Not just any musician gets a major Hollywood musical-fantasy-biopic made about them.
The pianist-composer-singer-activist-fashion plate has been one of the foundational elements of popular culture for the last 50 years.
He’s had seven consecutive No.
David Redfern/Redferns
1 albums and nine No.
First encounter
Bruce Hornsby:I was in 9th grade.
We were driving and he put on the 8-track ofTumbleweed Connection.
Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
“Amoreena” comes on and changes my life.
A seminal moment in my development.
Of course I couldn’t, but I’d try.
I’d seen him, you know, the figure, but that got me investigating.
Morton:That rhythm changed the game.
No one approached an intro like that, those heavy chords with the melody on top.
Adding the audience sounds, it makes you visualize the moment and live in it.
Then he jumps into the falsetto?
Folds:I hear that song and I’m immediately in a backyard, 1974.
Rufus Wainwright:It’s a great example of a curveball.
No one was expecting it.
you’re free to’t even dance to it!
Michael Stipe loves this one and he’s a tough one to crack.
Morton:The music makes you want to know more about the person in the story.
Then the end, with the orchestra, it’s like the end credits.
The melody doesn’t repeat for a long time.
Same with “Someone Saved My Life Tonight.”
It stretches for over two minutes before a repeat.
The current era’s songs are maybe two seconds.
Hornsby:I love it even if I don’t know what it’s talking about.
Once one of us would get it out of our heads, then the other would start singing it.
Wainwright:I was absolutelyobsessedwith this song when I was 10 years old.
The dude next to me starts singing along at the urinal.
Morton:“Laughing like children, living like lovers, rolling like thunder under the covers.”
Maybe the most perfect lyric ever.
And maybe the only songaboutthe blues that isn’t a blues-y song.
Then Stevie Wonder on harmonica is the icing.
Wainwright:My aunt, Anna McGarrigle, no slouch of a songwriter herself,lovesthis song.
Thibaudet: It’s a love letter, the essence of music.
He gives us the gift of feeling.
It’s amazing how just piano, bass, and drums can have such “rock music” impact.
My first trio played this and it always roused the crowd.
Morton:I’m a preacher’s kid from the black church, so I get this song immediately.
It’s gospel 100 percent.
“Take me to see Him.”
It’s a song you might fire up on a Sunday morning.
And it was such a surprise to me to learn he didn’t write the words.
When he sings it sounds so personal to him.
It’s so tender.
Musically, he’s really in stride with his formula and knows what’s connecting.
And Ilovethat slide guitar.
Hornsby:It has an atmospheric, cinematic quality.
I love the interval-leaping singing, “along longtime,” in his falsetto.
Morton: It’s a great song about being misunderstood.
I’m sure he had to deal with it a bunch.
He is one of one.
He is an alien.
He is Rocket Man.
Elton’s piano style
Thibaudet:You hear one note and you know it is him.
His rhythm is everything, a heartbeat.
Morton: He’s very New Orleans.
The seeds somehow got across the water to England, because you’re able to’t teach it.
Hornsby:In 1988 or so Elton had me sit in with him at Madison Square Garden.
Folds:There’s somethingconnectedabout his piano playing.
He has a sense of rhythm on the piano that almost no one has.
Look at the number of times he’s been covered.
Not many for someone with so many of the all-time greatest hits.
There’s a reason; these songs are difficult to do.
Wainwright:He’s so muscular.
Banging on the instrument, beating it into the ground, but it’s still beautiful.
It’s almost sadomasochistic yet the instrument is still moaning for more.
Spektor:Piano is not like guitar, there aren’t an infinite amount of tones.
It’s a certain kind of magic.
