This Day in Pop Music History (Birth of Elton John, ‘Captain Fantastic’)

March 25, 1947—Reginald Kenneth Dwight was born in a council house in Pinner, Middlesex, England to a former communications clerk on an RAF base and the pilot she married. The latter’s attempt to instill military-style discipline into his shy, sensitive, piano-playing son backfired. Not only did the marriage fail, but the son embraced Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis as his idols and, for the longest time, personal hedonism as his preferred lifestyle. It’s a pretty safe bet that Stanley Dwight would have been astonished to know that, when his first-born turned 50, he would be knighted, under the show-biz nom de plume he had taken for himself years before: Elton John. 

The reaction against his father’s sartorial strictures (no Hush Puppies allowed, for instance) might have been nearly a decade tardy after the Dwights’ 1962 divorce, but when it finally came, it was enacted with spectacular force and for all the world to see. John might have entered the commercial stratosphere at the height of Glitter Rock, but I’d be hard-pressed to think of another musician who could match him as the Liberace of Rock, what with his endless varieties of eyewear, platform shoes, top hats, soccer outfits, Ziegfeld showgirl plumes—add what you will, because there’s a fair chance John wore it.

His show business name derived from Elton Dean, saxophonist for the pop pianist’s Sixties band Bluesology, and blues singer Long John Baldry. But more startling than the Christian name and surname he came up with was his middle name: Hercules. It might seem an affectation oddly macho for him, but like the Greek mythological hero, he had to endure a series of labors (starting with his authoritarian dad) before passing into legend:

·        * The rough pub where he cut his musical teeth as a teenager; 

·        *  A manic, fame-spurred lifestyle of outrageous spending and crazy demands that, for sheer insanity, might have climaxed when, frightened by turbulence in the air, he demanded that the pilot of his plane “Stop the wind!”;

·       *   The engagement in his twenties that put him on the brink of suicide (a situation chronicled in the hit “Someone Saved My Life Tonight”); 

·      *    Revealing his sexual orientation when rock ‘n’ roll was at its most homophobic;

·         * The breakup of his marriage in the late Eighties;

·         * Addictions to alcohol and drugs that it took him more than a decade to shed;

·       *   A protracted, painful court battle over musical copyrights with his mentor, Dick James;

·         * A rancidly erroneous report by the British tabloid The Sun that the star kept several guard dogs with larynxes removed so he didn’t have to hear them bark (sparking a libel lawsuit ending with the paper retracting its claims);

·        *   A throat-cancer scare.

If you’re a baby boomer like myself, Elton was nearly inescapable in the early-to-mid Seventies, with seven consecutive albums that went number-one in America. He might as well have been given an entire portion of the radio dial all to himself in those years. That’s the level of commercial success that Warner Brothers record executive Joe Smith had in mind when, for the famous October 27, 1975 Newsweek cover story on Bruce Springsteen, he wondered what level of success The Boss could achieve, let alone sustain: “He's a hot new artist now, but he's not the new messiah and I question whether he will establish an international mania. He's got a very long way to go before he does what Elton has done, or Rod Stewart or The Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin."

We know what happened to The Boss, but we also know what happened to Elton: perhaps not the supernova phenomenon he had, but certainly sustained, consistent success (save for a brief dip in the late Seventies) since then, even in the musical theater (The Lion King, Aida, Billy Elliott). And, for all the differences in persona between himself and Springsteen, the two have this in common: they are virtually without peer as live performers. (Elton’s flamboyance in concert might have a more desperate quality to it: he was once quoted as saying that the stage was “about the only place where I feel safe.”)

A few more points about Sir Elton:

·         * How many can match him for the number and range of his duet partners—to name a few, John Lennon, Billy Joel, Kiki Dee, Tina Turner, Shania Twain, Leon Russell, even Luciano Pavarotti?

·        *   How many can match him for the number and range of his feuding partners—Madonna, George Michael, Keith Richards, Simon Cowell? (See this "Daily Beast" post.) 

·         * Besides the hundreds of songs he has written over the years, in collaboration with Bernie Taupin and, more recently, Tim Rice, he has also either released or performed in concert some interesting cover tunes, including by Fleetwood Mac (“Don’t Stop”), Jerry Lee Lewis (“Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On”), George and Ira Gershwin (“But Not For Me”),  and Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini (“Moon River,” in this You Tube video, to a French audience).