Elton John on the keyboard geniuses who blew his mind: ‘With Zoot, you were in for a party’
It’s much better than that headline makes it sound. Worth reading properly and dipping into the linked samples they have. More than anything it’s about being a musician and realising that others may or may not be better but they’re different and you cannot do that.
As we all know I’m not too hot on The G and as we might not know Elton’s never really struck me. But this is *good*.
It is a good read. Elton was a brilliant pianist, songwriter and performer. I was never a great fan, but he’s written some cracking songs. His voice is long gone but clearly his enthusiasm for music isn’t nor his knowledge. Will check out some of the people he mentions.
My absolute favourite is Winwood on “Every Mother’s Son” by Traffic. He’s got that uncanny ability to rein himself in at just the right moment, and to be restrained when others would go over the top. An essential component of genius.
He’s a second cousin or somesuch of my ex, and my son does have a lot more musical talent than could possibly have come from my side…
Meh. A piece about organ which doesn’t mention Jimmy McGriff?
The Steve Winwood story is interesting: a mate of mine knows a bloke who was in the band when Winwood turned up to audition aged 14.
The story goes (perhaps apocryphally) that they told him to go away as he was too young to play in the clubs, but he sat outside and at the end of the day, after auditioning everyone else, they said, ‘Oh bloody hell, you still here? Alright, come in then.’
Ten minutes later they realised they were in the presence of true genius (Muff was five years older and not paying much attention to his kid brother at the time).
Once he’d demonstrated his prowess on the guitar he did the same on the organ, and then on the drums.
Spencer Davis apparently said, ‘I don’t suppose you can sing as well?’
Winwood: ‘My mum says I can’t.’
Gets up, gets on the mic, turns out he can, a bit.
Alan Price, the musical one in The Animals: they had played a set at our Charity Ball and then they all pissed off except AP. He poked his head into our common room and asked if we minded if he played and sang some blues? Someone went off for a jug or two of beer and Mr Price entertained himself, and us, for – I suppose – forty minutes or so. Then he politely thanked us and went off into the night.
A quick discussion ensued: we decided he was a top man, a good bloke, and a fine musician.
It was decades before I heard live blues again – Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, since you ask.
Forgive me if you’ve heard this reminiscence before: I’m getting old and such stuff increasingly floats into my mind. One other thought: in the early days of jazz an impresario remarked that all the white jazzmen really wanted was beer and an audience. Maybe Mr Price was like-minded.
Yes, good article.
Thanks for that story, dearieme I’ve another one of hearing Clapton playing acoustic at a West End cellar club on wet Sunday afternoon. Sitting in on a session by a very amateur blues band. It illustrates how much those guys in the day were in it for playing the music, rather than the money.
Who remembers seeing Georgie Fame playing keyboards for Prince Buster on Jools Hollands’ New Year TV show, along about 2004? No fuss, no name-check, but those two embracing like the lifelong friends they were was a ‘never-again’ moment. Georgie Fame was about 654x more than just the ‘Blue Flames’, yet he is virtually-unknown these days.
llater,
llamas
Elton is just a brilliant piano and song man, they don’t make em like him anymore.
When was the last time a track like “Daniel” was in the charts?
The organ in the 60s was pretty much the default keyboard instrument for live bands performing in front of audiences in smaller venues because electric pianos that sounded like pianos were a thing of the future and mic-ing up a joanna was a recipe for feedback or howlaround. The Vox Continental with black white notes and vice versa was limited in its range of sounds and similarly the Farfisa. The Hammond B3 was king but a heavy brute even without the pedalboard and very expensive.
The Fender Rhodes piano was great when it came along but also quite heavy and expensive. I had three of these in succession – but they didn’t hold their tuning well and sounded like a Fender Rhodes piano and not like a Bechstein. Next came synths whose piano voices improved considerably as the technology progressed and today we have the Nord (easily identifiable because red) which is excellent.
As the technology advanced the quality of the music arguably went in the other direction, of course. Incidentally, I’m not entirely sure that I’d entirely agree with Marius that Elton John was/is a brilliant pianist.
TMB – he might not be the best pianist in the world (I heard David Furnish has a six inch pianist), but he rocks the ivories.
Elton John’s classic tracks are so easy to listen to, yet so artfully constructed and performed, that he deserves his living legend status.
@TMB
Rhodes didn’t hold their tuning? I had two – a 73, then an 88 – and they both did. They were “Mk1s” but not the really early ones (wish they had been) and the action design changed quite a lot over time.
Stupidly I sold mine to the bloke out of Shakatak when no-one wanted it on sessions any longer and used a DX7 instead. Big mistake. And then there were the Yamaha CP70 and CP88 stage pianos, which I toured with but never owned. Horrid action and sounded half-way to a Clavinet. I’m glad I never wasted my money or broke my back on them.
Proper Hammond playing is a world of its own. I never went anywhere near it.