Elton (Nearly) Gone… But Not Forgotten

In 1989, Molly Meldrum had a BBQ for Elton John at his house in Melbourne. Elton wrote on Molly’s wall:

Dear Molly,
So many years,
So many tears,
But so many great times.
Your friend Elton.
Love you.

As Elton does his 20th and final Australian tour, we remember the great times … and some of the tears.

Welcome to Australia

When Elton arrived for his first Australian tour in October 1971, he was greeted at the airport by two policemen who told him the badges he was wearing would be “damaging to our society”. One said, “Bitch, Bitch, Bitch”. Another was a zodiac sign featuring a sex position. Elton stuck a few band-aids over the badges and was then asked by customs officials if he smoked marijuana.

Madam Across The Water

While on his first tour, Elton wanted to hear a test pressing of his new album, Madman Across The Water. Bill Duff from Festival Records brought a copy to the Southern Cross Hotel in Melbourne. Elton shrieked when he saw it. Instead of “Madman Across The Water”, the label read “Madam Across The Water”. Elton loved it. He signed the record and gave it to Molly: To my darling Molly, with love Elsie Johns xxx

Now listen!

On his first Australian tour, Elton fell in love with Daddy Cool and Eagle Rock. He went home and wrote Crocodile Rock, which became his first US chart-topper. Elton’s lyricist, Bernie Taupin, can be seen wearing a “Daddy Cool” badge on the cover of Elton’s 1973 album Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only The Piano Player. Elton spoke about his love for Daddy Cool when he appeared on Countdown in 1975. “I thought that band was probably one of the most impressive bands I’d ever, ever heard. Eagle Rock is still one of my favourite tracks of all time. That tour, I went and bought 15 copies of Eagle Rock in a record shop in Sydney, took it back to England and gave it to all the disc jockeys there.”

The first fight with Molly

After his first Australian tour, Elton did an interview with an English music paper. “Everything [in Australia] is controversial, even Coronation Street,” he sniffed. “They have a sign flashing on the screen during the show: ‘Not suitable for children’. They are so archaic, and they hate the English, or at least the press hate us. We’re still ‘Limeys’ to them. My cousin lives there, and he had to accept the principles of a beer-drinking idiot to survive. It was a nightmare being there, but we’ll go back. Why not?

“New Zealand is nice, though,” Elton added. “It’s like England, years ago. It’s lovely and green, and the people are great. But Australia … the band had five days off in Adelaide, and they went mad with boredom.”

Molly was not happy. He wrote Elton an open letter in Go-Set: “So Australia was a nightmare, was it? And we’re terribly archaic and supposedly hate the English? Oh, Elton, don’t you think you’re exaggerating just a bit? Heavens forbid, we now have our own local telly series entitled Number 96, which makes the gang from Coronation Street look like a church choir.”

All was forgiven when Molly heard Elton’s Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only The Piano Player. “Believe me,” Molly wrote in Go-Set, “it is the best LP he’s EVER released. MAGNIFICENT is the word.”

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“I really had had enough of myself”

No international star appeared more often on Countdown. In a revealing chat at the end of 1977, Molly said interviewing Elton was like an annual event. “It’s like the Queen’s Speech, isn’t it?” Elton replied.

“I’m a horny little bastard”

Another tour, another fight with Molly. In 1979, Elton appeared on Countdown to celebrate the end of the decade. After the show, TV Scene ran an article headed “Elton-Molly Feud?” It started: “Did Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum and Elton John fall out over the taping of Elton’s Australian appearance on the ABC’s Countdown?” Molly explained: “Elton had a variety of hats, and the last one he wore was complete with horns. I asked him what the horns were for, and Elton replied, ‘Because I’m a horny little bastard.’ So we edited that out of the show. Elton wasn’t too happy, and he put on a little turn, but it was only a small one.”

Heartache all over the world

Elton had just landed in Melbourne in December 1980 when he was told that John Lennon had been killed. Elton sent Yoko a huge chocolate cake. “She always loved chocolate.” Molly had been organising a dinner party at his house to celebrate Christmas with Elton. He had a turkey, a tree and fake snow. The dinner party became a wake. “I really loved John,” said Elton, who is Sean Lennon’s godfather. “And when you love someone that much, I don’t think you ever quite get over their death.”

Are you and Rod good friends or not?

Molly had interviewed Elton in Brisbane just a few days before John Lennon’s death. Elton talked about Bruce Springsteen (“I like it, but all his stuff sounds as if it was recorded on the lawnmower”), Split Enz (“It’s one of the best albums of the year for me”), and Rod Stewart (“I think it [Foolish Behaviour] is his weakest album for a long time”). Molly also asked Elton to introduce Ian Dury’s new single. “I think they put this song in on purpose for us. I mean, last two people in the world who should be introducing this record. However, it’s Ian Dury and I Want To Be Straight. Some chance!” And the interview ends with Elton wearing a giant cowboy hat and talking to Molly about cowboy hats (in Molly’s pre-hat era).

Molly takes the cake

During his 1982 tour, Molly presented Elton with a cake to celebrate his 35th birthday. Of course, Molly ended up wearing it.

Something about the way you look tonight

In 1983, Australian artist Wes Walters painted Molly’s portrait for the Archibald Prize. The portrait didn’t win the Archibald, but Elton bought the painting for Molly, and it still hangs in Molly’s house.

Kiss the bride

Elton married recording engineer Renate Blauel in Sydney on Valentine’s Day, 1984. Molly gave Elton and Renate some all-Australian gifts for a wedding present – flying kangaroos (instead of flying ducks) to put on the wall, gold placemats featuring kangaroos and emus, and a colonial cookbook. At the reception at the Sebel Townhouse, Elton’s best man and manager, John Reid, raised a toast to the Queen. “Thank you, thank you,” Elton said.

Hello Molly

During one visit to Australia in the ’80s, Elton had a harbour cruise in Sydney. Molly was running late, and when he arrived at the dock, his ship had sailed. Seeing Molly’s distress, the water police said, “No worries, Molly, we’ll take you to the boat.” They hurtled out to Elton’s party, sirens blazing. But when Molly boarded, no one seemed pleased to see him. He later found out that all the partygoers thought they were being raided, and as the water police drew close to the boat, all sorts of illicit substances were being thrown overboard.

Like a trackless tram

Also in the ’80s, Elton bought a Melbourne tram. Yep, a tram. “I really don’t recommend going shopping in the depressing aftermath of a three-day cocaine binge unless you want to wake up the next day confronted by bags and bags filled with absolute crap you don’t actually remember buying,” Elton advised in his autobiography. “Or, in my case, you wake up the next morning to a phone call informing you that you’ve bought a tram … that has to be shipped from Australia to Britain, where it can only be delivered to your house by hanging it from two Chinook helicopters.”

I’m still standing

Elton nearly fell apart during his Australian tour in 1986. “Something was clearly very wrong,” he recalls. “For a singer, it was the most bizarre, disconcerting sensation: whenever I opened my mouth onstage, I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen.” He feared he had throat cancer. Elton considered cancelling the final show at the Sydney Entertainment Centre, but “the thought that I might never sing again carried me through it”. He will never forget performing Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me. “My voice was raspy, but I don’t think I’ve ever performed the song better … every line seemed to have a new meaning.”

After the tour, Elton was operated on by Sydney’s Dr John Tonkin, who died in 2018 aged 91. “It couldn’t have gone better,” Elton says. “There was no cancer. The cysts were removed. After I recovered, I realised that it had changed my voice for good, but I liked how it sounded. It was deeper … it felt more powerful, more mature; it had a different kind of strength.”

Blondes have more fun

In 1987, a blond Elton hosted the first ARIA Awards. They were not televised, and Elton gave the local industry some words of advice: “The only reason I agreed to do this is because it’s not going to be on television. And if, in the future years, you keep it like that, I think it means something more because it’s much more personal.”

Elton loves Pnau

In 2012, Elton topped the UK charts with his first remix album, Good Morning To The Night. “I handed over the master tapes of my ’70s albums to Pnau, an Australian electronic duo that I loved, and told them to do whatever they wanted with them,” Elton explained in his book, Me. “They remixed different elements from old songs into entirely new tracks, making me sound like Pink Floyd or Daft Punk. I thought the results were fantastic … there was an album with my name on it at number one, and I had no idea whatsoever how it had been made.”

Edna loves Elton

The Queen of Australia, Dame Edna Everage, even recorded a song for Elton – Every Mother Wants A Boy Like Elton in 1978.

Face to face on Hey Hey

In 1978, Elton spoke about Billy Joel on Countdown. “I always felt sorry for the bloke because everyone said, ‘Poor man’s Elton John’. I thought that was really rubbish because the guy writes really great songs. But this album [52nd Street], I’ve never heard such blatant copying of a vocal style ever – My Life … and you listen to Big Shot – it’s Bennie and the Jets backwards … he’s probably been listening to outtakes that we did.”

But two decades later, Elton and Billy teamed up for the Face To Face tour. Elton and Molly are in top form during the Hey Hey It’s Saturday interview at the MCG while a nonplussed Billy Joel looks on.

Sorry seems to be the hardest word

Finally, in 1992, Molly talks about dramas in the Royal Family before Elton shows off a new hairstyle and almost apologises to Molly for his behaviour in the ’70s and ’80s. “We came to blows on a couple of tours in Australia because my behaviour was so erratic, which you were trying to point out … and I really wanted that part of my life to stop. I had everything in the world, and I didn’t have any personal happiness. You cannot take that amount of alcohol and drugs and be happy … I just want to function like anybody else.”