Elton John

Inside The Actor's Studio(Sunday night on Bravo) has brought us up close and personal with over 200 actors and directors and a couple of music superstars. A couple years ago Billy Joel served up a two hour illustrated lecture on his life, song development and performance. It remains the best Inside The Actor’s Studio ever. Last night was Elton John’s turn and viewers were treated as Sir Elton walked from the interview chair to the piano more than a dozen times to accompany himself on several classics. For Elton John fans, and I am one, hearing him without the band, with just the piano was great. Elton was trained early on as a classicist but as he pointed out, and as one could clearly see, his hands are very small, too small for classical. Apparently, though, just right for rock and roll.
Host James Lipton as usual could hardly contain himself being in the presence of such a star. But then, he got pretty excited over Philip Seymour Hoffman. (All you need to know about James Lipton is that he’s 79 years old, dyes his hair and beard, wants to get a tattoo, and idolizes someone named Bernard Pivot. The most interesting thing about Lipton, who is occasionally parodied on SNL for his pretentious obsequiousness, is that he wrote a minor nonfiction classic called An Exhaltation of Larks which “restored to the world hundreds of group terms, from the familiar gaggle of geese, host of angels, bevy of beauties and pride of lions to the long-lost but equally authentic unkindness of ravens, murder of crows, etc.” Then he made up a bunch of clever group terms for his book such as, “ a slouch of models...an acre of dentists, a score of bachelors, a lurch of buses, a handful of gynecologists...” This book has been in print since 1968.
Sir Elton was open and honest in answering questions, as a knight should be. He detailed his addictions and his victory in overcoming them. And, he admitted that during the seventies and eighties, when under the influence of drugs, he was over the top costume-wise and needed a “clothing intervention.” Mr. John is still a bit deluded in this regard. He came out dressed in the most unstylish costume James Lipton had ever seen though shit might have melted in Lipton’s mouth before he would have ever commented on it. Elton John was wearing what looked to be a Punjabi-style long white shirt that came down to just above the knee. Over this he wore a blue blazer. This gave the appearance of jumping out of bed and putting on one’s jacket without first taking off pajamas. A bizarre and distracting costume choice.
As many know, Elton John writes the music and performs (and is thus the famous one) and a guy named  Bernie Taupin writes most of the lyrics. What we learned is that they don’t work in the same room and never have. Taupin hands John a lyric and Elton goes off by himself and composes. His talent is such that he gets most of his songs lined out in less than an hour. If this seemed unbelievable to hear Elton John decided to demonstrate his song writing ability to close the show. He asked if anyone had a book and one of the student actors brought up a  copy of Ibsen’s Per Gynt. Per Gynt is a challenge for a playgoer to watch (I failed after the first act), and would seem to be overwhelming to the songwriter. But Elton sat down at the piano, opened the book and laid the mike on it to keep it flat, took a look at the page and improvised a very musically compelling piece without pause. That’s the kind of talent that makes one famous for 35+ years.