He was a coward. He didn’t have the guts to personally contact me My dad treated Elton like a son.. he couldn’t live with it when he turned on him. The court case cut his life short
PAIN OF MOGUL WHO MADE SINGER A STAR
IT IS just one short paragraph amid the controversies and colourful celebrity anecdotes which pepper Elton John’s long-awaited new autobiography. Most will skip by it. But to Stephen James, visibly moved as Elton’s words are read to him, it means the world – an apology of sorts over the star’s very public fall-out with his late father.
Stephen is the son of music publishing mogul Dick James, who first signed Elton when he was an “awkward, shy, shaking” kid aged just 20.
He was also a father figure to the young Reg Dwight, who had a strained relationship with his own distant dad – the confidant he turned to as he struggled to come to terms with his sexuality.
Yet, in 1985, Elton took him to court in a dispute over rights and royalties.
In the book, Elton said he “hated every minute” of the case but felt he had to go ahead because “the industry had to change the way it treated artists”.
Despite Dick’s attempts to reach out, Stephen said Elton would not personally discuss his gripes and once, he claims, cancelled a meeting just a few minutes before it was due to start.
The result of the case was mixed and the financial hit to the Dick James Music label was not as heavy as he feared.
But Dick, already in poor health after a heart bypass, was left distraught by what he saw as a betrayal from the man he’d “seen as a son”.
Less than three months later, he suffered a sudden heart attack and died, Stephen believes due to the stress.
And he claimed Elton only coldly sent his sympathies via his lawyer, never following with a card or flowers.
He added that the star has never apologised for the strain caused by the case – until the hint of recognition in his passage from Me: Elton John.
“I loved Dick”, writes Elton, conceding: “It was really ugly, really sad.
“That wasn’t how the story of Dick and I was supposed to end at all.”
For Stephen, the words are incredibly poignant – he just wishes now to hear them directly from the singer.
“My father couldn’t live with the fact Elton had turned on him,” he said, sitting in his office surrounded by the singer’s gold and platinum discs.
“There is no doubt in my mind he would have lived longer if it wasn’t for the stress of the court case.
“My mother told me afterwards, he just couldn’t come to terms with how Elton had attacked him.
“He keeled over and died and I got a message sent to me via Elton’s lawyer to say how sorry Elton was for our loss. But he made no personal contact. “He was a coward, he didn’t have the guts to personally contact me. “He could have written and said how sorry he was, ‘Sorry for your loss’. To get it via his lawyers was very hurtful. “If he’s kind and apologetic in the book, that means a lot to me. But to hear from him would help me move on.” Since the case, Stephen, who still works as a music publisher, has only seen Elton once, in a restaurant in the French Riviera city of Nice, four years ago. “I said hello, he said hello, and then as he left he put his hand on
STEPHEN JAMES ON ELTON’S REACTION TO DAD DICK’S DEATH
my shoulder,” he said. “A psychologist friend told me that might be a form of apology but he couldn’t actually verbally say sorry.
“I always felt he had trouble expressing his innermost feelings.
“Maybe he had a hard time after my father’s death feeling guilty.
“A letter or phone call would be nice, it would help me put it to rest.”
Dick and Stephen, who at 72 is just two months older than Elton, played instrumental roles in the creation of Elton John, yet feature little in Me.
Dick was also portrayed in Elton’s recent biopic Rocketman, produced by his husband, David Furnish.
He was played by Line of Duty actor Stephen Graham as a bad-tempered figure, much to Stephen’s horror.
The truth, he said, couldn’t have been more different.
Elton was 20 when he first came to the attention of DJM in 1967, after practising one evening in their recording studio without permission.
The bespectacled lad from Pinner, Middlesex, let in by a pal, was dragged in to see Stephen. “He comes in shaking like a leaf, very shy. Quite nervous, almost like being like he was being called to the teacher’s study,” Stephen recalled. Thankfully, young Reg’s recordings had caught Stephen’s ear.
The lyrics were bad but the compositions “interesting”, he said.
He took them to his dad and Dick told him to develop the unlikely star.
An advert was placed in the NME for a lyricist and a teenage Bernie Taupin sent in some poems.
He and Elton hit it off and have remained songwriting partners.
But as Stephen and Dick started working with the talented pair, they struggled to make a performer of the painfully shy Elton. Stephen recalled how his stage fright got so bad that some days he would not even get out of bed.
“He was shy, awkward, podgy, introvert,” he said.
“One occasion, when he was supposed to do a gig at Southampton University, he phoned at 10am screaming down the phone at me, ‘I’m not going... stuff your f ***** g gig’.
“I would say, ‘You will ruin your career before you get one if you get known as someone who cancels gigs’.
“It happened a few times, fear of going on stage and not going down well. I would send a girl in the office round to get him out of bed.”
But Elton was happier after accepting his sexuality and beginning a relationship with his manager, John Reid. Again, Stephen’s dad played a key role.
Stephen said: “Elton would come to the office and ask to see my father on his own and he would discuss with him, a bit like a father, his sexual problems. He was struggling with his sexuality, not sure which direction he was going in.”
In those days, the drink and drug problems which dogged Elton after he left DJM in 1976 to set up his own label weren’t overt. But Stephen suspected the star had begun to use.
“His behaviour was erratic, one moment being nice, the next extremely aggressive and abusive,” he said.
He added he is glad Elton appears to have finally found contentment with David and their two young sons.
“He needed the stability of a settled relationship, giving him the love he was craving,” Stephen said.
“I think he would be an extremely good dad,” he added.
“He wants to give them a life he doesn’t feel he was given as a child, with more affection and loving.”