really low percentage, and if the act should happen within a year, it just means that they've got four years of being screwed to look forward to. Like the Beatles on EMI earning one percent. Jesus!

"We're going to get new acts for Rocket, but I wouldn't mind working with some of the people from the past. I wouldn't try and make a record of them in 1973. So many of those artists make a mistake... like, Bobby Vee made an album recently as Robert Thomas Velline. But I prefered Bobby. Vee to be" Bobby Vee. If I could get people like that on the label, I'd make ultracommercial singles with them, like they used to make. There's so many people around that you could get hold of... Jackie Wilson! And make really great records again. "Cguse you know they still have to have it.

"I think that because everybody involved with Rocket has the same ideals and outlook, it makes the corporate number a little easier to take. If it ever got too deeply into a business thing, I'd just sell my shares and go away. With Apple you've got four opinions, each coming from a different direction. And who needs the grief? But ask me in a vearYtime, and HI be able to tell you better."

Just how fanatic a record fan he is can be seen in the fact that he's having a new house constructed for himself in Surrey, and his friends aren't really joking when they tell you that he was forced into more spacious accomodations by his warehouse record collection. Records line his walls. They crowd his basement. They're everywhere you look. Always underfoot. They've taken over. And yet he still knows what they're there for, and exactly what they do.

"I buy eveiry record I own," he says proudly, "I buy every tape. Because if you get a freebie, it's not the same. It's not fun anymore. If there's a new artist with a worthwhile album, buy it because you'll help to create a demand, however small. In the States it probably doesn't mean much, but in England it certainly does. Because if you're new and have an album out, a shop will only order one copy. And if that copy is sold, then they'll have to reorder another, and it continues like that." %

What's this, a man who makes a fortune from the record industry and then insists on pouring his money back into it? What kind of fruit loop philosophy are We dealing with? That of a desperate consumer, maybe. Being as aware of the inter-industry machinery as he's made himself, if a promo man in Dubuque isn't pushing one of his records hard enough, Elton knows. And the fight becomes,' as with any of us who have somehow allowed the music business to muddy our relationship with the music, to cling to every drop of enthusiasm And passion that, we can summon. And hope that we never grow so old that we lose it.

In the wine-lifted dressing room following the Miami show, some flunky breezed in and out with a note for Elton from Jerry Lee Lewis, expressing the Killer's desire to summit with one of the stars he helped make possible. "Christ," says Elton Without a moment's hesitation, "I'm not gonna do that. He probably wants to shoot me„ after all the nasty things I've said about him. And he would, tpo; I've heard that he's a vicious bastard.

"I have to consider that anybody who goes from rock & roll to country has gotta be a loser. I don't; like country music very much,and I think it's an easy way out for people who cati't sustain, the level of playing rock & roll... i.e. Cortway Twitty. I suppose that I don't really understand it, "cause it's a strictly American thing. I just think country music's a bit lame: I like Waylon Jennings sometimes. I love Charlie Rich. But I consider them to be a cut above the rest." •

A rock critic. Just like the rest of us. And Elton John might also be his own best critic, except that he's the kind who prefers to digest it all slowly. Good as certain parts of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road are, for example, it'll probably be another few months before he can recognize its flaws. When his vision focuses, however, it's usually on the mark, and what he sees will inevitably have some kind of an effect on what he follows it with. Which may be why Elton John has not only survived, but taken in context has consistently grown.

Throughout the whole Elton John experience, you can't escape the feeling that he's going through his motions while watching himself in a fantasy-size mirror — and that maybe all there really is to the man is just a skillful manipulation of what he sees by reflection: That makes him very easy to peg as a Monti Rock a little late or perhaps a Gary Glitter a little too early. But he doesn't really fit in either slot. Both of the others make a mockery, however bacchanal, of what they're attempting to be, but there's a reverence in Elton's

ritual that has to count for something. Elton John cares about rock & roll. Can the same be honestly be said for David Bowie? Ian Anderson? David Crosby?

But he cares more about what it can do than necessarily what it is. "I used to play on Hollies records," he'll tell you. in disbelief, "and they actually thought they were creating great art. We'd spend eight hours on the track to something like "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother."

I couldn't believe it. I prefer to think of pop music as very disposable, that's the great thing about it. Someone can make a record and you can switch on the radio tomorrow and hear it, and it'll be fantastic and it'll be the next number one. And then they'll never have another hit record in their lives. Like Zager & Evans; someone could do a great article on Zager & Evans. That's one of. the strangest things that's ever happened. "In The Year 2525" was probably one of the'biggest singles of all time in the States, and when they disappeared absolutely nobody noticed. And the nice thing about black music is that you can have your one hit record, and then suddenly reappear with another one five years later. What drama!"

But why should we glorify this magnificent pretender, and be so willing to embrace an obvious show as the real thing just because it's inspired? Maybe because enthusiasm and passion have become almost incidental to the rock process, but without them we can't ever hope to create heroes for ourselves that are real. And if Elton John is indeed helping to keep that torch at least smoldering, then he's a friend worth having. ^