Sir Elton opens up about what he does before and after a big show
It’s all about glitz, glamour and great music on stage but what happens backstage at an Elton John concert? The icon reveals his pre- and post-show routines, and how becoming a dad changed him.
Entertainment
Don't miss out on the headlines from Entertainment. Followed categories will be added to My News.
When Elton John walks off stage at AAMI Park tomorrow it will be the 50th time he has performed in Melbourne since his first show here in 1971 at Kooyong Stadium.
It will also be his final ever Melbourne concert.
Promoters and fans have been anxious since the superstar abandoned one Auckland show and postponed two more this week after being diagnosed with walking pneumonia.
The week break was designed to give John time to recover to finish his remaining seven Australian shows, which finish in Sydney on March 7.
The superstar’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour is a two-year global victory lap to conclude over 50 years as a touring artist.
Australia’s been a special place for Elton. During his frequent visits he’s recorded here (a 1987 live album with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra) and been a well-paid wedding singer for James and Jodhi Packer in 1999. Elton even got married here – to engineer Renate Blauel in Sydney on Valentine’s Day 1984. It didn’t last.
There’s been one constant friendship linking him to Australia — Molly Meldrum. The pair met in 1971, and their camp interviews would become legendary on Countdown.
Whenever he toured, Elton would visit Molly’s Richmond house – scene of his iconic 80s parties. One was held soon after he’d had a pool installed. The superstar took a glimpse at the new addition to the backyard and said “Nice spa. Where’s the pool?”
Sadly the pair fell out in 2012 when Channel 7 aired a quick catch-up gossip between the friends before the official interview began — where Elton slammed Madonna for slamming his good friend Lady Gaga.
Elton’s comments calling Madonna a “fairground stripper” went worldwide, much to Molly’s horror. He tried to clear the air, with no luck.
While Madonna forgave him and caught up with Meldrum at her Melbourne show in 2016, Elton carried a grudge. He even wrote about the incident in last year’s autobiography Me noting “You can tell from the footage that it wasn’t part of the interview, that I was just sounding off to an old friend between takes, but they broadcast it anyway, which brought that particular old friendship to a very swift conclusion. Still, I shouldn’t have said it.”
A new chapter was written in December when Molly picked up the phone and heard a familiar voice. “I thought someone was playing a trick, and he just went ‘It’s Elton you silly old queen’,” Meldrum laughs. “He invited me to the show and said he wanted to talk.”
Elton’s longtime Australian promoter, Michael Chugg, also a close friend of Meldrum, organised the private, backstage meeting for the pair to clear the air at Rod Laver Arena (a venue he played at for the 19th and final time over his career in December).
“Elton reached out to Molly, Molly came to the show, we sat them together, they had a good chat,” Chugg says. ”I don’t know what was said, nobody does, they were alone, neither of them are talking about it, nor should they. They were very happy afterwards. As we’ve been touring around we saw some of the old Countdown episodes, they did some incredible things together.”
Chugg is a veteran of the Australian music industry, who worked as a tour manager on ABBA’s 1977 tour before being one of the founders of Frontier (with Michael Gudinski) in 1979, then starting his own company in 2000.
He’s handled Elton’s Australian tours over that period, which have seen the superstar become restless with playing the same venues over and over – requesting Chugg put him in outdoor gigs, winery shows and to route tours in places he’d never been to before.
That policy has seen him play everywhere from Werribee to Wollongong, Launceston to Darwin and on this farewell jaunt as well as city dates his enormous production has been trucked to Bathurst, Rutherglen and Mount Cotton with shows to come in Coffs Harbour, Townsville and the Sunshine Coast before a final Australian show in Sydney on March 7.
He’s set to sell 530,000 tickets in Australia on this tour (which started in Perth on November 30), and will get to over 700,000 once all the New Zealand dates are concluded.
“It’s a huge grossing tour. This tour has gone to so many different parts of Australia, giving people the opportunity of a lifetime.”
Planning a three-month farewell tour has taken near military precision. The shows have been spread out — never more than two in a row – to give the 72 year old time to recover and also quality time with his family — husband David Furnish and sons Zachary, 9, and Elijah, 7, have been based in Sydney.
As he has done on all tours, Elton walks off stage and, if it’s a regional show, into a helicopter; if it’s a city show, into a car, and direct to an airport and a private jet back to Sydney to be home for when his sons wake up the next morning.
The music icon has told every audience at every show he’s quitting touring because he’s a late-in-life dad who wants to spend quality time with his sons while he can.
“I have a family now,” he said at his January 25 Hanging Rock gig.
“10 years ago I wouldn’t be sitting here saying this, but now I do. I need to be with them.”
Elton and family went home for Christmas and New Year – which luckily coincided with him performing at the Golden Globes in early January where his biopic Rocketman won two awards, including best song.
Elton flew back to Sydney and his next concert featured the Globes propped on the piano. WhenRocketman’s I’m Gonna Love Me Againwas nominated for Best Song at the Oscars, Chugg had to reschedule Auckland dates to factor in Elton flying to LA between shows on the New Zealand leg of his tour. Once again, he rejoined the tour with a new addition to his trophy cabinet; his first Oscar with longtime songwriting partner Bernie Taupin.
What does Elton John do on show day?
“He arrives at the venue, has a nap, prepares himself, talks to different crew and band members and hits the stage,” Chugg says.
Prior to his health derailing the Auckland shows (he’ll now return to New Zealand for two shows in January next year — the entire farewell tour was meant to end in London in December) the only glitch in the tour has been the Yarra Valley show on January 31, where extreme rain and wind saw Elton drenched, his piano short circuit and the concert axed after 96 minutes. Punters were heartbroken when the show could not be rescheduled due to that rigidly-planned schedule, and further disappointed when they were not eligible for refunds (promoters gave them the offer of tickets to three other shows at the same venue).
“We’ve had a lot of shows rained out,” Chugg said. “We’ve also played a lot of shows in the rain, but never anything that intense.”
There hasn’t been a lot of Elton sightings during his Australian visit. In November he went to the Sydney opening of Billy Elliot, the musical he wrote the score for (he wore a tutu on stage with the cast), and last month invited Tones And I, Winston Surfshirt and Amy Shark to his Sydney hotel to be interviewed for his Apple Music show Rocket Hour. He told Tones her hit Dance Monkey was “one of the great pop records of all time.”
In December a lookalike was snapped buying an ice-cream near Geelong, which local media reported as the superstar popping into a local establishing for a quick treat, which he paid for himself.
Apart from the fact he travelled to his gig in Geelong by helicopter and no doubt has a private chef if he feels like a soft serve, Elton John wouldn’t be seen dead in denim shorts.
“Elton in a f---ing ice-cream shop,” Chugg laughs. “That was amazing. There’s been some funny stuff happening on this tour. But the joy everyone is getting when you look at peoples’ faces during the show, and the wide age demographic it’s quite amazing. He crosses all the age groups like no other act I’ve ever seen.
“The shows have all been incredible. I know he’s loving them. And I know he’s been reading all the reviews, there hasn’t been a bad one.”
We even got a taste of the classic Elton tantrum at the February 1 show at Rochford Wines when he called a lighting operator a “turd” (one of his favourite insults) for not putting a spotlight on a band member as he introduced them, and throwing a water bottle after his microphone didn’t work.
MORE ENTERTAINMENT
METRO NIGHTCLUB FALLS TO THE WRECKING BALL
HIT MUSICAL BILLY ELLIOT LEAPS INTO MELBOURNE
HARRY SHEARER OPENS UP ABOUT TAP, SIMPSONS AND APU
Chugg reveals there were initial discussions about Elton playing the Sound Relief bushfire concerts before they got postponed (“there was talk about him doing it but we never got it to that point”) and the superstar donated $1 million to bushfire relief charities at a Sydney show.
At his first Hanging Rock show Elton ended his set wearing an oversized koala head as his nod to the events of our summer.
With seven more Australian shows left on the tour — all in outdoor venues — a nervous Chugg is on constant weather watch and hasn’t even had time to think about an end of tour party after the March 7 gig.
“I know it’s going to be emotional when it ends. I’ve already had a tear or two in different places. I certainly had a tear after f---ing Yarra Valley.
“Everyone is talking about the big let-down that is going to come after the last show. That’s pretty normal, you dedicate four months to a tour, you’re totally immersed in it and suddenly its gone, it can tend to have a little bit of a psychological effect I’m sure it’s going to have that. But there’s also going to be some brilliant memories.”