Davey Johnstone

Davey Johnstone, guitarist and musical director for Elton John, has an amazing memory...learn not only about his history, from folkie to rocker, but the recording of Elton John tracks and more!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
My guest today is Davy Johnstone. Davy, we were talking
before we began about the pronunciation of your last name
Johnstone or Johnston. You said, there was a story. Tell me, okay, now,
when I was growing up in Scotland, it was Davy Johnson.

(00:30):
Because in Scotland they're very offhand, not worrying about the
T or the E or whatever. Davy Johnson. Just like that.
When I moved over to the States, people would see
the spelling and go, oh, Davy Johnstone. And when I
heard that, I must admit I liked it. I liked
it the sound of it Americans saying that. However, one
day when I was on the road with Alice Cooper,

(00:52):
I'm an airport somewhere and this guy came up to
me and he said, you're used to play with, right,
And I said that's right, yeah, And he said you're
what's your name again, You're Davy And I said, yeah,
Davy Johnston and he said, no, you're Davy Johnstone. I

(01:13):
immediately when I like that, Yes, I am, thank you busted.
You know, so, I've always I've used that pronunciation. Now
for myself. I like it because I'm also I'm an
American citizen as well as a British one, so I'm
very tied into this country all the way. Now, So
Johnstone is okay, let's go back to Davy, because yeah,

(01:35):
you're a child of the fifties as am I and
we all were you know, Bobby Davy whatever, and then
as we aged people tended to change to Bob Robert Dave.
Tell me about being Davy. Well, I was always we
Davy growing up because my dad was Big Dave. My

(01:56):
dad also but his name wasn't David. It was actually Davidson,
which is a really interesting Scottish name. Davidson Wallace Johnston
was his name, and so he was Big Dave and
I was we Davy, and it just seemed to stuck
all the way through my childhood, through my soccer days,
and then when I started playing music, it just seemed

(02:16):
to be a catchier name. And I suck in the
e because it was totally accidental. Somebody was taking a
photograph of me and an Irish singer called Noel Murphy
who had formed a little folk duo together, and the
photographer wrote underneath my picture Davy with a E D

(02:37):
A V E y. So that was purely accidental. But
now so many fans and people know me as Davy.
My kids call me Davy. My wife calls me Davy
when he's been in a good mood. And yeah, so
I don't mind being called Davy. I'm not the one
of my sisters in Scotland still calls me David. I

(02:58):
will not call you Davy. You're David, you know. So
it's fine. Okay, you've talked about becoming a citizen. How
do you decide to do that? Well, I've lived here
for many years. I've lived out near in California for
thirty over thirty years now, especially in this area of
where I am now, which I love out in the country,

(03:20):
just around Calabasas area. And we decided, my wife and
I together because my wife is Danish. We both decided
about three years ago, four years ago, perhaps when things
were getting really really strange here politically. We had a

(03:42):
long conversation about it and I said, Okay, I am
not a citizen, so therefore I can't vote. I can
do everything else. I can pay tax obviously, I've always
paid my taxes. I do all the other stuff, but
I can't vote unless I'm a citizen. So I feel
it's horton now that I get my citizenship and that

(04:03):
you get years too, so that both of us can
vote in the upcoming election in twenty twenty. So that's
the main reason we did it. And when I got
back from Australia, we've been doing the usual applications and
the petitions, all the stuff you have to fill in
and the background stuff. And when I got back from Australia,
right right as COVID was coming in, my immigration attorney

(04:27):
who's in New York called me up and said, what
are you doing tomorrow? And I said, well, I'm getting
over my jet lag as usual. He said, can you
go to Chatsworth because I have a date for you
in a time they're going to swear you in privately.
So it was really beautiful the fact that I got
to go, you know, locally and just with a few

(04:47):
people in the actual office, and I got sworn in.
My wife was there, our kids were there, and it
was really a magical thing. And I'm really proud to
be a born again American. Okay, you say your wife
is Danish, how did you meet your wife? That's another
good one. My wife's Danish. I've always had this connection

(05:11):
with Danish people. Our record producer Chris Thomas was seeing
this Danish girl, a very beautiful Danish girl called Tina. Now,
unbeknown to me, I'd met Tina a couple of times,
but unbeknown to me, her best friend was my wife
to be Kay. And at that period time, for example,

(05:36):
Chris Thomas's girl was Tina, Rick Astley's girlfriend was Lena,
another Dane. All right, it gets really interesting. And so
on Tina's birthday one year in nineteen eighty nine, Alton
through a party for Tina because she was about to

(05:56):
get married to Chris Thomas, and it was a birthday party.
So I was sitting next to this beautiful Danish girl
called k and the party was in Paris, so it
was a very romantic place and it was a very
romantic evening. And that was it. We were submitting with

(06:16):
each other and we were together for a couple of years,
and then we got married in nineteen ninety two after
we had our first child, and it's been wonderful. Were
over thirty years now and really happy. Is this the
only time he had been married? No, twice before. First

(06:37):
time was when I was nineteen years old. At that time,
I got Diana Partridge pregnant when I was living in London,
and we had a little boy called Tam. Tam is
now an engineer and a writer, songwriter, filmmaker, musician, and

(07:00):
he lives in Cornwall in Southwest England, which is a
beautiful part of the world. My second marriage was to Rosa,
a Mexican girl from from Los Angeles with a wonderful family,
and our marriage spawned two children, Jesse and Daniel, and
they both still live in California and Kay. As I've

(07:25):
told you, it was Danish and I brought her over
here to live with me in California. And this has
been the one that's um, that's lasted obviously, and there's
no end in sight. Thank God. I'm tired of all
that running around and it's over. So how many kids
do you have with your present wife? Four with this

(07:45):
this wife? And unfortunately, back in two thousand and one,
we had a tragedy and we lost our firstborn, Oliver,
in a drowning accident in our pool. It happened when
I was on the road with the Alton John Billy
Joel Tour and we were in Chicago playing a show

(08:06):
that night in fact, and we had two nannies taking
care of the kids. At that point. Oliver was nine
years old, Juliet, my favorite and only daughter, was four,
and Charlie they was two. So they were well shepherded

(08:27):
and well taken care of while we were in Chicago
doing this celebration for my birthday, and tragically, our little
boy got away from the nannies, found his way into
the pool and took up a tenth type of thing
in there, which she had always been told you can't
take that, you can't take anything into the pool, and

(08:49):
he did and he got tangled up in it. The
nanny didn't get to him in time, and he drowned.
I got this news when I was on we just
played the set of the show in Chicago, and I'm
backstage and I'm signing next to Elton and with Kay
and I get this call and the road manager said, Davy,

(09:10):
there's a call for you. And I said, I'm not
taking a phone call right now, and you know we're
doing a show, and he said, no, you've got to
take this call. I took the call, and this this
poor doctor had the job of telling me this unbearable
news that that our son had died in a drowning accident.
The shock was so immediate. I was obviously very angry

(09:35):
and denial. It was like, what do you mean? Who
is this kind of thing? But finally I realized, okay,
this is the worst news that for any parent, and
I went and got my wife, I held her, I
told her what had happened. She immediately fell down, and
you know, Elton and grabbed her at the other side

(09:57):
and was holding her up to just the most unimaginable
feeling and changed our lives, obviously in every possible way.
He was a wonderful little boy. And what I've tried
to do when I finally stopped drinking and drugging and
doing all the other stuff because I felt that I

(10:18):
felt that I had a license to drink, to drug
allisas to kill myself because I was so miserable and
so upset because what had happened. And then I realized that,
you know what, I'll be honoring him much better if
I stopped drinking, stopped drinking being an idiot, and and
act like a human being and face up to these

(10:40):
things and that's what I did. And so that's how
we honor our child. Now. Every year we celebrate his
birthday and we celebrate his his death date. And it's
the only way we could we could get through this
thing was by facing up to it properly and by
staying together through it, you know, helping each other. So, yeah,

(11:02):
that was a total tragedy. And all also my children,
my other children helped me so much during this period
of time. Alton was a massive help, and my bandmates.
But I could never have gotten through it without my
wife and my kids and are close friends. Wow. So

(11:25):
it's type of thing you never get over, really right,
you never get over it, but we've learned to, you
might say, deal with it because over the years, what
happens this kind of situation, what happened in my case
and in my wife's case. Anyway, it starts off being

(11:45):
like this giant boulder in your heart, and then as
the years go by, it gets a little softer, less
jagged edges, and it becomes more of like a small
manageable that still breaks you up when you think about
this wonderful little boy that we lost, But you know,

(12:06):
you get to a point where you can actually go ahead,
go on and deal with it and possibly help other
people who are going through similar situations, which we have done.
I've given help to a couple of friends who've had
similar types of tragedy because I've realized that people just
need to talk about it. You can't just hide away
and not talk about it. This is something that has

(12:28):
to be faced and dealt with, and you know, and
you make it part of your life, you know, not
something that defines you, but something that's part of your
life that you treasure. And so I'm very grateful. Okay,
talking about your kids, are they off the payroll? No,

(12:49):
I don't know if that ever happens. Bob, my youngest
is definitely not off the payroll. Elliott's um just turned
eighteen last November, and he's a wonderful singer, a beautiful
looking kid, and he can't wait to get the hell
out of school, and he's also an artist and various things.

(13:11):
The next and Lion Charlie, is a sound engineer, also
a songwriter, and another musician, brilliant piano player. He went
to USC here in California for piano and for music production,
so they're kind of in the family business. My favorite daughter, Juliet,
who's actually on her way to New York City today.

(13:32):
She devised a wonderful business. Her name is Juliet Johnstone
and that's her website and everything. And she decided to
start painting on clothes about just when COVID was kicking in,
and it turned out to be a wonderful idea because
many pop stars, models, various personalities, celebs, whatever started wearing

(13:59):
her clothes. So it's wonderful that she's doing this and
she's got this ridiculous business. And recently she painted a
guitar for me for my seventieth birthday. I'm coming up
for seventy two now, but I she painted. She finished
it in time for me playing Dodgers Stadium with Elton

(14:20):
in November, which was awesome. So I got to take
that guitar on stage and use it. And you know,
a Bob, I'm blessed. I have some amazing children and
I'm a very lucky man because it's always kept me
a little bit grounded in my life, because you know,
we take our kids everywhere when we travel as much

(14:41):
as we can whenever it's possible, and so they've seen
the world many times in different places, and I think
they've really enjoyed that aspect of it. And they love
their own Uncle Elton, you know, or Auntie Elton, you know, whatever,
however he prefers to be called. And you know, they've
got some great friends because of the life we lead

(15:05):
and their own talents. And they've really helped me because
I mean I listened to their their music. I listened
to what they're listening to and it stuns me occasionally. Okay,
you talked about your daughter painting a guitar for you.
In the room we're in right now, I can already
see like twelve guitars on the wall. How many guitars

(15:29):
do you own? You know? I have no idea. It
sounds gross to say, but I really don't know. I'll
find out more accurately when this Farewell Tours over, because
we have three totally separate rigs outrun the road, which

(15:49):
one of them, for example, is just leaving Australian Zealand
where we just finished. Another set is in the New
York area, and another set is in Europe waiting for
us to start the next leg of the Farewell Tour
in the end of March. So each rake contains about
twenty five guitars, I would say maybe thirty, so that's

(16:13):
ninety there roughly. I've got another a few dozen at home,
along with various satars and various other things that I
don't take on the road with me anymore because they're
just too delicate. So yeah, it's a lot of stuff.
But in my retirement, I intend to play each and

(16:34):
every one of them. I intend to get back and
give each one the love that they really deserve. Because
I'm very blessed I have so many instruments, so it's
wonderful I do, and we get to them whenever we can.
But sometimes I feel that they're being ignored and they're
not being giving the TLC they deserve. So I'm looking

(16:56):
forward to retirement when I can line them all up
and honor them for their part in my life. Now.
A lot of guitarists have favorite instruments, whether it be
brand in model, or you know, those of us who
played guitar. I don't want to say that. I mean,
we all played guitar after the Beatles. Know that if
we went shopping with guitars, every guitar sounds a little

(17:17):
bit different. And there are people who take that guitar
on the road. There are people who only use it
in the studio. Do you have a couple of favorite instruments?
I do. I definitely have a couple of go to instruments.
Right from the beginning day when I first joined album,
for example, I wasn't playing much electric guitar, but I

(17:39):
had an electric guitar. But Alton tells a wonderful story
about me plugging in at the Chateau when we went
to make the first album, and it's a great story.
It's not entirely true because I did own an electric guitar,
so that was a Fender Stratocaster. But as I started
playing with him and I was able to buy a

(18:00):
couple of other instruments, I realized that my real favorite
was going to be a Gibson Les Paul, and then
later a Gibson Flying V. Because I began I began
to like the solid guitars because the sustain was more
evident and more clean, So I really loved that aspect
of Les Paul's. So yeah, my favorite really has been

(18:22):
a Gibson Les Paul. Second has probably been a Flying
V or a reverse Flying V, and then would probably
become the strat, you know, the Fender stratum. But the
other thing, Bob, is I I have so many guitars.
I mean I have a double neck made by a
company called Fernandez, which is completely jaw dropping brilliant. Um.

(18:44):
I use it for a lot of slide guitar and
regular one. I want to switch from neck to neck,
and it has the most pure gorgeous sound. So I
mean I I have so many of them, and so
many mandolins, electric mandolins, so many acoustic guitars, electric acoustic guitars,
so that I can use them live also, So yeah,

(19:06):
plenty of instruments. We have them coming out of the
Yang Yang. When you know, whenever we go to make
an album, there's so many dough Bros and Mandolins and
Mando cellos and stuff, dulcimers, you know, you name it. Okay,
you have twenty five guitars approximately in three different rigs.

(19:27):
Someone who's not sophisticated would say, why do you need
twenty five guitars? So why do you need all those guitars? Well,
one good reason is a backup for each guitar. There's
a prominent For example, I need to have my number
one less Paul. I need to have a backup for
that less Paul. I need to have my favorite flying

(19:50):
v or reverse fee and a backup for that one.
I need to have my favorite strat vender strat and
a backup for that one. I need to have my
favorite acoustic guitar that I'll be using in that particular
rig and a backup for that one. I need to
have an acoustic guitar open tuned because for songs like Rocketman,

(20:11):
I use a particular open tuning which is pretty amazing,
pretty special, So I need to have a guitar tuned
in that tuning as a backup. Also, because you know,
the main thing I don't want to do is hold
up a show when you have a problem like a
string popping and it's in a bad part of this
song where you can't just get through it with the

(20:32):
rest of the strings. So I have backups for each
and every instrument. And then for example, I'll have another
couple of guitars for songs like the Bitch Is Back
for example, bitches back when I recorded that I did that,
and an open g tuning very similar to the tuning
that Keith Richards uses. He uses five strings on his tuning,

(20:56):
I use all six, so there's a slight difference there.
I learned to play g tuning from John Martin, famed
British guitar player who tragically died way too young. So yeah,
there's there's various tunings and I'd like to have a
backup for that one as well. So it might sound
a little over the top for some people, but really

(21:18):
there's a good excuse for them. And then also, if
Alton decides on a tour he wants to do Mona
Lisas and mad hatters, I have to have a mandolin
ready and a backup for that mandolin. If he wants
to do a honky cat, I have to have a
banjo and a backup for that banjo. So luckily I
have all these wonderful instruments so that I'm never sure

(21:40):
of one, and I've got a wonderful guitar tech. I mean,
Rick Salazar is an absolute genius looking after all these
different guitars, looking after the various tunings, keeping each and
every one of these instruments in tip top shape. It's
just I couldn't do what I do without him. He's

(22:02):
just amazing. Okay, you mentioned Dodgers Stadium this year, and
of course you played with Elton in nineteen seventy five
Dodger Stadium. It's the same building. But what was different
about those two gigs. Well, let's see, the first one

(22:26):
was earlier in the year. I think this last one
was November seventeen, eight seventeen, nineteenth and twentieth, I want
to say, and end of November, so it was much
colder and darker. For one thing, the gigs in seventy five,

(22:47):
I can't remember exactly when they were, but they were
either September or early October, and so it was the
majority of the shows were in daylight and I could
see people. I could see this sea of people. It
was just such an awesome feeling. And we'd never that
stadium hadn't been used since the Beatles played there, so

(23:10):
there was a lot of these things going on where
we were doing. There was firsts were happening that many
people hadn't done since, for example, the Beatles. So that
was a very magic gig. And it was special in
another way too, because we were having to do excuse me,
we're having to do this particular show with a new band,

(23:31):
basically because Dan Nigel had been let go at the
end of nineteen seventy four, so I was tasked with
putting the new band together once we decided on who
the members were going to be, so in nineteen seventy five,
so it was all these different guys and it was wonderful.
I mean, we had a great band. It was rocking,
It was totally rocking. But this time, for me, the

(23:55):
difference was after doing it for fifty years, after playing
some of these songs for fifty years and writing stuff,
and yeah, I don't know. It just had a really
emotional feel about it, thinking, Wow, we're never going to
play these songs in America again, and that really is

(24:15):
what it is. We're never going to play them live again.
So it was wonderful to see really close friends. They're
really good musician friends, people you know, like Date, the
wonderful David Page and James Newton Howard and just all
these brilliant musicians. Alice in Chains showed up to see
us so much. Just good friends, Eddie Vedder all these

(24:37):
cats came to see the show because they're big fans,
you know, and it was wonderful to see them backstage.
I must say one point about seventy five that blew
me away though completely. We were backstage in the trailers
waiting to go on, and there was people before the show,

(24:57):
in the middle of the interval and after the show.
This is on the seventy five show. So one of
the wives, I believe it was Caleb Quay's wife, Pat.
She had a really Cockney accent, fantastic London accent, and
she suddenly says, in a very English accent, Yeah, that's

(25:18):
Gary Cooper out there. And I think to myself, Gary
Cooper is fucking dead. I'm pretty sure. So I go
over to the window, pull the curtain back and it's
Carrie Grant. So I go, oh my god. I love
Carrie Grant had to be like my favorite actor growing
up as a kid in Scotland. His movies were all

(25:40):
over the place and anyway, I just loved the suaveness
about him. So I went out and had a chat
with him, and he was knowledgeable about what we were doing.
He was saying, oh, yes, I'm really enjoying the interplay
between you and the other guitar player and you and Elton,
and the way you guys or look at each other

(26:01):
and smile and laugh, and I was just like going,
this is unbelievable. I'm talking to Carrie Grant, somebody who
you know. When I was eight years old we first
got a television in Scotland and I'm seeing like one
of his movies, like The Bishop's Wife or something, and
there he is backstage it does you say to him? So, yeah,
that was a There were more stars in those days

(26:25):
that were maybe I'm a bit more jaded now, Okay,
you know you mentioned your retirement. This is and people
can't see my air quote a farewell tour. There are
a lot of people who are going through the motions
for the money. I've seen the Farewell toured twice. Elton

(26:46):
is really digging it. So I just don't see Elton retiring.
I mean, George Street was the first one to do
is I'm retiring from touring, but he ended up playing
single dates. You're closer certainly than I am. What do
you think is really going to happen? Well? I really

(27:06):
feel that when we finish off, I believe the last
concerts in Stockholm, I want to say July eighth. I
think that's right. I must say that, as far as
I'm concerned, touring wise, we're done. This is going to
be it. We're done from touring. There's a part of

(27:28):
me that obviously thinks, knowing out in the way I do,
it would not surprise me if sometime in the future
he decides to do maybe a Vegas, a small residency,
a short type of thing, because he started to enjoy
some of those shows too when we got into that.

(27:49):
From between two thousand and five and two thousand and
fifteen or so, we had a couple of shows that
were very There were a lot of fun to do.
They were a little tedious at times. That whole that
idea of doing something that we weren't used to. But
I wouldn't be surprised if he went if he knows
what it is now, so I wouldn't be surprised if
sometime in the future he maybe does something different, maybe

(28:13):
with a small orchestra, or maybe something entirely different. I
have no idea, but that's just my take on it.
I promise you. We haven't discussed anything. We haven't talked
about any of it. You know. He calls me about
all kinds of stuff, and we're not going there just yet. Okay.
So I didn't see the Vegas shows. The red piano

(28:35):
and the other one. What was different about playing in
Vegas as opposed to a usual tour. Well, I was
at first, I didn't like the idea at all. I
just thought it was I was terrified. I thought, you know,
going to Vegas, that's like a musician's graveyard. I did
not like the idea at all. But then when the
fun of it, the fun aspect kicked in, we realized, okay,

(28:59):
this is a good giggle, and we we trimmed it
so that we were never there for longer than three
and a half weeks. There was no I can't I
can't understand people or artists who are able to stay
there for a residency for a whole year or whatever
they do. Impossible. I'd go completely nuts. So we would

(29:23):
go there three times a year for round about a month.
The one thing that was good about it was I
was closer to home. I could literally come off stage
because the shows in Vegas end early there because they
want people back, you know, in the casino, they want
people at the tables and the machines again, So the

(29:44):
shows would end about ten pm. I would literally have
my car ready to go backstage. I'd jump in it
and I'd be on the road before people were out
of the theater and home in three and a half hours,
you know, quick drive. I'd just drive myself home, So
that was a good aspect of it. And obviously being
able to see my my wife and kids more regularly

(30:05):
because they could come out to Vegas. Also, the Million
Dollar Piano Show was a great It was slightly more
I was, well, a lot more sophisticated. There was various
people who helped put it on. Mark Fisher, a wonderful
designer who did a lot of the Stones things, and
Sam Pattinson in England, and they were assisted by Tony

(30:28):
King and and Elton's manager slash husband, David Furnish. So
you know, it was a little more of a of
a I want to say, smooth, sophisticated and classy show.
You know, we were wearing like Gucci suits and then
Burberry suits, and then finally for the Million Dollar Piano Show,

(30:48):
sorry for the Farewell tour, where we're wearing Gucci, which
is fine. I mean it's very sharp looking, it's very
sharp rock and roll. I like it because it remains
the Beatles. I'm a massive, huge Beatles fan. Nobody bigger
than me. They'll we all say that, right, But yeah,
I like that aspect of it. I do think at

(31:10):
some point for me personally, I'm getting over the suits because,
you know what, I got into this business because I'm
a typical musician. I'm revolutionary. I don't want to wear
the same as thing as everybody else. You know, I
was wearing afghan coats and floury shirts and beads and
bell bottoms as you probably were back in the earliest

(31:31):
the late sixties, already seventies, so the idea of having
a uniform still rubs a little bit, robsby the wrong way.
So I'll be glad to get out of the good
cheer or whatever suit is I'm in and back to
some interesting clothes. It's the same songs in the same
order every night on this tour, right it is. It's changed.

(31:54):
I would say four or five times. We've changed song selections,
We've very rarely changed the order of things. We've tried things,
but each time we seemed to go back to the same,
the original thing. It's worked well. The only song that
we took out that I really miss is All the
Young Girls Love Alice, which I thought really kicked ass

(32:17):
and I thought a lot of the fans loved the
fact that there was a really deep cut that was
in there, but we kind of substituted that with have
Mercy on the Criminal, which is another another deep cut,
and that seems to go down great. People love that too.
So Mona Lisa's was in there for a couple of
tours way back when we started, and and a couple

(32:39):
of songs have come and gone and don't Go Breaking
My Heart comes in when like for the Dodger Stadium,
Kikid came out and did her party piece on that song,
and then dual Leapa did her her thing with Elton.
Instead of it being just backtrack, they still used the backtrack,
but they were able to use Doua's voice life which
was great and Elton live, so that was awesome. Okay,

(33:03):
during the show, is there anything prerecorded? No, we are
We are totally one million percent live. I mean, we
have a couple of vocal samples that we've recorded ourselves
several years ago, which we still use on a couple
of numbers, which we bolster our own live vocals with

(33:24):
um similar to the way that bands like The Eels,
do you know they most bands who have fairly prominent.
Background vocals tend to use a couple of samples here
and there. I don't think there's anything unfair about us
using them here and there. And we still love doing
the background parts because they're they're really meaningful parts that

(33:45):
when we wrote them, so it's fun to do them
live too. Okay, you're the music director, What exactly does
that mean? Really, I'm like a glorified bandleader. Really, I
mean it's not really. Music director is something that people
started calling me many years ago. And you know, I
don't really give a shit if they call me that

(34:06):
or not right frankly, but Alton's announcing me on stage. Yeah,
he always says, this is Davy, my band leader. And
I love that. That works perfectly for me because the
whole thing about music director started the second time that
d and Nagel were let go and I was asked
to stay when I was again tasked with the job

(34:30):
of or somebody's going to have to run the band
through their paces tish them the songs. Because as far
back as especially the second band I'm talking about in
the early in the mid eighties, when after the end
of nineteen eighty four, when when Dan Najeel let go
of that time. I had to come up with a band,

(34:53):
and it took quite a while for me to be
comfortable with the musicians that we had, and by the
time and we got to the end of the eighties,
I was very happy with it. We had people like
Charlie Morgan on drums, Bob Birch came in on bass,

(35:13):
Guy Babylon on keyboards. Eventually we got Nigel back, which
was great. He was out of the band for something
like seventeen years. So when I think of the various
combinations of bands I worked my way through. We had
some wonderful players. Don't get me wrong. We used to
you know Jonathan Moffatt sugar Foot, you know from Jack

(35:33):
Michael Jackson Stuff and his band. You know Romeo Williams,
all these different players. Jeff backs to play with us
for a while. James Newton heard. Obviously, Ray Cooper has
been in and out of the band, and he was
more of Ray was always more of a floating member,
but when he comes back, he's always my permanent member.

(35:55):
Ray and I go out to dinner all the time
on the road. Were the food freaks of this tour.
So we tend to dine out as much as possible. Okay,
have you been to Noma in Denmark? I wish i'd had,
but I believe it's closing the end of this year.
Ray and I have got our sightset for going there
when we're there in early July, so we're hoping we

(36:18):
can we can get in. Okay, So what's the best
meal you've had on the road. Well, for me, you
can't go wrong with no Bo. We love Japanese food.
No restaurants are in very many of the major cities,
I'm sure you know that. Although in Atlanta we found Umi,

(36:41):
which is a ridiculously great Japanese restaurant in the Buckhead
area of Atlanta, which we love. That area. There's some
wonderful restaurants and a couple of friends of mine own
the restaurants and they started this place and it's just unimaginable.
It's so great. So it's definitely on a par with
Nobu and maybe slightly better in some areas. So I'm

(37:05):
big on Japanese food. But obviously when we want to
take some of the guys like I take Rick, my
tech occasionally he likes Japanese food, but he's really big
on steak, so we'll go to one of the many
wonderful steakhouses, of which, as you know, there are several.
We just love great food, so it's one of it.
To me, it's one of the biggest, big joys of life.

(37:28):
So I make sure that I eat well on the road.
Do you work out on the road. I have a
set of stretchers that I do every morning, and I
swim whenever I can because I like to swim at home.
Right now, I'm I'm undergoing a bit of shoulder problem,
so I'm doing physical therapy for that. I've got wonderful

(37:51):
therapists here in my area that are helping me out.
So yeah, as we get older, you know, fifty years
of guitar sling and Bobby, you know that's like you
play guitar, you know, imagine doing it every other night
on stage for three hours. You know, suddenly your neck
and your shoulder starts to give way. So I have
guitar players neck and shoulder right now. Okay, Elton has

(38:15):
a huge catalog. If I were to call out a song,
would you be able to play it right like that?
Or what would it take to recall it? Well? Put
it this way, if it was one of the ones
I played on, absolutely, I mean, because there are quite
a few that I didn't play on leading up to
you know the band. Oh, let's face it. If you

(38:36):
see his greatest hits, I'm on every track. So yes,
if you caught a few mentioned a track or a
deep cut that I played on, I'm pretty sure I
could play it for you. And doeselt never call out?
I mean, you've been with him all these years forget
to farewell tour? Is he ever just playing and say
let's play you know, Harmony, or let's play Teacher, I
need you or whatever. Well, he'll suggest, you know, we'll

(38:59):
be talking about sets. We do that, him and I
do that before each tour anyway, and so we'll come
up with things like you said, Harmony, you know, high
Flying Bird or whatever to be. The thing is, he
has no fucking idea how to play these socks. So
this is why they call me musical director Bob, because

(39:22):
when it started happening, I realized he didn't know the songs,
he'd forgotten them, he didn't know how to play him.
So what I decided to do. I've got a very
good friend called Adam Chester, who's a wonderful piano player, singer, songwriter.
Adams a dear friend. He loves our music. He loves
Elton's music, all his sides. One day I called him

(39:43):
up and I said, Adam, I need you. I'm tired
of showing up for a TV rehearsal, for camera rehearsal.
Elton's not there because he want rehearse. I'm tired of
doing a band rehearsal without piano. I'm just sick of it.
So would you like to be my Elton? And he
went yeah, So, so I bring him in with the

(40:08):
whole band. He's not perfect, he sings the songs really well.
We do a change of key depending on where Elton's
voice maybe at the current time or whatever. And so
that by the time Elton's ready to come into rehearsal,
we're really good to go. We have the arrangements down,
everything's totally good to go. All he's got to do

(40:30):
is remember his part. So and he does that so quick,
Elton so fast. There's a good reason. I mean, he
hates the rehearse and I don't blame him. It's can
be a thankless task. I do enjoy it when it's
fun because these songs are so playable, there's so much
fun to play. They're not fun to play if somebody's

(40:51):
not enjoying it. So I don't I don't even think
about putting Alton through that that phase of it. I
wait till we're not perfect, and he's pretty much ready
to just go, Okay, what was that chord? What's this chord?
And then we work it out and he plays it.
And usually for a tour, he won't need more than
about I don't know, an hour to two hours rehearsal,

(41:14):
and that's for a major tour because we're all good
to go. He comes in for you know, an afternoon,
we do a few songs, we have a tea break,
we do another few songs, we have a tea break,
and then he goes, I think that'll do. Let's just
go and do it. So really, we rehearse when we
were on stage, and we've always done that. So many
of the of the jams and the various moves, the

(41:37):
maneuvers that we get into doing on stage are all
done purely live. We just work him out as we're playing.
And he's always loved to do that, and I love that,
and you know, as soon as he might play a
little thing and rocket Man and I'll jump on it
and we'll use that for a while. And you know,
it's all about you know, ebbs and flows, and we

(41:58):
know each other so well that we do that, and
the band follows us, and that's the way it works. Okay,
let's go back to the beginning. Edinburgh. What'd your parents
do for a living? My mom was a wonderful old

(42:20):
Scottish housewife. I have two sisters, so there was my
My two sisters are one is ten years older, the
other one is twelve years older. So I was the baby.
I was the afterthought. And my dad worked in the
Department of Agriculture. He was a civil servant and he
was also very worldly person. He very well read. Taught

(42:46):
me a lot about stuff and about manners, about respect.
He was a really good man. And he also helped
me so much with my soccer career because football is
like a religion in Scotland. I mean not American football,
I mean the real football, so that kids in America

(43:09):
in Britain, they grew up with football. So I was
fitball crazy when I was a kid. That's what they
call it fitball crazy because I loved it. And every
waking minute I was in the park or I was
in playing in teams, I was playing for my city,
I was eventually playing for Scottish schoolboys. So I loved it.

(43:32):
So Dad was great. He was very supportive and all
that stuff. He had a very serious injury. He had
rheumatari arthritis. It really crippled him from quite an early age.
But he'd still show up at every soccer game that
I played as a kid. I mean I'm talking in
the rain and the snow, you know, typical British weather,
and he'd show up. And when I started playing guitar,

(43:56):
he was the one who said gave me the most encouragement.
You know, other people were saying what are you doing?
You know, like my teachers at school would say, well,
that's a waste of time. Only one teacher ever said
to me, you're doing the right thing. Carry on, my
art teacher when I he asked me what I was
going to be, when he was asking the whole class,
what are you going to do when you grow up?

(44:17):
What are you going to do when you leave school?
And my answer was I'm going to be a professional musician, sir,
And he basically was ready to hit me over the
head with a book and said that's stupid. There's no
way give that idea up. So um my dad was
the one who said, don't listen to those guys. You know,
believe in yourself, go for it. And so by the

(44:39):
age of fourteen, I was playing in pubs, which is
where most folk music is played, because I I kind
of graduated from being a massive Beatles fan. I am
again a massive Beatles fan again, but in those days,
learning every George Harrison like by listening to the radio

(45:00):
Radio Luxembourg or Radio Caroline, one of those pirate ships
or are rolling stones to it, I'd learn all the
parts right there sitting by the radio. I graduated from
that to listening to folk guitar players who, in my mind,
were way better than anybody I was listening to on
the pop scene. I was listening to people like the

(45:22):
Incredible string band John Martin, Bert Jansch, Pentangle, Joni Mitchell.
Suddenly I was hearing I'm going to like, what the
hell these people are the real stars, you know, And
then I started to hear bluegrass people in America, and
I'm going like, Okay, this is way advanced. This is
the stuff I want to play. So that's the reason

(45:43):
that I started playing more acoustic guitar, mandolin, banjo, dulcimer,
and then eventually star a folk singing guy called Archie
Fisher played the saitar and he invited me to his
home to hear it one day, and I heard it
and that I've got to get one. And of course
i'd heard Jarles Harrison playing on Norwegian wood and thought, okay,

(46:09):
I'm in. I'm sold. You know, I'm a sucker for
a great siding instrument. Anything strained, and I got one,
which I still have to this day. I got it
when I was eighteen. I still have it to this day,
the same one. Okay, so you're growing up, are you
the kind of kid who's a loner? Remember the group?
You're a good student, bad student. I was a good student.

(46:32):
I was good, but I was lazy because I was
more interested in music. I did just what I needed
to get by, and I was very upset with my
dad said you got to go to extra math tuition
because you're failing and you are not allowed to fail
this class. So I hated him for it at the time,
but I did end up getting my result all levels.

(46:53):
Over there, they have all levels and A levels. All
level is like high school. A level is more like
what you do to get into college. So I got
six A levels, which stunned me. I was surprised as hell,
but it meant I was ready to go to Art
college because that was my major. And I decided, just
before I was going to go, I'm not going to

(47:15):
go to Art college. I'm going to go to London.
So I had about well, my mom gave me what
she had in her purse. It was eleven pounds, which
was about twenty bucks. So I got on a train
with my banjo, my guitar, my mandolin, and I went
to London and I looked up a guy, Noel Murphy,

(47:35):
this wonderful Irish folks who just passed away a few
months ago. Unfortunately, Noel had said to me once when
he heard my playing in a pub in Scotland. He said,
listen man, you're crazy good. He said, if you're ever
in London, looked me up. Well. When I heard that,
I thought, okay. I went to London and I went
to his apartment and I knocked on the door, and

(47:59):
of course he answered it and said, um, what the
fuck are you doing here? That was literally it. I mean,
I went, you know, we started playing. He said, okay,
you might as well play, So we we. We began
this very successful folk duo partnership, and we were a
massive draw on the on the folk scene between like

(48:22):
I don't know, sixty seven and sixty nine, and then
I graduated to something a little more I don't know
what you would call it, um folk pop or something
magna carta, a band like that. And see, there was
all this folk rock stuff going on at that period
of time, and very many folk physicians like myself, we're

(48:43):
getting snapped up by bands. Um, Dave Swarbrick got snapped
up by Fairport Convention. Rick Wakeman got snapped up by
the firstly by the Strobs and then by yes um
people like Ralph mct hell were coming on the scene.
I was playing with him also Kat Stevens, and then

(49:05):
I got you know, I was starting to do session work.
So when I did that a little bit slower, a
little bit slower, how'd you get session work? Okay? Well
I got session work because basically from from my studio, sorry,
from my playing in pubs and playing in folk clubs. Basically,
people would just call me up. They would hear me,
and they would say, look, I think you'd be great

(49:27):
on this record. Will you do it? And I was
like absolutely, I mean I never turned a gig down.
You don't do you don't turn a gig down. And
so I started playing with those kind of people, you know,
obscure kind of folk artists, but who had record deals.
Colin Scott, Ralph mctel was a bit of bit better

(49:49):
known Kat Stevens obviously, and Gus Dudgeon, Elton's producer at
that time. Wait, before you get to Gus, you knock
on Murphy's door, you have twenty dollars in your pocket.
Do you end up sleeping in his apartment? What is
your lifestyle like before you work with Elton? And did

(50:11):
you ever contemplate giving up? Okay, this is a good
run up to that, Bob, So I'll tell you what happened.
So I'm fifteen years old. I'm working with a partner
who's a wonderful singer called Titch. So we go by

(50:31):
the really original name of Titch and Davy, and we
get really interesting people digging our stuff. Again. Folk clubs,
all folk music took place in pubs in those days.
That's just what happened. I think it went to coffeehouses
later on, but pubs were where it was very rosy
folk clubs, and again I was playing banjo at this

(50:54):
By this point, people were going shit crazy. Whenever I
play one of the Dubliners reels or something Irish tunes,
they'd be going nuts. Per serk. So I was already
a bit of an item. When I was fifteen as
a banjo player, we suddenly started getting gigs supporting people
like the Incredible String Band, and there was one band

(51:17):
called the humble Bums. I don't know if you're aware
of Jerry Rafferty, yes, and Billy Connolly right, was still
my friend to this date. Billy Connolly couldn't believe again
my playing and what was going on with us. So
we became firm friends. And this is again, is all happening.

(51:37):
When I'm fifteen and sixteen years old. I continue to
be close to Billy and these other guys who are
hearing me play, and they're all going, Jesus christ Man,
you know you can do this or you can do that.
So me and my friend Titch hitchhike to Liverpool and
we we just got there. We don't know anybody. We

(51:58):
end up staying at my aunties house and Soot, which
is about half an hour on the train from Liverpool.
And we go to Liverpool because the Beatles are from Liverpool.
So we go there thinking maybe somebody will discover us.
So we go to this area of very dodgy area
near the Bluecoat Museum where some of those guys studied,

(52:19):
and found this very very dodgy club called the Green Moose.
And we went in there and there was all these
hippies and folk singers, and there was one guy called
Willie Russell who's a friend of mine to this day.
He was a poet, writer and wonderful, wonderful singer. He

(52:43):
we got on immediately. Willy Russell turned out to be
one of the greatest playwrights and he is one of
the greatest living playwrights in British history. He wrote. He
went on to write Educating Rita and Blood Brothers Shirley Valentine,
and he's you know, living. He still lives in Liverpool
and has a place in Portugal. Anyway, I digress. Willy

(53:07):
and I became firm friends. So suddenly you had me,
Willy Russell, Billy Connolly, Noel Murphy, this kind of kind
of gangster folk people, and we could drink more and
smoke more harsh than anybody else, So we were rapidly
getting a name. So I kind of had I was
ready to go to London. People weren't that surprised when

(53:29):
I showed it up there because they kind of knew
who I was. So yes, Noel Murphy, apart from saying
you know, what the fuck are you doing here, said okay,
well you better come in. Maybe we should think about
talk about this, So you know, we rolled a few splits,
talked about what we could possibly do together, and obviously

(53:49):
him being an Irish singer and me being an exponent
of the tenor banjo and mandolin acoustic guitar, we could
do this folk duo. So we were first called Murph
and Shagas. That's another one of my names. Shagas was
a name that he came up with. You probably know
what a haggas is, Bob, or maybe you don't, yeah,

(54:11):
but anyway, he thought, well, Davey resembles a shaggy Haggas,
so I'm going to call him Shagas. So that was
my name for a couple of years too, and then
eventually we decided to give ourselves more of a band name,
and we called ourselves Draft Porridge and in the in
the latent days of the folks in there, Draft Porridge

(54:33):
became quite a thing. So all this kind of thing
was happening. People are starting to talk about us. We
were getting this massive following, and eventually I get starting
to ask to do sessions. So that's where the gust
thing comes in. Okay, so Gus calls you, do you
know who Elton is? At that point? He's an empty Sky,

(54:54):
which wasn't that successful the first self titled album, Tumbleweed Connection,
never mind the live album and the Friends soundtrack. You're
called by Gus? Is this just another gig? Or do
you say? Wow? Well? I had heard about Elton from
Gus because Gus and I took a meeting. We had

(55:15):
metturing sessions for this group, Magna Carta that I was
with for about a year, and before I was a
bona fide member of that group with a three piece
folk group. Gus was producing them, so I was actually
a session man on that thing too. So that's where
we first met and we took a meeting sometime after

(55:37):
because I was so bold away by what he was
doing and the way he made my instrument sound. He
was obviously a schooled engineer as well as a great producer,
so we took a meeting one day and he told me,
he said, I worked with this guy called Regge and
his real name, he's calling himself Elton John and he
said he's just had a big successful show in la

(55:59):
and you probably be hearing about him, and I went okay,
and that's the first time I'd heard of him. And
I remember going back to Scotland a few weeks later
for a visit with my folks, and my dad and
I were watching a show called Top of the Pops
which I think is probably still on in the UK,
and Elton was on doing border song and I remember thinking, well,

(56:23):
this guy's got a killer voice. I love his piano playing,
and look at that head of hair. My dad and
me both said, look at this guy's here. He's got
this thickest, coolest looking head of hair we'd ever seen, right,
And that was the first thing that kind of I
noticed about him. So anyway, I went back down to
London and I've done a couple of months later or something,

(56:46):
Gus calls me and said, look, I'm doing a poetry
album with Bernie Taupin. The idea is for to do
acoustic album whereby yourself, if you're into it, Caleb Quay,
Sean Phillips, the American musician, and a couple of other

(57:09):
people here and there are going to be in the studio.
Bernie is going to recite his poetry and you guys
will play whatever you want in the background. You bring
your guitar, your sitar, your mandolin, and Bernie's just going
to read poetry. You're going to smoke a lot of dope,
and then you're going to play whatever comes into your head.

(57:29):
So that's what happened. I showed up at the studio.
I met Bernie, who was a great guy. Straightaway, got
un fantastic with him, and that's what we did. We
sat around and got to know each other. Gus was producing,
Clive Franks was engineering. Clive went on to be our
front of house guy. So this album was so much

(57:52):
fun to record because Caleb and I were just We
got to know each other on that record, and it
was obvious that at some point we would do some
other stuff together. It was just one of those things.
So after Bernie's recordings, I guess Bernie must have said
to Elton, you've got to check this guy out. And

(58:15):
I got the call to do the mad Mare across
the Water thing, and I showed up with more stuff
than they asked me for. I was booked to play
banjo on a song called holiday En, so I brought
my banjo. I also brought my mandolin, and for some

(58:36):
reason I brought my sitar and walked into the studio.
In those days, he was he was reg so Gus
introduced me, and he was very very shy. Elton was
sitting his piano, didn't he wasn't really into eye contact.
He was just looking at the piano and it seemed
quite shy and nervous. And I said, okay, well can

(58:59):
you play me the song we're going to do? And
he played the song and I straight away said, well,
I don't think it's banjo on that. I think mandolin
is going to be better. And he said okay, let's
try that, and then to go one more. After we
ran the song down a couple of times. He didn't

(59:20):
have an intro for it, and Gosus said well, how
are you going to start it? And Elton said, well,
I'm not really sure. And I said, well, why don't
you just start it? It's just me, like a nineteen
year old kid from Scotland, and I said, why don't
you just started straight in? I said, it sounds like
you've just come in with that bust, and I last
that just come in you me and I'm coming with

(59:43):
the mandolin and the piano, and that's what we'll do.
And he went, okay, let's try that soap full of
shit young scotsman, you know. So we do that, and
every he goes, that's great. So here I am surrounded
by people like Herbie Flowers, Barry Morgan, I mean, brilliant musicians,
Chris Spedding, Ray Cooper, all these great wonderful session players,

(01:00:07):
and I'm sitting there and going, okay, this is really
getting interesting. I'm working with these guys and straight away
you could tell, okay, these guys are they're the cream.
I've done a bunch of sessions, but this is another
another world, you know. So then the next song he
asked me to play. I believe it was the song
that they had originally wanted me to try, which was

(01:00:29):
the title track of that record, mad Man Across the Water,
and I found out later they tried it with a
couple of other guys. They tried it with Mick Ronson,
who was also a dear friend of mine, and Michael Chapman,
another friend of mine, who was a wonderful folk guitar player.
They'd done versions and for whatever reason, it hadn't been
what they needed, and so they said, this is the

(01:00:53):
riff for the piano, like for this song I have.
So he played the riff for Madman and I was
sitting there next to him with my guitar, and I said, well,
what about this? And I'm very much a first I'm
I'm an ideas guy, and my first ideas are usually
the ones that are best, just the way it works

(01:01:14):
with me. And I played what I thought, and they
all said, you know, Elton Gus and Steve Brown was
the manager at that point, that's it, eureka. So we
cut it and yeah, and I went on to play
on a few other tracks on that album. See on
those in those days you probably know this, Boblem. I'm

(01:01:37):
sure you do. And those days when artists were doing
an album, they had to do, you know, a three
hour session, you know, you had to get at least
one track done, usually more. If you could do more,
you would, you know, so for a day's work, say
if you were doing two full sessions, you'd hope to
get three finished tracks. And we did, you know one

(01:01:58):
of the next afternoon as we got a tiny d
answer leave on and I think we did some more. Yeah,
that's what I did the overdubs on holiday and I
did suitar and and extra stuff on that and yeah,
so the work rate impressed me. The songs really impressed me.

(01:02:20):
Elton's voice, the piano playing, I mean, I was hooked.
I thought, this this guy is great. I mean, it's
the best thing I've heard in a long time. So
I went back to my little cottage in Oxford Shore
where I was living with my first wife and our
little baby. And a few days later I got the
call um from Steve Brown who who said, um, he

(01:02:43):
would like you to join his trio. He wants to
be a quartet with you on guitar. And I was like, wow, okay,
I said, well that's really I'm flattered. I said, but
can I think about it? And he said of course,
you know, um, and I said you know what, I
don't need to think about it. I'm in I'd love

(01:03:03):
to do it. So that was it. And believe it
or not, between that conversation, I saw Elton a couple
of times shopping in the King's Road and he was
so he was a different character. He was friendly, exuberant
and buoyant, and maybe because he realized that I wasn't

(01:03:23):
just a bullshitter or something, and we became We were
good mates at that point. But I still hadn't met
d Murray the bass player. I'd met Nigel, but I'd
never played with him because they didn't play on the
albums in those days. So here I am, this upstart
guitar player just turning twenty, and I'm arriving in the

(01:03:48):
chateau nor rehearsal because, as I told you at the
beginning of this whole thing, Alton makes to rehearse. I said,
aren't we got to at least have a run through
with Dea, Nigel and you, and now it's gonna be fine.
So we get there and we literally start playing together
in the chateau, and that's how it all started. Okay,

(01:04:16):
a couple of questions. Yes, the sounds are very different
from your perspective. What's the difference with Gus Dudgeon as
a producer Chris Thomas. Wow, Well, I find that all
producers are really different because they all put their own
mark on things. Gus being an engineer at Decca Records

(01:04:40):
before he even became a producer. I mean, he was
one of those engineers with a white coat and the
whole thing, like in Abby Road they had in the
early days, and so he really learned about how to
make up instruments properly and the the whole thing. And we
began to have a wonderful relationship because thinking about you know,

(01:05:02):
Alton was the only other melodic guy in the band.
He played piano and occasionally he would do an overdub
on Melotron or far Fisa Oregon if something that was
lying around. But really I was the guy doing the
other instruments and guitar overdubs obviously, and bought other textures
who wanted and we'd employ them in every album. It

(01:05:22):
was a very very very close knit now and that
happened for all these classic records now in the eighties
when Alton when we reformed because Alton famously or whatever
got the original band back together. At the end of
nineteen eighty one called me saying, I want to get

(01:05:44):
Dea nageling you together again with me, just the four
of us, and we go back into the studio. This
time I want to go in with Chris Thomas because
I've been working with him and I'd like to try that,
And I said great, So we all went to We
did a whole year of touring before we did an album,
which was kind of cool. Who went straight into touring

(01:06:05):
and obviously it was like we'd never stopped playing together.
And so after the year of touring, we went to Montserrat,
George Martin's air studio out there with Chris producing. And
we've always enjoyed that way of working, by the way,
that residential area where you're kind of prisoners together. You're

(01:06:26):
all in one area, you know, where you get to
live and work together and have breakfast and maybe come
up with an idea of dinner together and go to
bed and wake up start again. So we've always enjoyed
that way of work. So Montserrat was a natural follow
on to our work at the Chateau and also at
Carriboo Ranch. So we get to Montserrat. I had met

(01:06:50):
Chris previously. I met him up at Paul McCartney's studio
in the malof Kintire when he was doing one of
Paul's albums, and we got on very well, and what
a great guy, you know. And I loved his work
on Beatle's White album. I loved his work on Tender Stuff,
which I was starting to hear. Chris and I became
very close because of what we were started doing straight

(01:07:13):
away because he also, like me, likes to work very quickly,
and also like Gus, Gus was always a very quick worker.
So we're very fortunate that all those guys liked to
work the way that Elton liked to work, which is,
hang onto your hat. You better be stayed with us
because this is going to be fast, and we don't

(01:07:33):
fuck around the studios like Howard Ground to us, so
that once we've run a song twice, we're ready to
take it. I mean I'm talking about from when it's written,
run down, played and recorded. That's what we do, you know.
So it's like hang on to your hat because we
ain't stopping for anybody. So Chris was quite used to

(01:07:55):
work in that way and loved it and loved what
we were doing, and I loved what he was doing
because it was a different way of approaching guitars as well,
because he brought that more chiangly sound of the of
the eighties guitar wise in but he loved again what
I'd do Les Paul Wise. In fact, we began to

(01:08:17):
call my Les Paul work BF cheese. And the reason
for that became was who we came to an overdub
and he'd say, you know what, I can really hear
some big fact Gibson's on this, and I would say, yeah,
that's a great idea. So big fact Gibson's became, you know,

(01:08:38):
this term for really loud, overdriven Les Paul sound, you know.
And so yeah, Chris and I get gotten great for
all these records. And but in the eighties Elton did
change around quite a bit. You know. He went a
couple or three albums with Chris, then back to Gus
again for a couple of records and then a live album,

(01:09:03):
and he kept having hits, which was fucking awesome. So yeah,
it was as far as the difference between them, I
must admit I equally loved working with Gus and Chris Thomas.
Both brilliant in their own way. Okay, so you're asked
to join the band, you're at the chateau. Everyone had

(01:09:24):
a fantasy of what the chateau was until the Beg's
documentary showed it and looked like kind of a dump.
So what was the chateau like? Well, it was pretty
run down. I mean it really was, definitely, but let's
face it, it was a French chateau. I mean, from

(01:09:45):
the outside it looked incredible. It was like two buildings,
both chateau esque and their design wonderful old buildings, beautiful
old buildings. And one building was the residential part. The
other side was where the studio was in. And when
I say run down, you know, they had sweeping staircases

(01:10:09):
stuff like that, but there were It wasn't much a
dormant There wasn't like old fashioned, beautiful framed guilt photograph.
There was nothing like that. I mean, any pictures in
the rooms, which were kind of shabby too, were just
kind of something stuck up there and pinned up there.
It was definitely not somewhere suave. This was somewhere where

(01:10:33):
you'd probably go to make a porno movie, right, And
I believe later on sometime in the late eighties. That's
exactly what started going on there, which is tragic, but
it was the idea of being in France, being about
twenty miles from Paris and the middle of nowhere, all

(01:10:54):
living together, you know, waking up, going down for breakfast,
having a bit of baguet and some cheese and some coffee,
and then starting to play. That's what it would be like. Literally,
I would come down in the morning and Elton that
would already be there sitting at an electric offender rose piano,
playing away and obviously writing something, and I'd grab a

(01:11:17):
baguette and a coffee and I wander over to where
he was sit down, and I vividly remember him starting
to write things like Honky Cat there and thinking, oh
banjo straight away and late, you know, later in the day,
would be working on something and he'd go, oh, this
song called Salvation another wonderful deep Cup, which ended up

(01:11:38):
being the first track that we actually recorded for those sessions.
I remember the way he started Rocketman and we were
looking at each other at this point, the four of us,
and going, okay, this is really really special because during Rocketman,
when we were mucking around with the basic idea for it.

(01:12:00):
We'd start doing backgrounds. D and Nigellavy, we start owing
and I and we've never sung before together, but straight
away it sounded like, oh, okay, this is going to
be fun, this is going to be really great. And again,
because we were so self contained, Alton keyboards, Me on

(01:12:21):
guitars and other strain instruments, Nigel and drums, and D
on bass, and all of us on backgrounds, we didn't
need anybody else. Because he didn't want to have a
live I didn't want to have a livish orchestral sounding record.
He wanted this one to be a band, to sound
like a band, you know, And I think we achieved that. Okay,

(01:12:43):
that's successful, and you're on the road. Meanwhile, now you're
a member of the band. To what dig we are
you saying I'm getting a steady paycheck, but maybe I'm
missing out on other opportunities with other people? You mean? Yeah, Well,

(01:13:04):
you know, Bob, here's the here's the kicker for the
whole thing. Because as soon as we started doing this
um honky Chateau, this first album, I mean, Madman Across
the Water was already doing very well. It was starting
to do stuff in the chart, so that was exciting
knowing that there was something happening for when we went

(01:13:28):
to the States. But Honky Chateau, we finished it in
two weeks. It was all. It was done in two weeks,
so straight away it was quite obvious, Okay, we're going
to get back to London. We're going to do a
concert at the Raw Festival Hall with our orchestra, so
we're going to promote madmu Across the Water. We'll do
it with you know, all the guys who played on

(01:13:50):
the record, and then the second half will be the
band set, no other way around. Band will do the
first half set and we'll promote the new album. We'll
play the new album live and the second half will
be the orchestral set with the whole of Madness Across
the Water and a few things from like your song,

(01:14:12):
Border Song, Burned Down the Mission, you know all that
kind of thing. So already there was this plan. We
were on this train and nobody was getting off. It
was like, this is what it's going to be. So
we did the festival whole show, which was televised as well.
I believe there's some kind of anniversary thing coming out

(01:14:32):
around about now, about that we did. That show went
off great, and a couple of weeks later, we're going
off to America and I'm going there for my first time.
Twenty year old kid going Okay, this is crazy. And
I must admit at that point after the Festival Hall show,

(01:14:53):
I was a little bit. I was a little bit unsure.
In fact, I told Elton. I called Elton about for
the gig and I said to him, look, you know what,
I think you need a tried, intrude, you know, rock
guitar player, because I don't know if I'm really into
all this. Posing See, the band never told me. The
other guy has never told me what is what their

(01:15:15):
live show was like, so I had no parameters. I'd
know nothing. I'd know, you know, no idea what to
expect when we got on stage that first time. And
not that it was that outrageous, but it was different.
And I was coming into a scene that I was
wholly unfamiliar with. You know, I was a little folk musician.
Granted I'd played some good shit on the album and

(01:15:36):
I was often running, but I had an awful lot
to learn. So I was unsure. So I said to Welton,
you know, I don't know if i'm your he said,
you're the guy. He said, I know it. I knew
it as soon as I met you, as soon as
I heard you playing. I've you've done the first album.
It sounds great. Let's just go with it. It's going
to be cool, You're going to be fine, and so

(01:15:59):
we went for it. Yeah, okay, Well let me ask
you this. Famously, Bernie writes the lyrics, gives him to Elton.
He comes up with the melody the song to what
we were others involved, yourself included obviously. Do you mean

(01:16:20):
during that writing Yeah, okay, during the writing process, we'd
all be I mean, occasionally he'd be on his own
and maybe he'd finished something and rushed through and say, guys,
listen to this. But much of the time, in fact,
most of the time, we'd be all sitting together, either

(01:16:42):
in the breakfast room, where we had a little semi
sarkle of instruments and so we could all play whenever
we wanted, or in the studio, where he'd well, maybe
we'd we'd go from the breakfast room over to the
studio to record a track that we were happy with.
Let's lay that down. And after we'd laid that down.

(01:17:02):
He would say, Bernie got a Bernie wouldn't even be there.
Most of the time, we just look at another lyric
and go and put it up there on the piano.
And he started fucking around. And we were just on
the basic track for the for the first song, and
he's already writing the second song. So I would be
sitting next to him with an acoustic guitar, and I
have a pad of paper with me, and I start,

(01:17:24):
you know, sketching down a couple of chords. When I
see where he's going with it. D would be plunking
away in the background. We'd all would all be listening,
so that by the time the song was actually written,
we all felt invested in it because we were we
were all there, and you know, occasionally there would be
the odd thing of oh what about that instead of

(01:17:44):
that or something, you know, but it was just like
this machine that wouldn't stop. And Elton was on such
a role which carried him on. Really. He went on
this role for so many years where he was actually
the song write up, no question about it. It wasn't

(01:18:07):
until later on in the seventies when I started writing
a few things with him and other people did and
again in the eighties that he started. He was on
such a role in such a thing for what he
was doing. It's kind of like I think Leononan McCartney
must have felt that way when they were writing their
their you know, classic songs that that five or six

(01:18:28):
year period. I often liken that. I mean not saying
that we're the Beatles or anything. I'm just saying I
liken it to that time when the creative creativity is
so off the charts that you really have to hang
in and pay attention to keep up. But on the
good side of it, because you feel a part of it,
you're totally invested all the way, you know, And that's

(01:18:51):
what it was like. We were a band. Let me
just put it that way, Bob, you were a band. Okay,
fifty years later things are different. Did you ever say, hey,
maybe I deserve credit the publishing. No um, because there
have been a few songs where I have gotten publishing

(01:19:13):
because I did care write several songs with him. I
don't know, I reckon, I've written about a dozen with him,
you know, proper compositions. Maybe maybe he's many as twenty.
I've encountered them, to be honest, I often did toy
with the fact that some of the bigger guitar driven hits,

(01:19:34):
you know, I would think, m that's me all over there.
There's not much else going on at that point, you know,
and I would I would toy with the idea. But
you know, I've got to tell you and all honestly,
I've never my relationship without and there's never been about that.
I would never go to him and say, yeah, what
about my my guitar parts there, I've got to tell you,

(01:19:55):
Bob and all honestly, I have seen so many bands
break up because of that fact. Right there, people squabbling
over well, that's my bit, so I should get a
part of that or and that's my part. We were
a band and didn't think. We didn't presume to jump

(01:20:16):
on the train that most other many other bands have done.
And you know, we stayed together for that reason, and
I think that's very important. Okay, there is money involved.
Who did you negotiate with from then to now over compensation?

(01:20:38):
There's not been much negotiation allowed, to be totally honest
with you, Back in the day, it was John Reid,
and John's was a brilliant manager, absolutely brilliant and really
made the whole thing happen. His exuberance and his understanding
of rock and roll, his already his experience from working

(01:20:59):
with Motown, and just his old knowledge and his gunghole attitude.
That was the train that we were all on. And
John was very fair. There was very There was a
great deal of difficulty coming negotiation wise from Elton's proper
manager of the whole thing, who was Dick James. It

(01:21:21):
was quite some years before they could, you know, move
out of that situation. So Dick had Elton locked up
into a pretty tight situation. So that was the first
thing that caused breakdowns if you like, or where we
could never get certain things sorted out. When I started
writing with Elton, when it became okay, Davy wrote this

(01:21:46):
with Elton, there was never any issue. That's what it was,
you know, Davy, Elton and Bernie, And as I said
a little while ago, there's many many songs like that.
So I'm certainly not going to pick bones about a
couple of songs that have done me very well in
my career that a lot of fans and guitar players

(01:22:09):
have held me in great esteem for quite frankly, it's
been worth it. To me to have the position that
I still have after all these years, and that I
still enjoy because quite frankly, Bob, I know too many
bands that have broken up for bad attitudes, and you know,
I'm fine put it that way, Okay, irrelevant of the songs,

(01:22:34):
like you're on this final tour, how do they decide
what you make? Well, that's become more of an issue
of it's a band. It's Elton John is now a brand,
not a band. It's now a brand. You must have

(01:22:55):
seen that coming for several years. It's not a bunch
of musicians anymore. It's a brand you have. You can
now have Elton John Walmart glasses, you can have this.
You can have Elton with a leaper, you can have
Elton with um you know, various other artists. He doesn't

(01:23:19):
always consider that his band is on a par with
what he does, or at least his management don't. I'm
pretty sure Elton feels the same way. When we are
doing the Farewell tour, we're all on stage. It's just
a band the same way as it ever was. You know.
It's me and Nigel and Ray and Elton up there

(01:23:40):
with the other guys doing our best you know. As
far as the money aspect of it, we are. All
I can tell you, Bob is that we're paid very
well as musicians. Okay, let's go back. Conkey Chateau is

(01:24:02):
a huge success. The next album is Don't Shoot Me.
I'm only the piano player. You know, back when there
was so much less information about musicians and music, I
fame it and I read it all. I family remember
Elton saying, oh, that album is a throwaway. When I
love that album, tell me about making that album. I

(01:24:24):
love Don't Shoot Me as well, because I stepped up.
I gained more confidence as a rock guitar player by
that point, and we had done a couple of tours.
One of the things about the early days was recording
tour album, tour, separate single, tour album. To you know,

(01:24:48):
it was always we were working very rare. We were
not working for that first five or six years, seriously.
But Don't Shoot Me was especially fun for me. Also
because I had bought a few guitars in America. I'd
bought the less Ball. Actually, Elton gave me a Les
Paul that I picked out for him on a tour.

(01:25:10):
I picked out a Les Paul and the old Man's
guitar shop that you might remember, of course, said he yeah,
and he wanted a Les Paul and I said, well,
see that one up on the pedestal up there, that's
the one you should have. And he said okay. So
I played it and he took it. And when I
had some guitars on about a month later, he said

(01:25:32):
take my Les bowl. So I was like, okay. So
I was happy. I still have that guitar too, of course,
but one second, tell me about the guitars getting stolen.
Uh my god, Bob, what a nightmare? What a what
a fucking nightmare. We were doing a tour of England

(01:25:53):
and this was right before we recorded Don't Shoot Me
and No Sorry. This was after Don't Shoot Me. This
was after we recorded Don't Shoot Me. Sorry. I'm I'm
getting a missing album. So do you want to tell
the Shall I tell this story first? About this? No,
I'll just keep going. I can follow you my audience. Yeah.
So we've done a tour in Sheffield, so this would

(01:26:14):
be late nineteen seventy two, winter of nineteen seventy two,
after Don't Shoot Me and I band I have picked
up a couple of guitars. In the States. I picked
up also the third mandolin ever made by Fender, and
it's an electric mandolin, and the serial number is zero

(01:26:34):
zero zero zero three. And I treasure this little thing
and it sounds killer on stage. I've never had electric
mandolin before. It sounds amazing that one. I had another
guitar that I bought in Nashville, which was a sixty sorry,
a fifty eight les Paul gold Top with soapbar pickups.

(01:26:59):
I adored this thing and it sounded incredible. D had
two bases. I had also my my strat. I had
another offender. I had a less special, one of those
wonderful one pickup ones at Leslie West used to play.
So Yeah. The truck driver without equipment decided he was

(01:27:24):
tired one night, and after the show he pulled into
like this part car park by this pub and locked
the truck up and went to sleep. Came down in
the morning and the whole truck had been stolen. They
took the whole fucking truck and all these instruments were taken,

(01:27:45):
and it was just horrible. My first experience of that,
it didn't go well with me. It happened again in
the future, but this time that it happened was like, Okay,
I'm not going to be too much of a collector.
I'm not gonna pick up really really wonderful ancient instruments
because I'm scared of traveling with them and having them stolen.

(01:28:07):
And I have great instruments still to this day. But
that was a real setback, one that you learned to
live back, to live with, you know, But okay, I
didn't like it. Frampton famously got his guitar back decades later,
although there was a plane crash involved, etc. Now with
the internet, have you ever found the stuff that was
stolen resurface? Wouldn't that be great? Because I promise I'll

(01:28:31):
look at because along with that hall that they took,
they also got an acoustic Gibson mandolin from you know,
like early nineteen hundreds, like nineteen eight or something that
was in the hall and it had my name on
the flight case. Now ten years later, I'm doing a

(01:28:52):
session in LA for Eddie what's his name? Who's Eddie? Who? Oh?
How am I forgetting his name? Who produced Hendrix Nye
Kremer and Hendrix Eddie Kramer? For god, I'm so sorry, Eddie.
You're probably gonna hit me the next time I see you.
And he said to me, oh, I'm working with this

(01:29:14):
Polish band and they have one of your mandolins. And
I'm what, what do you mean? He said, yeah, this
Polish rock band. They've got you one of your mandolins.
I saw your name on this flight case in get
ask and I'm going no, so immediately I get people

(01:29:35):
on it. And of course this is the early eighties,
you know, cell phones are still not happening there and
there's nothing like that. No, I can't run over there
and nail it down all the rest of it. So
I never did get it back, Bob. But I'm I'm
looking at I have my sources, people who troll around
looking for things, because I'm sure I'm going to see
those a couple of those instruments again. As you say,
with the internet, Spanish show up sometime. Okay, let's go

(01:29:58):
back to Don't Shoot Me Right. What a great collection
of songs on that record. Daniel was almost too easy
to record because we were literally sitting around the piano.
He wrote the song. The whole song start to finish

(01:30:19):
in about twenty minutes, and let's cut it, okay, Gusta
let's do it now. Okay, we did. We sat down,
played it down once, fixed out a couple of things
in the arrangement, played it again, and a third take
we got it. We got the master. That was it.
It was just beautiful, relaxed, laid back feel, and we

(01:30:39):
just cut it live obviously electric piano, Elton singing live, vocal,
drums and bass, and my acoustic guitar, and it just
sounded so great when we heard it, and immediately everybody
was going, single, that's got to be a single. It's
just so singable and so cute and so beautiful. And

(01:31:02):
then one of the things that I loved about this
about Daniel when I think back to that track and
the way we cut it, were the overdubs that we
put on it because we kept it very, very sparse.
But straight away we'd fallen in love with the melotron.
I've always loved melotron flute sounds thanks to the Beatles.
You know that wonderful Strawberry Fields sound at the beginning

(01:31:23):
of that. I've always loved that sound. So I said, hey, Alton,
you know what, we need a solo on this. Why
don't you play a solo on melotron with that wonderful
fluty sound. He did the solo and and the beginning
of the track. He just threw in a little thing
at the beginning of the track, and the first time
we ran it through, he played it and that was it.

(01:31:43):
It was done, and it was like, okay, well that
was easy. So then I said, well, you know, the
solo sounds so cool. It's got a great little melody
that you composed on the spot. And I said, why
don't we have a little bit of banjo playing mandolin
style but way back in echo And Gus said, that

(01:32:04):
sounds like a good idea. Let's do it. So we
fucked with the marks and did our usual playing around
and we have this wonderful banjo that people often wonder,
what is that during the soul of Daniel? But yeah,
it didn't even much. And one of the cool things
about it was to get the vocal that Gus thought

(01:32:26):
should be on that record. He walked out up one morning,
because usually what we do is we do all the
vocals at the end. We changed that, you know, as
we as we progressed, and it probably was with Daniel.
So Gus woke Elton up at seven thirty one morning
and said, Elton, I want you to come and do

(01:32:47):
that vocal and he was like, what, I've come fast asleep.
He said, well, I just wanted you to do the
vocal when you've kind of got a sleepy voice. He
said that would be fucking easy because I'm half asleep.
So Elton arrives the studio and Gus says, okay, let's
just do a vocal on it. So's he's wrapped up
in his fur coat and his shades, you know, and
his headphones obviously, and to run the track and it

(01:33:10):
sounds exactly like it should do. He's got that slightly
husky sound about it, and that was the vocal we use. Okay,
My two favorite tracks on that album are Teacher I
Need You and Elderberry Wine. Any stories you can tell
me about those two, Yeah, because actually another wonderful overdubbed

(01:33:31):
story on Teacher I Need You, which I love too,
by the way, and again it just showed the way
that we were a band. I mean, it's just a
band playing on that track and all the vocal the
background vocals, which were a lot of fun to do.
But on one of the overdubs there's that there's that
wonderful teacher A teacher, Oh yeah, teacher. Well guests who

(01:33:55):
played the buddom That was Elton Wow, because he had
the idea for doing that overdub and said, well, why
don't you fucking play it? You know what it is,
do you just do it? He said, I'm not a drummer.
I said, it doesn't matter. Anybody could do that. So
we take one of Nigel's Tom's out to the studio

(01:34:15):
and Elton did it. And I tell you something, Bob,
I bet Alton doesn't even remember that. He'll probably hear
this and he'll go, did I Because there's a lot
of things that I do remember details, and that was
one that I thought was so cool that he did
that because it was such a fun song and very

(01:34:36):
much inspired the whole record in fact, was very much
inspired by Mark Boland because we were kind of in
glam rock phase that then. You know, we were wearing
Granny Takes the Trip clothes and you know, lyrics suits
and platform shoes, the whole thing. We were all the
way into that whole thing, very much in competition with

(01:34:58):
the Bowie thing. Dave Barry was another friend, but also
it was all new competition. All these records were coming
out at the same time. You know, you'd get a
t Rex song and one of ours and one of
David's and it was just a wonderful time. And the
other one you mentioned. The other song you mentioned was
Elderberry Wine, which I love because it's so loose, and

(01:35:21):
again very early take of the track, we decided it
sun It's so cool for two reasons. I really loved
that track. Two main reasons. One that we discovered what
could happen with double track and the piano and then
using the very speed turn it down so you got
that wonderful you know, pub effect, pub pub piano effect,

(01:35:43):
you know, which we went on obviously to use that
on many other songs in the future. But it was
Ken Scott who showed us that trick, and it did
require to play the song. It wasn't like he just
could take that track and somehow magically have it album.
Had to play the part again. And so when we
heard the sound, we all went, oh my god, because

(01:36:05):
nobody'd ever heard that sound before on anything. It was
the first time I'd ever been used. Like shit, we
are actually innovators. Now we're doing a beatleshit. Here, you know.
And the other thing was when the guitar parts came
around for that song, because suddenly, when I double tracked
the rhythm part and the little lines in there, they're
all on one track, the same kind of shit started happening.

(01:36:29):
We're going like, oh, that sounds a bit like George
and I love what we're doing here. And and then
it repeated itself on Midnight Creeper and again on the
arpeggio things on Have Mercy on the Criminal. We started
to use these double trackings in a way that I
think the Beatles were using them kind of, and you'd

(01:36:50):
get a slight out of tuneness that would that would
just bring that sound that would made people just go, oh, fuck,
I love this, And we did. We loved every thing
we were doing. We're so excited about the process of
the recording that we were just lost in that world.
That was the joy of it. Since we're this deep
into the album Crocodile Rock, what fun that was to do, Bob,

(01:37:17):
I mean, what great fun and what a great little track.
And you know, ballocks to all the people who said, oh,
he's just doing this this thing, and you know, that's
a really cool little track. If people think the time
to listen to it. It's a brilliant track, great work
by Gus because the idea was we wanted to do
a little bit of a rock and roll tribute but

(01:37:38):
also a bit of a send up, hence my kind
of ventures shadows type and Dwayne Eddie takes on that.
There's about eight tracks of guitar and now all doing
different things because we wanted that to give, you know,
to show our love of rock and roll. And obviously
the la la la la la la rich Alton did

(01:38:01):
and you know what a cool little song. And I
think who was it tried to sue us. I think
it was Pat Boone or somebody tried to sue us
on the track said it was Speedy Gonzalez or something.
It's like, oh, please get a life, you know, but um,
great fun. We weren't doing anything. At least people were
talking about us, and I think that's something we had

(01:38:22):
to realize. You know what, we're going to get this.
This is going to happen now because people are buying
our records and a lot of people are are listening.
So that's a good thing. Okay, Next comes Goodbye Yellow
Brick Road. When does it become a double album, Okay,

(01:38:43):
I believe. Actually it was quite early on. I want
to say the idea was already in the back of
their minds because of the success of Punky Chateau and
Don't Shoot Me Massive, and then again of course, now
the Black Catalog is started to sell. The live album

(01:39:04):
is suddenly a hit, so is the Elton John album,
and it's all starting to sell. So they're obviously thinking,
all right, we've done this. We've done a live album,
we've done this, we've done orchestra done it. We'll have
to do a double album. So I know there was
talk of doing it, and I even remember a working
title of silent film talking Pictures. Wow, that was the

(01:39:32):
working idea for the thing. Anyway, we're in the Chateau
and we have, as usual, we have so many songs
as a lot of songs. By the way, Elton usually
refers to yellow Rick Rhode is what's Davy going to
play on this one? Because it's just it's just so

(01:39:54):
guitar heavy, which I love because we we we employed
so many different sounds, ideas and whatever, and it was
just so much fun for me and for everybody because
we were all getting off on it, but there was many,
many songs and the idea of doing an opening track
that was going to be something majestic and had an

(01:40:16):
instrumental We knew that's what we wanted to do. So
Elton wrote the first part the piece, and I don't
mean I don't mean the synthesize of piece. That was
all done after by David Henschel when we decided we
need something at the very beginning before the band comes
in with the slow movement, and so Elton and I

(01:40:40):
Indian agel we knew what it was. We'd already Elton
had already written love Lives fitting I had worked out
my guitar parts what I thought they should be on
that song. And we did the whole thing from the
beginning of the quiet part of Funeral for a Friend
all the way to the end the basic track, so
there wasn't any gaps in it. And that's a long time.

(01:41:04):
That's got to be I don't know, nine minutes, something
like that, eight or nine minutes. I'm not sure how
long it is. But it was so exciting because you know,
we've always liked the red light in the studio. When
the red light goes on that's like religion. You're in
the studio, shut the fuck up. But of course we're
just about to start funeral for a friend, the most quiet, delicate, haunting,

(01:41:28):
beautiful thing, and Ellen's by the plan of and I
can hear Alton going one, two, three and instead of four,
and we just all completely fall about and there was
this wonderful far and obviously the tension was so but
as soon as he let that go and it's we

(01:41:49):
have a tape of it somewhere, it broke the tension
and we all kind of relaxed a bit and we
stopped laughing, and then we started again and did the
whole thing through. And then as is my one, I
started the over dubbing guitars and went pretty crazy on
on that whole thing too. And you know, it was

(01:42:12):
great because you have a song that lyrically, musically is
already done. You know what's coming up. So we were
already having ideas about where we would do background vocals,
where we would do this, what we might add at
specific points and the song, and nobody really was was
telling us do this or do that, because it was

(01:42:34):
only gossip was obviously there and not being a musician
that wonderful ideas person and greater interpreting your ideas. But
nobody was telling us anything. So it was us doing
exactly what we thought would be right when when we
were doing it, okay, you know this was about it. Really.

(01:42:55):
A couple of years later it became standard de camp
vocals and a punch in. Well, you guys conscious of that,
or you say leave the mistakes in or what was
the philosophy? Um there was in the days that we started.
It was more a question of punch ins. Because Alton's

(01:43:16):
vocals were always so good. There was never a question
of having to do well. You know, we didn't think
about it because it wasn't the way that we worked.
As you mentioned, it happened a little bit later on.
I don't say Elton's vocals was so great. I remember
him saying to me one time round about the Yellow
Brick Road period. Oh my god, he said, I hate
my vocals on on mad Man across the Water. They

(01:43:39):
drive me fucking crazy. And I'm going what I said,
They're so amazing because they're so young, they're so you
they're just unbelievable. They're vulnerable, but they have that sound.
That's why people like you man, So so we carry
on with all that, and really the comping thing didn't

(01:44:01):
really start to happen until the early eighties when we
did the Chris Thomas records, because he had already started
working that way with Chrissy Hyend and Pete Townsend on
his solo album and stuff like that. So Chris was
versed in that and Alton wasn't. He thought that was
a great idea. Why not? And he still did a
couple of vocals where most of it he had and

(01:44:23):
they just do a quick comp to get certain things
here and there. But um, I've most of the things
that I've been experienced when I've experienced Alton doing a
vocal bar one when need to don the Sun go
down to me? That was an interesting one. Well that
was nineteen seventy three. But he threw the wobbler of

(01:44:45):
all time during that vocal m He literally was so
frustrated and kept thinking that it sounded like shit that
he it was like, fuck, bas I don't want to
do this anymore. Said it to Anger Hunk, and if
j doesn't like it, said it to Lulu and we
were cracking up, obviously because it was funny what he
was saying, I mean, he's very funny guys, you know,

(01:45:08):
And he wasn't laughing. He was deadly serious. He said,
I hate this. I don't want if this vocal goes
on the album, I'm gonna fire everybody. I mean. It
was one of they say, you know. And of course
when he heard it the next day, it was like, oh,
that sounds pretty good. And you know, but for the
most part, doing vocals with Elton or a pleasure because

(01:45:30):
he is so good, I mean live, I never hear
him sing outitude an ever period. Okay, let's stay with
the album. You mentioned earlier All the Young Girls Love Alice.
That happens to be my favorite song on the album,
which people tend out to talk about but you were
doing for a while, but fare Well tour, tell me
about that track. Well, that was just a riot to do.

(01:45:54):
Again in our in our beatlesque way of working that
we developed, we were just into furthering all these different
sounds and having fun doing what we wanted to do
and making up different sounds. When Elton had written Alice,
we loved the song straight away and I had this
idea around the riff that actually the riff was his

(01:46:17):
piano riff. I didn't invent the riff, the actual damped
vamp little dirt. It's actually a piano lick, God bless him.
And I learned to on guitar and double it and
it was sounding great. And then I thought, oh, what
about if I used my Uni vibe on this, which
is a really cool pedal in those days where if
you floored the pedal it had this wonderful super wobble

(01:46:41):
effect like a fast Leslie cabinet or something wonderful hairy sound.
And I just added a bunch of crunch to it
through my own amplifier and used my volume pedal then
to bring the whole thing in out of nowhere, so
you don't hear anything until you hear this good invitation. Well,

(01:47:03):
I've been doing it for fifty years. But it was
such a blast to do because as soon as people
heard that, it was like, oh fuck, we love this.
And of course I double tracked it just to be
a show off. And yeah, it was just a riot, Bob,
because to have that much fun, it's almost not fair.

(01:47:24):
It shouldn't be allowed. You know. We were having so
much fun, you know, and it was serious work. We
knew that and we knew it had to be great
whatever it is what we do. But we were going
through this phase of it seemed like almost everything he
wrote and that we recorded together and the way that

(01:47:45):
we orchestrated things, we had this magic thing that was
going on that people loved. And I've heard so many
people talk about all the young Girls Love Alice and
like you, many people think that that is just such
a classic album, which whit is. But getting back to
what you said earlier, because of the amount of good

(01:48:09):
songs that were coming up, there were no songs that
we were recording that were sounding like B sides. For example,
usually when you're recording something, you have a few extra
tracks and Okay, that'll be a B side or whatever.
Nothing sounded like a B side on good By Yellowick Road.
So suddenly we had like fifteen sixteen tracks and we're going, well, Gus,

(01:48:33):
we're going it's got to be a double album then,
because now the first track on the album is going
to be half of the first side, so it's going
to have to be a double album. So that's when
it all became that's the target, and that's when the
running order became important. And Gus is actually a wizard
at that. He's great at doing sequencing a record, and

(01:48:56):
we knew what the beginning was going to be, but
we let him go with the rest of the sequence
sing pretty much and what about Saturday Nights all right? Well,
we knew that was going to probably, you know, annihilate
some people because of its aggression and the whole thing.
And wow, what fun that was for me to do

(01:49:18):
because on the basic track of that one, again it
was we had tried it to record that previously. The
song had been around for quite a while. He wrote
it back in when we tried to do an album
in Jamaica, and for one reason or another it didn't
pay off. I mean, the main reason was the studio

(01:49:40):
was just not possible. It just didn't have the ship
we needed to do a record down there. It was
just what it was. So we went back to the chateau.
So we knew the song in our head and I
already had an idea of about some intro parts and
how I would do, how would approach it. And Alton
was really Adam meant that there would be no piano

(01:50:01):
on it. He just loved what I was doing so much.
He said, I just want you to keep going. I
had another guitar at, another one out, another one. So
being a guitar player, as you probably saw, apart from
the bassic guitar, all the way through, suddenly there was like,
I think eight guitars on the intro, but by the
time we got to the solo section, there's like ten guitars,

(01:50:25):
and on the second half of the guitar solo there's
twelve guitars totally rocking out, all maxed out, you know.
In fact, one of the biggest sounds I got guitar
wise came from a little Fender Champ amplifier that many
people use as a practice amp. Well. I found that
by turning everything up to hell obviously and turning your

(01:50:48):
guitar up to hell, and then you got the sound
from Monster sound. I found out later that that's the
sound that John used John Lennon used on Revolution. I
found out when we were chatting one day about guitars,
and I was like, really, is it does I can
get it now because it's such an in your face

(01:51:08):
sound and it's so distorted it makes sense, you know.
So yeah, I had the best time with doing it,
and after i'd kind of done with all my guitar parts,
and then the slight part at the end of the solo.
I said, you gotta play piano on this. You got
you gotta do. Jerey Lewis, you gotta do Little Richard,

(01:51:29):
you know, do you somewhere on the track. So when
the pack piano first comes in at the beginning of
the chorus, it's not in for the first two verses. Obviously,
the first part of the song. It comes in that lisando.
As it comes in, it's like, all right, it's a
Nott John song. And then it really makes sense. But

(01:51:50):
it was such fun to record. And he always talks
about him dancing around the studio when we were cutting
the track, and it's true he did. He had a long,
long micro phone chord because nothing was wireless in those days,
and he was right, you know, jumping over instruments and
amplifiers and cabinets and come on, you fuckers. He was
shutting recording this track. But it all worked. You know,

(01:52:15):
the aggression certainly paid off on that track. It comes
out you know what that is as soon as it starts,
and again, you know, we played the shit out of
that and thanks to Gus and the engineers and the
way that we were working at that point. We were
just doing whatever, and everything was on hell. You know,
all the settings were on hell. So the next album

(01:52:38):
is Cariboo. Cut it the Ranch and niter Land, Colorado
with a high altitude. How did you end up cutting there?
And what was it like with the altitude, etc. Bob,
you know what, you asked the best questions. I knew
this would be a long chat we have today. Caribou.
The plan to go there was because simply we'd run

(01:53:00):
out of residential places and the chateau was getting old.
As we mentioned, it was starting to get a bit
rough around the edges. We just wanted somewhere a bit different.
We tried Jamaica. It was a kind of a letdown.
We'd heard about Carbo Ranch because of Joe Walsh's album Barnstorm,
and I'm a huge Joe Waltz fan and a buddy

(01:53:22):
of Joe, and I adore him. He's just a great,
great player and a great man. And we heard that
album and me and especially me and Elton were just like,
oh my god, listen to these silence, listen to the
guitar sounds, you know. So we decided to go to
Carbo because it was a great sounding studio. What came
out of there sounding great. So we made the trip

(01:53:43):
in January, that's our usual time to go and make
a new album. That became our time, and off we
went January, not knowing how fucking cold it was going
to be there and snowbound. It was amazing beautiful, and
we each had a log cabin to stay in, wonderful
beautiful log cabins, beautifully, you know, with um brass beds

(01:54:08):
and wonderful quilts and weighing nicer than the chateau. Luckily,
lots of snow gear, and there was snow plows up there.
In fact, the first day I arrived, I went looking
and walking around the property and ran into this guy
working on a snow plow, and it was Terry Cath
from Chicago, and we right and we became great friends

(01:54:32):
there and then, and it was just it took a
couple of days to get used to the studio there
because it was so different. There was no windows in it,
even though and it was a very large. The thing
about the chateau that was so special was that had
these floors ceiling windows and because you know, obviously giant
double thick windows because in the country, no, we didn't

(01:54:57):
have sound to really worry about. There was no other
outdoor sound. But Cariboo had no windows, so we were
back to that kind of a little bit claustrophobic studio vibe.
But it was a big room so that was okay.
The altitude really fucked with us straight away. We all
got kind of headaches and stuff and found that we

(01:55:18):
had to take aspir in the morning or something like that.
Nigel got hooked on oxygen. We all kind of did, actually,
but Nigel still has it on stage these days. That's
from Cariboo Ranch, believe it or not. And we found,
to our surprise that Elton was singing about another ton

(01:55:38):
and a half higher than he usually does, so that
when you listen to the songs of Caribou and Captain Fantastic,
which we recorded there also and the following album, he's
singing so high. It was very difficult for us to
reproduce that, you know, after the mid eighties, because he

(01:56:00):
couldn't sing that high anymore. He was done after his
throat issues. He couldn't get up there, so we had
to eventually scale everything down. So going back to that,
his vocals were wonderful, but incredibly high. You know, everything
was pitched really high. You might notice that the next
time you hear a track from that album. We loved

(01:56:22):
working there because we suddenly we made our own. The
only difference is we didn't have like a little breakfast
practice room. Everything was in the studio, So we just
have our breakfast in the lodge, all hang out there,
do our thing, go for a snowmobile, have a ride
and a horse, you know, do whatever you know, and
then go to the studio and start writing recording. There's

(01:56:46):
a track on there called on the first Caribou album
called I've Seen the Saucers, which is a very very
interesting song. I've always thought it was a it's a
great deep cut, but the one that not a lot
of another fans have really paid much attention to. I
don't think, but I really think it's quirky and a
lot a lot of fun. For that track, Ray Cooper

(01:57:09):
had the idea of using a water gong on it. Now,
Ray when he does things, he didn't never do anything
by halves. So Ray's gone was I don't know, ten
feet in diameter, and we had we've had that in
the studio It was hard enough getting in the studio.

(01:57:32):
Then we had to find a tank big enough to
drop the water going into because that's the idea. You
hold the gong suspended above the water and then you
slowly drop it in. So it goes from this gone
right the support studio. We almost drowned the studio. We
almost ruined it with and mold and shit. So but

(01:57:54):
the sound was great. The sound was great on that track.
So the next time you hear it, listen for the
water Gone okay and the Bitch's Back. Bitch's Back was special,
um because we wanted to do it was obviously going
to be a rock track, and Elton wrote it very
quickly and he said, I want, you know, I want

(01:58:17):
a really different intro, something really machine gun doing something different,
you know, And I went, okay, well that, so I
did the g tuning idea and came up with, um
what it was, which is essentially doing a bark or
they're going to did a little bit, a little bit,
a little bit bad about and do the inversions with
your first and third finger and sorry, your second and

(01:58:40):
third finger for all your guitar nuts out there. And
it's a great sound and the way I got that
sound was by plugging directly into the console, not through
an amplifier, so that sound has got a really high
end kind of fipip sound to it. It's that direct
sound to it. So we did two guitars like that,

(01:59:01):
and then I added a couple of heavier guitars later on.
We were always great for varying the textures of whatever
guitars we put on. We would make sure that there
was one was a bit different from the other, and
then if a lead guitar track, it was obviously from
the other four. So I'm the Bitch's back. Had the

(01:59:21):
two direct inject guitars doing the riff, then a couple
of overdriven guitars doing that, and then like a solo
sign guitar doing other pickup links. But again, a really
fun track to record, and we had Tar of Power
come up there for a few days to do some horns,
and so we had a built in sec solo with

(01:59:42):
Lenny and those guys up there. So it was awesome. Okay,
going to the next job, which you referenced earlier, Captain Fantastic,
which is also cut in Caribou Ranch. There's a lot
to dig in there, so maybe leave that for another time.
But I'm only going to ask you because your memory
is so damn good. My favorite track on that is
tell Me when the whistle Blows. Remember anything on that? Oh? Absolutely,

(02:00:07):
What a great song and what a different song. Because
it's such a unique song. We all thought right from
the off, it's got to be a really different treatment,
different from the way that we'd play anything else. We
were going for a real, a real soul blues type
of thing, and the idea was to cut it with

(02:00:30):
electric piano, so none of that melodic pianos, regular acoustic
piano stuff, really nice dark electric piano sound. D's bass
and Nigel Strump's really cut it like that, leave it sparse,
and then later I would overdub some guitar lines. And
that's exactly the way we did it. The idea from

(02:00:52):
my guitar sound. I kind of stole a couple of
tricks from a couple of other guitar players. I stole
an idea from Steven Stills about using the bass pick
pick up on your guitar and taking all the travel
off that pickup so that it's really round sounding and
really cool. And I stole a couple of David Gilmore

(02:01:17):
ideas with the way he kind of approaches notes so
that you'd hear all the inflection of just one guitar,
not a whole bunch of instruments, and so it was
a very style. It was our most stylized track we've
done up to that point, I think. And then we
asked Gene Paige to do the orchestral arrangement because we

(02:01:39):
loved what he was doing with that Philadelphia soul sound
and his stuff was just off the charts. It was
so cool and at first, in fact, when we first
when we heard it, none of us liked it. We
heard it, but it was so fucking weird that when
we heard it as far as it was like, really,
oh my god, that's a bit cheese, and then there's

(02:02:00):
a there's this, But then you know, the more we
heard it, he was like, Okay, got it because he's
a really special was a very special arranger. Okay. The
album after that also cut in uh Colorado Rock of
the West. He's one of my two favorite tracks on

(02:02:22):
that you actually have a writing credit which has grows
some funk of your own. What happens there? Well, well,
that song I love on the album The way the
track comes in after Island Girl, because it follows Island Girl,
which is the Puppy first hit. I think off the record,

(02:02:43):
the way it grows some funk comes in couldn't have
been more exact the way I imagine it when we
wrote it. We wrote it the night before and Elton's room.
We were screwing around writing. We wrote a couple of
songs in His and His Lug happen that week, three
songs in fact. But Gross and Funk happened after we'd

(02:03:05):
written the song which is the opening song on the album,
the medley, Yell Help Um, And that was purely my
idea from I was listening to a lot of Jjkle
stuff back then, and I was based in my rhythm
ideas for that song on that. But Gross and Funk
was much more of a Okay, here's a great rock riff,

(02:03:29):
but what about changing the key so that starts off
with a slamming rock driff and then goes into a
two part harmony guitar line. Down damn down, Dada da.
So it was like, oh, yeah, this is gonna work
because Caleb and I were doing two guitar parts, and

(02:03:49):
then later on in the song, Ray Cooper was able
to use the vibes in such a way, the Eddie
Kendrick's vibe at the end of the song. You know,
the musicians we add in that band allowed us to
do some great things on that album. Apart from Caleb
and Me doing the guitars, which you were really astounding
on a lot of that record. But James as keyboard,

(02:04:11):
James Newton Harder's keyboard on the album is fucking unbelievable.
James and I have always really worked well together and
had a lot of fun together. Yeah, so it's all
been so much fun. I think you grow some funk.
I believe Kicky and I did some background vocals on
that song as well. Okay, the next album is Blue

(02:04:32):
Moves in the fall of seventy six. This is simultaneous
with Elton coming out as gay, which is not a
big deal today. I think it's been over emphasized. I
don't think it really was as big a deal as
they said back then. But the album was not as successful.
Sorry seems to be the hardest word. Ended up being

(02:04:54):
a huge hit. Did you get a bittersweet vibe from
the reception and what was going on there? Yeah, to me,
even when we were recording the album. There's some great
stuff on it, no doubt, absolutely no doubt. But as
it went on to me, it was a little it

(02:05:21):
was almost like diluted. It was almost like fresh orangues.
It's been diluted. Suddenly it became not what I remembered
it being. And it wasn't because suddenly there was seven
people in the studio instead of four, you know, or
five when Ray would be a part of the band
as well. It was more than that. It was like,

(02:05:45):
hold on, how many people were in that band? Shit
to Elton, myself, Ray Rogier, Pope, Caleb Quay, Kenny Passarelli,
James S. Newton heard Roger Pope? Is that right? Roo?
So yeah, seven people a lot of people. It's a lot,
a lot more ideas. And I think Alton was being

(02:06:06):
extremely generous in suggesting that we write some songs it.
It was so very very kind of him in that way.
It kind of in a booknd to what we were
talking about earlier about about if people think they should
get a piece of a certain song on this record.
I feel that Alton was more bringing us in that

(02:06:28):
particular band into songwriting, which was a very generous thing
to do for any artist or any musician, I feel,
and I don't think it hurts the record in that
the way the record turned out, because it turned out
to be a much more to me, a much more
sober collection of songs than anything we'd come up with before.

(02:06:50):
Things that didn't quite make sense to me. To me,
it wasn't cohesive as cohesive any of the albums that
we've done previously. That's again chefs my personal opinion. I
have no idea how the rest of the guys feel
about it. And I think that the album cover and
the packaging kind of the album covered that is the
insert and the picture was kind of happy, and that

(02:07:12):
was fine, But the album itself all being blue with
that Patrick Proctor painting, it was fine, and I guess
it's what they wanted to do at the time, and
it was very artsy, but maybe for me I thought
it was a little too artsy. Okay, do you realize
the end is coming? After that album? Elton breaks up

(02:07:36):
the band? You're on your own? Did you see that coming?
And what did you feel when that happened. I did
see it coming. I didn't know what was coming after it.
I did see an end to the thing, and we'd
talked a little bit about stuff and because of his

(02:07:57):
health mainly and the amount of work we were having
to do to tour with all the product that was
out there and the demand to see Elton and the band,
and it was phenomenal. It was a wonderful time. But
he was very, very straight up about it. He sat
the whole band down with Sean Reid, all of us together,

(02:08:18):
and he said, guys, I can't do this anymore. I'm done.
I have to dissolve the band because I don't know
what I'm going to do next. I just need time
for myself to recover from what we've been doing for
the last seven years or whatever I've been doing. I
need a break. I need to be me and find
myself and have rest, etcetera, etcetera. And he gave everybody

(02:08:41):
a really nice handoff to say, you know, you guys
have been amazing, and all the rest of it now
all down the line. For myself, the situation has always
been a little bit different. Elton's always been in touch
with me. I think the longest period when he didn't
call me was after what he decided to do another
band thing and I was already working with Alice Cooper

(02:09:05):
and then that segued into some work with Meat Love.
So I was already a very busy session guy, and
he wanted to work with with other I think he
wanted to work with other people. He had asked me
a couple of times about doing a couple of projects,
and I did a I think I played on one
of his solo records, A single Man. I played on

(02:09:27):
one track of that. So I've always been in touch
with him more than anybody else music wise, hence the
musical director kind of tag. But I did get up
in jam with a band that he had right before
we got back together in nineteen end of eighty one
beginning of eighty two. He had either a tour I

(02:09:47):
think that encompassed that Central Park gig that he did
where he wore the Many Mouse sorry not many Mouse,
Daisy Duck costume, Donald Duck costume. Right, he had Central
Park and back then he had d and Nigel back
in the band, but he had two other guitar players
he had Um I kind of Tim Rennick, I think,

(02:10:10):
and Richie Zero. I want to say that's my guests
UM and I think, I don't think Ray was even
in that that band and some background singers, three background
singers who I can't remember who they were, so it
was different, but it wasn't people who were owning the music.
I didn't feel I want to see it at the
Forum when when the show came through, and you know,

(02:10:32):
Elton said, well, why don't you get up on a song?
And I got up on bite your lip, get up
on dance and blew some some rock and slight guitar
and it was great good to see him see them
and do that again. But I could tell right then
he wasn't happy with what was going on then, and
if he was going to tour again, I could tell then.

(02:10:53):
It was almost like it's going to happen very soon.
And yeah, but I was just getting done with the
meat loaf thing. He hopped to call me and said,
I really think we should put the band back together.
It's so funny, Bob, because here in that phrase. I've
heard it done jokingly in so many sitcoms and different
things and used in different contexts. But when he said

(02:11:16):
I really think we should get the band back together,
I said, you're absolutely fucking right, we should. You know,
it was just okay, let's do it. And again we
went into Mark two and it went the same way. Okay,
when he does break up the brand, how much does
that fuck you up? How do you lift yourself off
the floor? Are you okay financially? What happens in that

(02:11:40):
interim before you start to work with Alice Cooper, etc. Well,
first of all, I started to do sessions with other people.
I started to work with other producers like Richard Perry,
robert A Pere, Bill Schnay because they again knew what

(02:12:02):
I did, and they would invite me to play on
their track and also artist occasional I would just say,
would you come and play on my record? I'd like
Alice Cooper and people like that. So I built up
some I was never really that short of work immediately
following Elton, and my intention at that point was, Okay,
well we're going into nineteen seventy seven. I just kind

(02:12:25):
of take some time for myself. So I went to
Tahiti for a month and almost didn't come home. I
fell in love with Bora Bora, absolutely loved it. Got
completely away from music and anything to do with touring
or anything, and really cleansed myself, you know, and and

(02:12:47):
we finally came back and slowly got back into life
in California, because I just started living in California. I'd
rented a place in Hollywood. And to be totally honest, Bob,
there was also an awful lot of the rock star
thing coming creeping into my my life. Then when I

(02:13:09):
say the rock star thing, what I mean is dangerous
amounts of alcohol and drugs and women started to creep
into the picture. And it began to get very very
dodgy and scary. Quite frankly, Um, I managed to come
through the other end, but not through, you know, not
from a lot of bumps and bruises and and and

(02:13:31):
you know, potholes, false starts and what have you. You know,
as as we all do, as life, as life takes us,
it can't all be up, you know, it certainly can't
all be up. And I had a great time. I
got to tell you, I went on for like a
couple of years of really having a good time. I

(02:13:53):
put it this way, I thought it was having a
good time. Um. Although the parties were quite legendary amongst
the people who who came and enjoyed them for a
couple of years, but like any other person in that situation,
when you're hosting that kind of event on a regular basis,
you suddenly wake up and go, well, either you don't
wake up, or you wake up and say, you know what,

(02:14:14):
everybody's around my house? I think what happened? What really
shook me up? One night, it was about three four
in the morning when a dear friend of mine happened
to be Lowell. George May rest in peace. So I'd
dore little Feet, that one of my favorite things of
all time. And Richie and Lowell and those guys would

(02:14:35):
hang out at the house as well. So they were
into notorious, notoriously into various forms of you know, stuff,
and so they'd be they'd be fixtures in the house.
But I was fast asleep on it, and it was
about four in the morning, and it was Lowell's wife
banging on the door, wanting to come in and party,

(02:14:56):
you know, and those kind of things. That kind of
thing already happening, and people like Oliver Read the actor
showing up. I don't know all of her fucking read
and he shows up in my house, and you know,
it was just bizarre. And I suddenly thought, all right,
I'm gonna have to get again, a little bit of respectability,

(02:15:21):
get that into my life. And I figured the best
way to do that was to get married and have
some kids. And that's what happened with my second marriage
and had two wonderful children. Rosa my wife at that
time I met. She was a dancer with Alice Cooper's band.
When I went to work with Alice, so you know,

(02:15:44):
mister rockstar picks up the dancer. And the tour was
Rose my wife at that time, and Cheryl Cooper, Alice's wife,
with the two female dancers, and there were two gay guys,
and you know, that period was it was kind of
interesting because working with Id segued into working with Alice,

(02:16:05):
and it was so much fun. It was just hilarious.
And Alice is still a dear friend to this day
and his wife, Cheryl. That marriage at that time wasn't
to be. It really was what I had mentioned to you.
It seemed to be like a way of me gaining
some kinds of respectability, responsibility also, but it didn't pan out.

(02:16:29):
I just wasn't willing to stop my ways, my rock
star ways, and I wasn't certainly wasn't ready the quick
touring when Elton when the band came back together, So
really that second marriage was doomed. And what about getting clean,
because Elton famously got clean. Yeah, I thought it was

(02:16:49):
amazing when I was so proud of him when he
got clean. Of course, like many, like many alcoholics and
drug addicts, you know, it wasn't for me that time.
When I saw him do it, I thought, it's so
great he's doing it, and I was so happy for him.
I was having a wonderful period of time because I

(02:17:10):
just met my wife, my present wife, Kay back then
in nineteen eighty nine, and he got sober in nineteen
ninety so it was the perfect timing for me to
have this year getting to know my new wife. Oh,
we weren't married at that point. We were together for
the first two years, had a baby, and then we
married in ninety two. But it was a wonderful time

(02:17:32):
to have a vacation, really start enjoying family. This this
woman I was in love with, and suddenly I thought,
that's it. I found the right combination for me and
you know, for her, I think. And we had a
beautiful baby and we decided to travel everywhere together and
that's what we did. There was still a lot of

(02:17:53):
party in going on, mainly drinking because the Danes are
probably as big drinkers as the Scots, and I wasn't
ready to stop drinking, definitely not. And ten years of that,
my wife and I was still very much in love.
But when we lost our son in two thousand and one,

(02:18:15):
that was such a jolt. Obviously it sounds like a
very weak way of putting it, but it shook me
to the core, obviously. But I didn't stop drinking for
another seven years after that because I was I think
I was on a course to killing myself. Nothing mattered.

(02:18:38):
I didn't matter if I was around or not, and
I was still when I got back to working. The
band were always very you know, Elton was great. He
was very supportive all the way through it. I mean
he supported me in more ways than I can tell you,
and the band were kind to me. It was difficult
because you know, I went back. It was right in

(02:18:59):
the middle of the Billy Joe whole thing that I
lost my son and saw that going back after four
or five months of being away in dealing with that
grief was really difficult. It was really hard, and you know,
I found myself getting into antidepressions and stuff like that,
which didn't help with the drinking. So I wasn't stopping

(02:19:21):
any of it until the fall of two thousand and nine.
And with Elton, he invited me back to his place
where we're doing in the middle of a tour, and
occasionally over the years he'd invite me back for a
few days and we'd hang out and you know, listen
to music and do you know whatever, have dinners and

(02:19:43):
just have fun, and to inviting me back after while
we're on tour in two thousand and nine and the fall,
and he sat me down at breakfast one day. He
just comes down for breakfast and we're having like bald
eggs and toast and marmalade and cups teen we're chatting
away and he just turned to him and he said,

(02:20:04):
you know, I think you should do something about your
drinking and your drugs and stuff. And my first I said, really,
I said, the drummer is much worse than me. He said,
I'm not talking about the fucking drummer. I'm talking about you.
So right there was a wonderful nudge from one of

(02:20:26):
my dearest friends of all time telling me you better
sort this out. It's time. So he got me on
that path and from there I met several people who
have been so helpful. And the people I've met in
that program have just been so unbelievable. And yeah, I

(02:20:47):
have not a drinks since two thousand November two thousand
and nine or thirteen years, okay, over thirteen years. So
you went to AA or you went to rehab, or
you did it yourself. I've done both, Bob, for good reasons.
I did it myself first, and I was wonderful and

(02:21:09):
got it and got the whole thing and adored it.
And then some years later the beginning of this Farewell
tour actually and I was having an issue with pain
medication for neck and shoulder injuries. I've still go I'm
still going through thanks a lot of guitars. And I
decided to go to Eric Clapton's place, Crossroads, which I

(02:21:32):
had heard about from some friends. And I have a
dear friend in music Cares Harold On, who helped me
hook me up with that. And I decided at the
end of a leg of the tour, and I sat
down with Alton and said, look, in two weeks time,
I want to go and sort this out. And he
said I think that's awesome you're doing that so because
I you know, I was worried about the pain medication

(02:21:54):
and it never affected my drinking or anything like that,
but I was worried about other ways of not being sober.
And I went to Crossroads for a month, had the
best time I had, you know, wonderful counselors and therapists,
and came out of there free of everything. And freedom

(02:22:16):
is the is the key, Bob. In fact, that was
the That was the reading I've read this morning. It
was all about freedom. You know, when you have a
life where you feel free and you're not worried about anything,
you're not guilty about anything, you don't owe anybody anything,
you're not concerned about somebody saying your name, and you
turn around thinking, well, what the fuck is that? You know?
It's that's real freedom, and that's what I have nowadays. Okay,

(02:22:41):
you cut us an individual project in the seventies, you
put out an album last year. Did you ever have
a desire to be your own act or these are
just side things you had to get out of your system. Yes,
definitely sight things, you know. The opportunity here to do
my first solo record was when I just joined Elton

(02:23:04):
literally six months in to play with him. He said,
I love what you do. You've got to make you right.
I said, yeah, I do. I said it's not very
commercial what I write. He said, doesn't matter. He said,
I'm forming a record label and I'd love you to
be one of the artists on it. He said, I
have Kiki d I have a band called Long Dancer.
I'd like you to be one of the artists on it.
I said, I love tim. I'm very touched that I

(02:23:27):
get to make an album. So I got gusts to
produce it. Um. I really enjoyed doing it. I used
a lot of good friends like Joe and Armor Trading.
I got to play piano on a couple of tracks myself,
which was fun. I used Dudley Moore's drummer on a
few tracks. I was able to use d and Nagel

(02:23:48):
on a few tracks. I just and I used Elton
on the opening track on the record, which was really
great fun and but it was definitely not out of
commercial venture and but one that many many people mentioned
how much they enjoyed the music on it over the years,
and I'm grateful for that. It never got slammed because

(02:24:08):
I don't think a lot of people heard it, quite frankly,
but the people who did hear it seemed to love it.
So fast forward almost fifty years to COVID and I'm
sitting it home, thinking, wow, I'm going to be home
for a while. This might be a good time for
me to write some music and enjoy early retirement, because

(02:24:29):
who knows what's going to happen. So that's exactly what happened,
except in this case what I've written something. I've got
some talented kids, Bob, I've told you that I would say.
There was one song I wrote it brings to mind.
You know why all started again. It's to do with

(02:24:50):
the Beatles, I suddenly thought, and I got the kids together,
Elliott the singer, Charlie the engineer, keyboard player. I said, guys,
why don't we just record a song. We're just sitting
at home here, nothing's going on, you know, let's wrest
record something together. And they said, okay. So I picked here,

(02:25:11):
there and everywhere. Well, just a great Beatles song, as
you well know. And we didn't copy the Beatles version,
but we did it in a way that was I
think beautiful, and we did it all up in Charlie's bedroom,
literally sitting on the bed doing it, and you know
it said the acoustic guitar part first, then the Mandolins,

(02:25:33):
then put some bass on it, and then I had
Elliott sang on it, and then Charlie put some keyboard
on it. This is the way we did the whole record. Really. Obviously,
as I started to write more, I started to concentrate
more on the guitar aspect because I was writing a
thing that was more my kind of record. And Yeah,

(02:25:54):
what came out was just a really enjoyable collection of
songs I feel, and Elliott sang lead on almost all
of them. I sung the vocal on one and I
did two instrumentals, and it was just a joyous thing
to do this stuff with my children. And the studio

(02:26:14):
that I'm in right now belongs to my friend Marlin Hoffman,
who's sitting next door, I think, eavesdropping, And we did
the whole thing in the studio which is Marlin's home studio. Okay,
what is one thing people don't know about Elton or
a misconception? Quite a lot of thing that Elton doesn't

(02:26:40):
remember about Elton. Elton makes a really good cup of tea.
Once in the studio in Book Studios, another residential place
in Denmark, who were making a record called Sleeping with
the Past, and I was doing a guitar overdub and

(02:27:02):
he came over to me, came into the room where
I was, had my amplifier and my guitar and put
a cup of tea down and I said, oh, thanks, Helton,
and I carried on doing the soul or whatever it
was I was doing. How to drink of the tea
A few seconds later, put my guitar down, put the
headphones down, and went out of the studio to find him.

(02:27:24):
I said, Elton, this is the best cup of tea
I've ever had. I said, how would you know how
to make the tea that I love? He said, Davy,
I've known you for like sixteen years already, surely i'd
know how to meet you a fucking cup of tea.
And there's another thing about album that people don't know
that I'll squeeze in. And it's another domestic fact about

(02:27:46):
our hero, Sir Elton. He and I went up on
we went up to see the Warner Brothers tour. It
was a rock and roll tour with little feet tier
of power Graham Central Station. This is in nineteen seventy
three in the fall, and what a tour. And we

(02:28:07):
were both little feet freaks. So he says, come on
jumping my rolls. We jumped in the rolls with his driver.
We took off up to Manchester. We checked into a
sleazy little hotel, had some Indian food and went to
see the concert, which blew our minds. We ended up
on stage with the Dubies and Lowell and all these

(02:28:28):
people and having a great time. And we ended up staying,
you know, hanging out partying with the band. And we
came back late lately. We probably got back to my
house in London about five in the morning. I opened
the door and again I've got a nanny. My wife's
away at that time, the first wife. There is a

(02:28:51):
disaster in the kitchen, my young son, Tam, who's only
just coming up for a year and no by this
time he's three. There's coffee, tea, milk, whatever you can find,
PORI jokes, everything all mashed up together on the floor.
And he's in the middle of the kitchen floor and

(02:29:13):
I walk in and he goes Da Hi and Alton.
We both look at it and he shrieks. Obviously he
doesn't like mess. And I said, oh man, I can't
believe this, and he said, look, you take take take
time upstairs and change him, clean him up, do what

(02:29:34):
you gotta do. I don't know what that is. I'll
clean up down here. This is Alton Joe. And I'm
taking my infant son, my three year olds down upstairs
to clean him up and bathe him. And I'm thinking,
Alton's a good guy. You know, he's downstairs cleaning my kitchen.
And I go downstairs and I swear it's fucking spotless.

(02:29:56):
So I don't know many other people who can claim
that to have something that Elton has done for them,
but a great cup of tea and a great kitchen cleaner.
Plus he's my buddy. Great stories. Let's say it really
is the end? Yeah, can you sit at home and
be retired? I mean, is that really an option for you? No?

(02:30:19):
I wanted at home and be retired. I would never
do that, Bob, I'm not. I'm not that guy at all.
I'll be I'll continue to make music forever. And I've
got a couple of things up my sleeve. One that
I've been working on for many years, just gathering slowly
gathering stuff for it, which is a documentary based on

(02:30:40):
the original band and the way this whole thing came together.
I mean, I'm talking about you know, Elton, Me, d
Nigel and then later on Ray and it's really coming
together and the stories are hilarious for the most part.
Obviously there's some deep other kinds of stuff going on

(02:31:01):
in there. You know, there's everything you could imagine. So
when this thing is over, I'm getting back to it
and probably take me about a year to finish, I
would imagine. So either the very end of next year
or the beginning of twenty twenty five, there'll be a
documentary and it's a tentatively titled Harmony. Okay, one other thing.

(02:31:26):
If you're not working, you playing the guitar every day,
you know what. Normally I don't because I wouldn't necessarily
pick up a guitar between tours because I just wanted
to get away from music. But I found that, especially
with COVID, as soon as I felt free enough and
loose enough to do something for myself, the daily playing

(02:31:51):
became fire against something that I haven't done for many,
many years. So that's a very very acute question you
asked me there, Bob, Because Yeah, I suddenly started to
enjoying it again. Because there wasn't a deadline. I didn't
have to worry about doing a certain thing, working a
new song, a song that we've done with Elton for
the band. It was just all about what I wanted
to do, and that's what I'm enjoying. I'm going to

(02:32:14):
enjoy getting back to well on that. No, Davy, this
is a natural point of demarcation before the band gets
back together, and so many things, and they're certainly you know,
you talk about sleeping with the past. I got a
lot of questions about that, but I think we're going
to bring it to an end for today. So I
want to thank you so much for spending this time

(02:32:36):
with my audience. I've enjoyed this so much, Bob, and
thank you so much for inviting me. Thanks for having
me on here. And I'll call Dave Page to thank
you for suggesting it. Oh listen great, I'm going to
contact Page two in any event, till next time. This
is Bob left Sex