ELTONSCHAUNG

Look, kid, I coulda discovered Elton John. No, really! I had the opportunity to be the very first person in America to announce the discovery of this singing, piano-playing geniussensation.

Now, every critic is given all kinds of opportunities to discover new sensations, and Elton John was only one of a dozen that crossed my desk in the six months I was an Associate Editor of Rolling Stone. Every week there was a newi hype. But Elton John's publicist was one Norm Winter, and 1 tell ya, he was persistent. It got so I gave the receptionist orders not to allow any more of his phone calls past the front desk, so she got stuck listening to the hype. He'd hype anybody. ,}

But the way it started was one day' this record arrived from England with a sort of very dark picture of this snerdly-looking guy with glasses on it. I looked it over, and it looked pretty awful, but being British and all, I took it home and played almost all of the first side. Easy listening music, I said, and brought it back in. But there was a woman at the office who'd spent some time in England and she said I had to be wrong: there was a previous album Empty Sky, and it was pretty good. So I let her have it. She brought it back the next day. "Jeez, that's pretty bad," she said. "Wonder what got into him?" So I put it out on the table where all the reject records went and it disappeared sometime during the next week.

Then the phone calls started. "Did you listen to the album? We think he's going to be the Next Big Thing." NBTs are like cornflakes: there are lots of them around, they all look different, and they all taste the same. "Well," I told Winter, "I don't really think so." He asked me what I didn't like. I told him I didn't remember because I hadn't made it through the first side and I real busy so I had to go. "If we send you another copy, will you promise to listen to it all the way through?" Sure, sure, anything to get him off the phone.

Another copy came. Then extra copies started arriving in the mail. Wenner got his own personal copy. So did each of the other editors. The pressure was on.

Then the worst thing that could have happened did. I'd finally listened to both sides again* (*/ think by now, publicists have learned that the more you try and force somebody to make a decision or judgment on an act, the more prejudiced they become against the act, which can result in some uncalled-for viciousness.) and told Winter that no, I didn't like it, I'd rather listen to Frank Sinatra (true) and that there were a couple of dozen other performers I preferred, like the Insect Trust, Little Feat, Jesse Winchester, John Cale, and Commander Cody. "Look," he implored, "do me one more favor — come see Elton when he plays San Francisco next week." Oh shit. "I think that when you see him live, you'll change your mind. He's playing the Troubador with David Ackles." Oh, no! — not only did I have to see Elton John, but I had to sit through Ackles, who at the time was one of the most pointless, boring songwriters in the world.* {"Nowadays, of course, we have Barry White, Seals & Crofts, Patti Dahlstrom, Jimmie Spheeris, Michael Murphey, the various members of America, and dozens of others competing for the title.) (

To steel myself for the ordeal, I asked Cindy in the art department if she and

her friend Ron Nagle, a truly great songwriter (and now a famous artist) would like to come. Ron waS eager to check out the competition, so they said yes.* (*Here's a weird thought: right about that time, there were three really similar songs making the rounds, Leon Russell's "A Song For You," Elton John's "Your Song, " and Ron Nagle's "That's What Friends Are For." Prejudiced, I thought Ron's was the best of the three, and I'm still shocked that nobody's discovered if, but I just think it's odd that all three of those songs came along almost simultaneously.)

Now, San Franciscans may enjoy some scene-setting here: The Troubador, cousin of the Doug Weston's L.A. club, was located in what is now the downstairs dining room of the Boarding House, which is what they called the club after Weston beat a hasty retreat to L.A. and sold it to his associate, who now runs it. There's a story there I ain't allowed to tell, but anyway San Franciscans now know that the room in question held maybe 100 people. For Elton John.

Ron honked down two fifths of champagne on Norm during Ackles' set and promptly passed out. "He was so fuckin' horrible," he said later, "That I hadda do somethin'." I was left alone to face Elton, who came out andN played his entire first album, note-for-note, just like the record. The finale was "Burn Down the Mission," and h^ engaged in theatrics: he was wearing a Mickey ^ Mouse pin with a light-up nose that lit | when he pulled a string. As the desy ultory applause wafted up to the stage, ^ he pulled the string.* {"Some people | trace the entire history of glitter-rock f back to this moment) : I remarked later that the only thing about the set that impressed me was that Nigel Olsson had the biggest drum kit I'd ever seen and way atop it was the tiniest cymbal I'd ever seen, and I'd thought it was all for show until the end of one song, when he tinked it once. And that was the only time he used it all set. But I never wanted to hear Elton John again, shipped the copy of the record down to L.A. and known Anglophile John Mendelsohn, who wrote a tepid appreciation of it.

And that was five years ago.

Today, I am older and wiser, I know the younger generation has no taste, and anything they and I happen to agree on is most likely an accident. Pop music is a doldrums. A glance at the charts proves that mediocrity is the order of the day. And,, according to my advance November 25 Record World survey, number one again this week is Elton John* with "Island Girl," a pleasant, unspectacular single off his new pleasant-and-unspectacular album, Rock of the Westies.

I've given up listening to Elton John albums. When Greatest Hits came out, I listened to it and found that I admired the^ man's way with a single despite myself. I drove across the country this spring, and got to hear "Philadelphia Freedom" about umpteen million times, and I have to say I liked it.

But those albums are something

else. Bernie Taupin writes robotic lyrics —not that anyone ever pays attention to them — which are about as passionless as can be. With music and lyrics as obtuse as "Levon" or any album cut off Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, a case could be made for Elton's albums being written by computer. And it is, quite, craft, not art, that we're dealing with when it comes to Elton John, Never does he really cross the line which separates excitement from mere stimulation. You will, I believe, never hear an Elton John song whose words and music blend together into something extraordinarily more beautiful than the sum of the parts, something so perfectly whole and immediate and expressive that it remains with you forever.

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I went to see Elton again recently, on his tour of the West, and, while there were a few more people in the Oakland Coliseum than there were that longago night at the Troubador, there were a lot of similarities. This time the audience was youpger, heavily female, and, with the exception of two members of a local soul act who were there to take notes, gleamingly white, subspecies suburban white, aged from around nine to forty. The mere fact of the talented android's walking on to the stage occasioned a high-decibel shriek from the audience's little girls, and flash-cubes popped with strobe-like regularity. At first glance, it was like being in the midst of a real teenage sensation, but a second look around showed how well behaved the frenzy around me wasWhen the Beatles and all them caused hysteria, these girls' older sisters fought the cops to get closer to their idols. The security at this concert just had to go up to the few girls rushing the stage and suggest they sit down and they did. That was eerie — all that screaming, with so little energy behind it.

The band was better than okay, and both guitarist Caleb Quaye and percussionist Ray Cooper are great showoffs and wonderful fun to watch. The band can really rock out when it wants to, and the go-go boys (one of whom, I later found out, was a girl) sang exceptionally well. The show was certainly long, the sound was excellent, and the entire package was so well put together that even the ushers wore French t-shirts that looked like white tuxedo jackets with the toyr logo printed tastefully on them, the brainstorm of Rico the stage-manager. But it sure feels weird that the only thing that has stuck with me from that evening is the memory of those t-shirts. Tunes? Dunno, man.

* A friend came close to explaining this a few weeks later as we were driving around. Somebody in the car said "I just don't understand Elton John. He makes good singles, but as a performer, I just don't see him. I'd never go to see him if there were something else playing that night." "But that's not the point," this other guy said. "He's an entertainer. He's Wayne Newton, he's Tom Jones, he's Totie Fields, for chrissakes. You go see him, you get your money's worth. You won't feel burned — he puts on a show, and you walk out and maybe you can't remember a thing about it ten minutes later, but you've fucking been entertained, and you remember that." He's right — even though I don't remember anything of the show, I don't regret having gone.

So does that mean that half a loaf is better than none? The neutered passion of Elton John's music is, I suppose, preferable to the sterile posing of exBeatles or the impotent frenzy of the Rolling Stones (what's left of them) or the absolute vacuum that is Bad Company/Aerosmith/Eagles, and the

rest of what passes for hard rock these days.

But I say it's a hell of a time we live in if you have to use your head so much to justify or rationalize something your guts should be telling you, the sort of you order steak, you get oatmeal, and you say well at least it's food sort of rationalization. If Elton John is the best, thing on the radio, maybe you stop listening to the radio. If the music doesn't move you, maybe you change the station. It could be a generation gap, I suppose, but shit, he's older than I am by close to two years, and I sit almost in the middle of the age-group that buys his records, if the concertaudience was any indication. Maybe I miss the rawness of the music I grew up on, something easy enough to get with the equipment they used in those days and all but impossible to get with 128 tracks. Maybe I hate the kind of professionalism that serves it all up to you without your having to do a thing. Maybe I think the entertainment industry is a little too well-oiled in the wrong places these days. Or maybe I just don't understand why anybody would want to listen to Elton John. He's a pro — I'll give him that. But so is Perry Como.