eltonfan.net webmaster and Hercules Coordinator Stephan Heimbecher interviewed David Buckley about his new book, "ELTON: The Biography", which has been published in the UK on February 19, 2007.

1. David, you are not necessarily what one would call a die-hard Elton fan and you had to do a lot of research in order to “get to know” the man about whom you have now written a 400 page summary about his 40+ years musical career. According to the author’s note, your view about Elton as a musician and as a human being seems to have changed during the writing process. How much? Have you become an Elton fan in the end?

That’s certainly true about me not being a diehard fan. This was the first time that a publisher approached me to write a book, rather than the other way round. I had written a biography of Roxy Music for André Deutsch, and they kept asking me if I would write an Elton biography for them. After six months, I gave in! The problem for me was that I wasn’t convinced I knew, or even liked, enough of Elton to make the book work, so I was a pretty reluctant writer to start with. My allegiances in terms of Seventies icons had always been to David Bowie, someone I had grown up with and whose work I knew very well. There was a snobbish attitude (which, I must admit, I shared) about Elton: he wasn’t quite the ‘real deal’ somehow because he didn’t write his own words (as if that really matters), and he was never cool, or ‘groundbreaking.’ However, I was totally converted when I played Elton’s music and listened to it week after week. There are still areas of his career which I think are substandard, but I discovered so many great songs along the way that, yes, I guess I really have now become an Elton John fan.

2. In doing research for the book, you have spoken to a lot of people that have been part of Elton’s life in whatever way or form. Who was the most interesting person to talk to and who has revealed the most astonishing stories to you?

Well, it was wonderful to meet Ray Cooper – he hasn’t changed a bit, and was elegantly dressed in his waistcoat and jacket. He took me to a very stylish Italian restaurant in Munich, and we spoke for about four hours and have remained in contact ever since. The interview was wonderful, but over half of it was unconnected, or only loosely connected with Elton and so there was a lot I didn’t use. He’s lived an incredibly life as actor, musician, and filmmaker. Clive Franks was also tremendously helpful and told so many wonderful anecdotes. One which didn’t make the book sadly as I couldn’t find the right place to put it in, was when he was working doing the live sound on tour in the mid Seventies. Clive was, and is, a huge Beatles fan, and had been playing one of the Beatles hits compilations on cassette as music before the main show. Anyway, it was time to start ‘Funeral For A Friend’, which, as I’m sure everyone knows, starts very quietly with the all the doom-laden horror- movie sound effects. Live, this section was not played by the band, but rather Clive would pop in a tape of the beginning as found on the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album before Elton and the band would come in. But on this particular occasion he put on what he thought was the right tape only to hear, to his horror and crashing embarrassment, the beginning of the Beatles, ‘Hello Goodbye.’! It got to, ‘You say yes/I say no’, at a deafening volume, before he managed to stop the track. After his mistake, he could hear apparently was Calab Quaye on stage in fits of laughter. Of course, this is exactly the sort of mistake Elton would find hysterical!

3. Gary Osborne certainly was one of the pople you have talked to a lot. He has also written the foreword. How much has he influenced this project and how much of a help has he been to you?

Gary couldn’t have been more helpful. I managed to reach him through Spencer Leigh, who works as a broadcaster on Radio Merseyside in the UK. Spencer is amazing! He seems to have interviewed everyone on the planet connected with pop music, or so it seems. And when I interviewed him in October 2005, he said I must get in touch with Gary Osborne and Sir Tim Rice, and Spencer offered introductions to both people. Gary, of course, hadn’t been interviewed by Philip Norman for his earlier Elton book, and quite rightly thought that his own role and his importance in Elton’s career had tended to be dismissed. Gary, of course was one of Elton’s closest friends, and had worked with him for a five year period. So I managed to get, over three long interviews with him, a wonderful picture of Elton in the late Seventies and early Eighties. Warm, intelligent and with a great sense of humour, Gary was a great help throughout the project and was probably my main interviewee. During the interviewing process, he wrote the song, ‘Checkin’ It Out’ for ‘Lil Chris, which was a big hit in the UK.

4. Gary, like yourself, was not initially a big Elton fan. Do you think that this has been beneficial to the writing process because it meant that you could tackle the subject without being too full of praise and be more objective?

I hope the fact that I am discovering some of his songs for the first time means that I can bring a fresher approach to the analysis. I can’t compete with someone like Elizabeth Rosenthal in her knowledge of the songs in all their detail, but what I hope I can bring, after five previous biographies of my own, is a rounded and balanced picture of the man. I was keen to strike a balance. Rosenthal’s book is predominantly about Elton and his songs and speaks to Elton’s hardcore fans, whilst Philip Norman’s book says very little about Elton the artist, and rather more about Elton’s business dealings. I wanted to write a book which with it’s new interviews could appeal to staunch and knowledgeable Elton fans but which would also speak out a little to the less-committed fans, maybe people like myself who liked Elton but were unaware of how strong his catalogue of music was. I wanted to try and get these people to stop thinking about Elton as some sort of cartoon media figure with all the tantrums and outrage, and to start thinking about him again as a serious musician.

5. You must have ended up with a lot of material from the interviews alone. Plus the material you got from other parts of your research. How difficult was it to fit all that into the 400 pages you were given for this project?

Very difficult, but that’s part of the challenge of writing. An author has to make a decision about what’s really relevant and be brutal about leaving stuff out. The book is already 10,000 longer than it should have been! That said, there was material which was edited out at the last minute which I would have loved to have remained in. There’s some really interesting stuff from Paul Buckmaster about the making of the Elton John album for example which sadly didn’t make the final version. Another of my favourite anecdotes was also edited out too. Chris Charlesworth was a journalist working for Melody Maker at the time, and he recalled one example of Elton’s wit which I though was really funny but which my editor obviously didn’t! Chris said, ‘Do you remember the song “All By Myself”, a big hit in 1976 for Eric Carmen? Well, Eric Carmen came to an Elton gig, on that tour, I think it was in Cleveland. He came in to the dressing room and was introduced to Elton, who said, “On your own are you?” It was just at the time he had had the hit and we creased up laughing.’

6. Before this book, you have written about R.E.M. and David Bowie, to just name a few. Of all these books, what was the most difficult to write? What was the most interesting one from your perspective?

I made a conscious decision to write the Elton John book in a slightly different way to the other books I’d written. For a start, I wanted each chapter to start with a little incident in Elton’s life which I would write almost like a novel and in the present tense. Then the main action of the chapter would either fold back form this point or go forwards chronologically. Having set that as a rule, it meant that writing the Elton John book was probably more of a challenge than the other books. I also decided not to run the quotes from my interviewees in long blocks of text as I had done in previous books, but to use them in shorter burst as part of the narrative (something which is more difficult to do).

The David Bowie book you mention, Strange Fascination, was, on one level, easier to write because I knew so much more about the topic. But I think because I was a big Bowie fan, I was very wary of sounding too enthusiastic, and so I was criticised by some fans for being too hard on some of his albums and tours, particularly the later ones. With the Stranglers and R.E.M., I had more input from the bands themselves. If I have one major regret, it is, of course, that I didn’t get to interview Elton and Bernie themselves for the book.

7. Despite his 60 years of age and over 40 years in the music business, Elton seems to gain speed rather than slowing down as he still has various projects in the pipeline. What is your feeling, will you be asked to write an update about 2007-2017 in ten years from now?

I hope I might be asked to write an update earlier than that actually! If the hardback sells well then I might be asked to write an extra chapter for a revised paperback version. But I actually do think Elton John fans have a lot to look forward too. Elton seems in pretty good health and is committed to new albums and tours (despite the fact that he say he wants to retire almost every year!) I think Elton genuinely still believes he can appeal to a teenage audience, and on the evidence of The Lion King and his recent collaborations with pop acts, there’s no reason to suspect that he can’t. that said, the poor performance of his last two albums, and the Lestat production, also means that Elton has had to contend with a series of flops too. The period 2004-2006 has been a fallow period for Elton commercially; knowing Elton as we all do, he’s going to want to do something about that!

8. How many Elton records did you have in your collection before you started writing this book? How many do you have now?

Ouch! I have all them now of course! Beforehand, I had Goodbye Yellow Brick Road which I bought back in the Seventies, Elton’s Greatest Hits Vols 1 and 2, Too Low For Zero, The Very Best of Elton John, and several singles including, if memory serves me, ‘The Bitch is Back’, ‘Ego’, ‘Part Time Love’, ‘Song For Guy’, ‘Sartorial Eloquence’, ‘Little Jeannie’, ‘Blue Eyes’, ‘I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues’, ‘Wrap Her up’, and ‘I Don’t Wanna Go On With You Like That.’ The song I remember the most was the single, ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’, which I remember as a child when it first came out in 1973 and thought it was one of the most wonderful things I’d ever heard.

9. Have you ever seen Elton in concert?

Yes, but only recently, in Stuttgart in 2005, and I have to admit that I was a tad disappointed. I don’t know for sure, but I think he was battling the ‘flu at the time, so that might have had something to do with it, but he seemed to be going through the motions a bit or at least not as engaged with the audience as I know he usually is. I have never been to a concert which started at 7.20 pm before either, and that caught me out. I was thinking I had plenty of time to get a beer and get to my seat when I heard this Elton John music being played quite quietly from outside the arena. Then, much to my horror, it seemed that the concert had already started! But maybe I just got him on a bad night, or I was having a bad night. I’m sure if I saw him again it would be great.

10. Gary Osborne said in the foreword that yours is not the first book about Elton he has read, but that it is the best one. I would support that. I have enjoyed reading the book and I hope that many Elton fans will do so too. Thanks for the interview.

It was a pleasure Stephan. Of course, you helped me so much reading drafts of the book and lending me materials and your website was wonderfully helpful so, my thanks to you too!

The book is available online through amazon.co.uk.

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