Elton John: The Rolling Stone Interview

Below is an excerpt of an article that originally appeared in RS 141 from August 16, 1971. This issue and the rest of the Rolling Stone archives are available via Rolling Stone Plus, Rolling Stone's premium subscription plan. If you are already a subscriber, you can Click here to learn more about Rolling Stone Plus.

Bernie drove down from his cottage in Lincolnshire, where he lives with his wife, Maxine. We met Elton in the London offices of Rocket Records, his new label for promising artists.

As we walked to the chauffeured Rolls outside Rocket, Elton gazed in the direction of Oxford Street. " You know," he remembered, "when we were doing 'Empty Sky' [the first UK LP] we would get out onto Oxford Street at four in the morning and we'd be so excited we couldn't sleep, so we'd just sit in the Wimpy Bar and talk about the album. There was so much excitement in those days. We'd keep track of what albums would be coming into the import shops; when and if they were a day late we'd be crushed, our day ruined. But then if we were the first to get the new Jefferson Airplane, we'd feel on top of the world. Now we just get the American trades, tick off the new releases we want, and get them shipped over. So much magic has been lost."

When we reached the homestead, 'Hercules,' Bernie had already been there for 50 minutes, talking to the photographer about growing cabbages and sowing seeds. They hadn't discussed the recent US and UK Number One album, 'Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only the Piano Player,' so it seemed logical to start there.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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