New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Afan celebrates 50 years of Elton John’s music
Stephen Spignesi was 16 when he first heard an Elton John song, “Your Song,” on the radio. That moment changed his life.
The year was 1970. John had released his breakout album, “Elton John.” Spignesi ran out and bought it, then tracked down John’s first album, “Empty Sky,” from 1969.
“Elton was 21 when he began recording ‘Empty Sky.’ He was living at the Salvation Army.” Spignesi and coauthor Michael Lewis wrote this in their new book, “Elton John: Fifty Years On: The Complete Guide to the Musical Genius of Elton John and Bernie Taupin” (Post Hill Press).
“I heard him play piano and I thought: ‘Wow! I’d like to know how to do that,’” Spignesi said when we talked last Wednesday afternoon in the Community Room of the Hagaman Memorial Library in East Haven.
“Elton John taught me how to play the piano,” Spignesi wrote in his introduction to the book. “I learned, played and sang as many of Elton’s songs as I could handle as a selftaught piano player.”
Spignesi added that learning John’s fingering and riffs for “Tiny Dancer,” “Levon,” “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me,” “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word,” “Amoreena” and hundreds of other songs was “a master class in rock piano.”
But Spignesi told me: “I cheated! I used the sheet music. I’ve still got all of the songbooks.”
Spignesi got good enough on the piano to land bookings in clubs and restaurants in New Haven (500 Blake Street, Shawn’s) and up the shoreline circa 197375. His stage name was Stephen John.
“People came up and said to me: ‘Oh, you’re ripping off Elton John with that name! You’re trying to copy him.’ I said: ‘No! I swear, my name’s Stephen John Spignesi. All I did was drop my last name.’”
“It was just me at the piano and a mic,” he recalled. “I did Elton, the Beatles, Billy Joel. But I had to stop it. I was playing Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights from 9 to 1 or 2 a.m. It was too exhausting. Then I caught a cold and completely lost my voice. I thought, ‘If my vocal cords are so inflamed that I can’t speak, that’s a message.’”
Spignesi then turned to writing books for a living. He has written and gotten
published more than 60 of them, including works on Stephen King, Robin Williams, the Beatles, “The Andy Griffith Show” and the Titanic. He taught courses on some of these subjects for 10 years at the University of New Haven.
Spignesi knew this would be a prime time to write a book about John. The movie “Rocketman” came out last May, John is amidst a three or fouryear “farewell tour” and two weeks ago he issued his autobiography, “Me.” (Spignesi shocked me by saying he hasn’t yet read it; he said he’s too busy promoting his own book.)
“I did it because it’s the end of an era,” Spignesi said. “He hasn’t done an album since ‘Wonderful Crazy Night’ in 2016. Then he started this farewell tour that was supposed to finally end this November. But I just heard he’s added five shows for next April. So this seemed like a good point of closure. It’s his 50year anniversary.”
Spignesi decided to invite his friend Lewis to cowrite the book, knowing Lewis is also a huge John fan. A New Jersey resident, he cowrote “The 100 Best Beatles Songs,” another joint effort with Spignesi, along with books on Harrison Ford, Tom Hanks, etc.
Spignesi also brought in some of his other friends who are John enthusiasts to write essays about him. These make up the second half of the book, following a songbysong listing from all 30 albums, with concise information and analysis.
“It’s a fan’s book,” Spignesi said. “I do talk about the music: the chords, the melodic patterns. But I didn’t want it to be an analytical book.”
Instead, Spignesi wanted to say to the reader: “Let me tell you about ‘Your Song.’ Bernie wrote it when he was 17 and Elton was 20. He wrote the music to the lyrics in 15 minutes! He said in a documentary: ‘It was 15 minutes well spent.’ You think?”
And so yes, the scene in “Rocketman” showing how quickly “Your Song” came together is accurate. Spignesi noted fans had kept asking Taupin, “When you say ‘I sat on the roof and kicked off the moss,’ what roof was it?” Taupin finally told them: “I wrote it at Elton’s mom’s kitchen table!”
In the book, Spignesi quotes Taupin saying he was “a 17yearold virgin” when he wrote that song.
When I asked Spiginesi how successful John would have been without his lyricist, he noted John had a middle period when he didn’t use Taupin’s songs. Spignesi said the other lyricists were fine but there was nothing at the level of “Levon” or “Rocketman.”
“The artistic sensibility of Bernie and Elton melded in a way that’s very LennonMcCartneyesque,” he said. “Elton and Bernie clicked like that from the beginning. According to everything I’ve read, they’ve never had an argument.”
Spignesi is wondering whether we’ll ever hear another TaupinJohn collaboration. “When Elton gets back home in 2020, will he go back in the studio? Is Bernie writing? We don’t know.”
But he said he can hardly blame John for wanting to stop touring and be home with his husband and their two young sons after all these years of so many shows. “He’s 72. He has worked his entire life incredibly hard.”
Spignesi loves it that for 50 years John kept performing, kept recording albums for almost that entire span and still took on new projects such as writing his memoir. Spignesi told me this taught him “the importance of nurturing one’s creativity and to never stop creating.” He noted that while Joel remains a major artist who is still performing, he hasn’t recorded a new album in many years.
When I asked Spignesi how many John concerts he has attended, he again floored me with his response: one.
“I saw him at Madison Square Garden during his 1974 tour. When the show opened, he was lying prone on the piano as the opening synthesizer of ‘Funeral For A Friend’ played in the background. Then he leaps up and starts the show! I never forgot it. And I’ve never seen him since. I don’t go to concerts. I would rather watch a video of him where I can see him playing instead of standing in an ocean of people, hearing it come out of the speakers.”
What is Spignesi’s favorite John album? “Madman Across the Water,” because it’s got “Tiny Dancer” (“the greatest piano ballad ever written!”) as well as “Levon” and another fine ballad, “Goodbye.”
John’s greatest rocker? “The Bitch Is Back.” Runnerup: “Saturday Night’s Alright (for Fighting).”
Spegnesi’s choice for favorite John ballad is “American Triangle,” a haunting reflection on the death of Matthew Shepard in 1998. He was the gay college student who was tortured and left to die, tied to a fence post in Wyoming.
“It’s unbelievably moving,” Spignesi said of that song. “Some of Bernie’s best lyrics and the music is Elton at his peak. It’s a magnificent work of art.”
Indeed, Spignesi said “American Triangle” is his favorite John song of all time. Runnersup: “Your Song” and “Someone Saved My life Tonight.” (I learned in Spignesi’s book that the latter song is about John attempting suicide.)
Spignesi said “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” and “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” are “beautiful piano pieces” that draw on John’s classical music training.
But “Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” holds a special place in Spignesi’s heart. He wants it to be played at his own funeral.