Tom Dunne: I'm delighted to add Elton John to my 'late career triumph' list
Elton John's new album features brilliant contributions from Brandi Carlile. Picture: Cindy Ord/Getty Images for SiriusXM.
I seem to be writing of lot of “Late Career Triumph” articles these days. Leonard Cohen, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan come on down. Artists making music at a point in their careers when conventional wisdom says they should be past it. But these days, such wisdom seems anything but wise.
Elton John’s new album, is the latest. It is another “late career triumph”. It features Brandi Carlile although ‘features” might be too small a word for her part in this magic. She is a bright spark here and one which ignites something in Elton we thought long dead.
But that I suppose is the nature of great talents. When they have burnt with such fierce intensity once it never really dies out completely. And that is what is so beguiling here, when you see it harnessed afresh, teased back into life.
He thinks it’s his best work since and I wouldn’t bet against that. Why Elton has sought to put himself under such pressure to produce this album is hard to understand. His Glastonbury appearance appeared to set him up for the perfect career ending, and with his health slipping, who’d have blamed him.
But he wasn’t ready to go. Elton wanted one more challenge, to push himself, take himself out of his comfort zone and see where it went. To say it worked is an understatement.
But why Brandi Carlile? She had been a lifelong fan. She told a story recently of how her first album was a cassette of School bullies stole it and destroyed it.
“But I’m writing this from a bedroom in Elton’s house,” she wrote, “so I guess you can say I had the last laugh!” Elton was initially a fan of her T Bone Burnett-produced 2007 album In 2009 she wrote to him asking him to perform on a song of hers called Caroline, which he accepted.
But it was her 2018 album that sealed the deal. He invited her to join him on his radio show and the chemistry was palpable. “You are exactly the kind of artist I love,” he told her, “Someone with something to say and the power to say it.” And now here we are. Brandi Carlile invited into the songwriting room to contribute as an equal partner in a relationship – that of he and Bernie Taupin- that has been producing some of the most successful music of the 20th century for over 50 years. The team that wrote and accepting a relative novice at the table.
What’s equally striking is how little Elton John there is on certain tracks. and are almost Carlile solo efforts, but that is just another of John’s great gifts: his willingness to step back, give the song what it needs and do nothing more.
He learned this during his long career as a session piano player in the late 1960s. It’s an essential gift in a collaboration, not feeling you need to add something if what you hear seems already perfect. It was a key strength too in the partnership of Lennon and McCartney.
But when John does step up it is vintage Elton. The opening track, has echoes of epic That was imperial era Elton, a 10-minute mission statement of power and confidence. For him to re-capture some of that imperious power a lifetime later, is jaw dropping.
You sense in Elton’s interviews about this album a certain frustration. He has lived a life of incredible highs – just google some of 1970’s stadium tours to capture but a taste – and must feel the diminution of those powers all the more keenly He talks of the guests he brings into his radio show, many of them Irish - Kneecap, Fontaines DC - and how he wanted to capture a little of what it is they still have, that energy, that power, that youth.
Time and the passage of time looms large here. Elton knows he is 76, has spoken recently of losing his sight, and knows there won’t be too many more days of the type he had once grown accustomed to. You suspect he wanted to confront that but needed a foil. Carlile has somehow occupied that space, with sensitivity and wit. Stunning work.
