Elton John & Lana Del Rey

Pop’s most enigmatic star visits her idol at his Beverly Hills home for a conversation about meditation, Seventies L.A., songwriting, and why the best persona is none at all

Lana del rey is sitting across from Elton John in the kitchen of his Beverly Hills home, where she’s about to talk with her musical hero. But there’s a problem. “Wait a minute, my notes!” she says. “I have 13 pages! Where is my purse?” Elton calls for his staff to help, but Del Rey jumps out of her chair and heads outside to her pickup truck, a black Chevy Colorado with a broken headlight. A couple of minutes later, she returns with a stapled stack of pages.

Del Rey is one of music’s most enigmatic stars, someone whose presence can intimidate even other artists. (“I love Lana,” Billie Eilish recently told Howard Stern. “Around her I just turn into a little, floppy, baby child.”) But there’s no evidence of that mysterious persona today — Del Rey is excited, funny, and maybe a little nervous. “All right!” Elton says as she first walks through the doors of his surprisingly cozy home, full of pop art, with a zebra-print rug and mirrored walls. “I’ve been listening to your album all morning,” he tells her as they hug. “It’s really great. Number Three on Billboard, 108,000 copies sold. Way to go!” Del Rey erupts. “Oh, my God, you know my statistics,” she says, laughing. “Oh,” Elton says, “I know everything.”

Elton is talking about Norman Fucking Rockwell!, Del Rey’s fifth album. After eight years living in New York, she moved to L.A. and started working with producer Jack Antonoff. It radically changed her sound. Del Rey carves out her own darkly alluring vision of the California dream as she sings about listening to Crosby, Stills, and Nash at house parties and falling for a “self-loathing poet, resident Lauren Canyon know-it-all.” Elton says that her new album reminds him of the era when he first came to Los Angeles, in 1970: “You drove around in a convertible, and you listened to Joni Mitchell and

you listened to Jackson Browne and James Taylor, and it was just a magical time.”

Elton recalls that period in his new autobiography, Me, where he chronicles his journey — from his difficult childhood to addiction struggles, with behind-the-scenes stories about everyone from Princess Diana to Elvis. “I thought, ‘I’m never going to remember anything,’ Elton says. “But once you open that can of worms, it all starts coming out.” He sees the book as a companion to two other retrospective projects: the 2019 film musical Rocketman, and his three-year Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour, which may end up being one of the highest-grossing tours of all time. He played yesterday in Anaheim, California, and has another show there tonight. “I’m really enjoying it,” he says. “If I wasn’t, it would be an awful long way to go without enjoying something. There’s something about the American audiences. They’re more effusive. More stoned.”

Before their interview begins, Elton excuses himself to change into a sparkling red, white, and blue tracksuit and bedazzled sunglasses — his preshow outfit. “Oh, you little cutie!” Lana says as he enters the kitchen. “Can I take a picture, just for my bedside table?” she asks. “Sure,” Elton says, sitting down, crossing his arms, and smirking for the camera. “I know it’s a little creepy,” Lana says, “but whatever.”

LANA I read your book. It reminds me of when I read Chronicles, by Bob Dylan, or The Mayor of MacDougal Street [by Dave Van Ronk], and I was like, “Oh, that’s how you do it. This is how I get from where I am to where I’m going.” It was fun to read because everybody always asks me, “Well, how do you do it?” And I’m like, “Well, you play everywhere for no money with anybody who asks you, and do anything you can.”

ELTON Exactly. And you love it, and you don’t care if you don’t have any money.

LANA You almost kind of like it.

ELTON When I look back on the days when I was getting 15 quid a week, playing all those shows, I don’t know how we managed to do it, but it was the most fun. I was just having the time of my life. I would have liked to have been in a more prestigious band. But when I did start to become successful, I drew on all those experiences. I was playing with people like Patti LaBelle and Major Lance. Watching them taught me so much. You have to have that bit of where you’re in the van, playing shit clubs. People who don’t go through that shit never appreciate what they get, and they fade away too soon.

LANA I agree.

ELTON But listen, you survived. You came through that awful thing in that Saturday Night Live [in 2012]. Which was so distressing for someone like me to see someone so crucified. I’ve watched it, and it wasn’t that bad!

LANA It wasn’t terrible!

ELTON It wasn’t terrible at all. I don’t know what the agenda was there, but where was the #MeToo movement there?

LANA Oh, you said it, not me!

ELTON That’s the first time I ever talked to you. I rang you up and said, “Listen, I just want to offer my help. I know you’re sober and everything, but just don’t take any notice of these people.” Most people, that would have flattened them forever. It was an outrageous assault.

LANA What’s weird is, it’s the one night in all my time performing that I wasn’t nervous. I remember the intention I had. Looking back, there was a more eccentric performative approach to it. I was thinking about Maria Callas, or someone darker coming through.

ELTON You were still a very, very young artist. I don’t think you should have been put in that position so early on in your career.

LANA What’s funny is, I was selling out arenas for a year before — that’s how the guy who runs it heard about me, because he thought, “This is strange. This girl is selling out arenas, and she has two songs.”

ELTON You recovered from that incredible shellacking. I’m sure it gave you a lot of trauma. But it also gave you incredible backbone. And I didn’t think it was a major fuck-up. I saw Ashlee Simpson and, yeah, that’s a major fuck-up. That’s funny. Not to her it isn’t, but it’s very funny to watch.

LANA I’m not laughing!

ELTON Anyway. With your record now, the thing I’ve noticed about Norman Rockwell is that it has such a flow. I don’t think you’ve ever made a record with such a flow to it. I was listening this morning. David came in and said, “This is the sort of record that you’re going to love forever.” I don’t think I’ve heard a record like this for so long. It has a mood. Why did you choose the title?

LANA It’s not something that I felt like was in my ether, or future, as a title. But I think Jack was sort of my Bernie [Taupin, Elton’s lyricist] in that situation. It’s not like I’m always trying to evaluate the state of the American dream, or my version of the white picket fence, but there was some kind of version of where we both felt the culture was.

ELTON Ironically, the music that you’ve created fits the image of a Norman Rockwell painting. You could have sung these songs in the Fifties. They’re kind of timeless songs. It’s the sort of record you could hear Sarah Vaughan singing, or Dinah Washington. They’re singer’s songs.

LANA Thank you so much. To the point where, being in rehearsals now, getting ready for these bigger shows, it’s almost a little stressful, because what I’ve written is so much of a different mood from what I’ve been playing live for, like, 10 years. I’m like, “I think I need to just do the whole show differently.”

ELTON You’re going to have to think about it. Because if you play a lot of these songs . . . Playing a live show, I always think, is a bit like having sex. You start quite raucous, and then you slow down, and then you build up to a climax.

LANA I start the opposite, for what it’s worth! [ Laughs] Slow burn!

ELTON How big is the band?

LANA It was a four-piece, it’s a three-piece now. And I’ve got two girls who do backup, and they do some Sixties girl-group movement stuff.

ELTON It’s almost tempting to do the whole album from start to finish.

LANA That might work better than trying to fit it in with some of the songs from 10 years ago.

ELTON I think some of those songs will fit in if you do it right. The mistake I made was when I played Wembley Stadium in 1975, I brought the Eagles to England for the first time. It was them, the Beach Boys, Chaka Khan. I played the Captain Fantastic record from start to finish live for the first time. And after the fifth song, you could hear people wanting to kill themselves.

LANA Oh, no!

ELTON It’s horrible. Then you get to song six and think, “I don’t want to be here anymore!” LANA Pull out the hits!

ELTON The record is also very simple. There’s hardly any arrangements at all. Piano, drums, and guitar. And some synths, here and there? And there’s a beautiful brass arrangement.

LANA I think that might have been the Mellotron. It almost sounds like a Spanish horn, but it’s not. We call it “the Norman sound.”

ELTON The Mellotron’s a greatly undervalued instrument. I’m so glad it’s had a renaissance. I grew up in an era when the Moody Blues introduced the Mellotron. There were no samples or anything like that. All I had was a Farfisa organ.

LANA I just saw them at the Bowl, the Moody Blues. They’re right up there for me. By the way, everybody waited for an hour and 40 minutes

Mystique is your greatest asset, because you don’t want people to know too much. I never do interviews anymore. You have what Prince had. Nobody knew the fuck what Prince was like.

—ELTON JOH N