Davey Johnstone

the spelling and go, oh, Davy Johnstone. And when I heard that, I must admit I liked it. I liked it the sound of it Americans saying that. However, one day when I was on the road with Alice Cooper, I'm an airport somewhere and this guy came up to me and he said, you're used to play with, right, And I said that's right, yeah, And he said you're what's your name again, You're Davy And I said, yeah,

Davy Johnston and he said, no, you're Davy Johnstone. I immediately when I like that, Yes, I am, thank you busted. You know, so, I've always I've used that pronunciation. Now for myself. I like it because I'm also I'm an American citizen as well as a British one, so I'm

very tied into this country all the way. Now, So Johnstone is okay, let's go back to Davy, because yeah, you're a child of the fifties as am I and we all were you know, Bobby Davy whatever, and then as we aged people tended to change to Bob Robert Dave. Tell me about being Davy. Well, I was always we Davy growing up because my dad was Big Dave. My dad also but his name wasn't David. It was actually Davidson,

which is a really interesting Scottish name. Davidson Wallace Johnston was his name, and so he was Big Dave and I was we Davy, and it just seemed to stuck all the way through my childhood, through my soccer days, and then when I started playing music, it just seemed to be a catchier name. And I suck in the

e because it was totally accidental. Somebody was taking a photograph of me and an Irish singer called Noel Murphy who had formed a little folk duo together, and the photographer wrote underneath my picture Davy with a E D A V E y. So that was purely accidental. But now so many fans and people know me as Davy. My kids call me Davy. My wife calls me Davy when he's been in a good mood. And yeah, so I don't mind being called Davy. I'm not the one of my sisters in Scotland still calls me David. I

will not call you Davy. You're David, you know. So it's fine. Okay, you've talked about becoming a citizen. How do you decide to do that? Well, I've lived here for many years. I've lived out near in California for thirty over thirty years now, especially in this area of where I am now, which I love out in the country, just around Calabasas area. And we decided, my wife and I together because my wife is Danish. We both decided about three years ago, four years ago, perhaps when things

were getting really really strange here politically. We had a long conversation about it and I said, Okay, I am not a citizen, so therefore I can't vote. I can do everything else. I can pay tax obviously, I've always paid my taxes. I do all the other stuff, but I can't vote unless I'm a citizen. So I feel it's horton now that I get my citizenship and that you get years too, so that both of us can vote in the upcoming election in twenty twenty. So that's

the main reason we did it. And when I got back from Australia, we've been doing the usual applications and the petitions, all the stuff you have to fill in and the background stuff. And when I got back from Australia, right right as COVID was coming in, my immigration attorney who's in New York called me up and said, what are you doing tomorrow? And I said, well, I'm getting

over my jet lag as usual. He said, can you go to Chatsworth because I have a date for you in a time they're going to swear you in privately. So it was really beautiful the fact that I got to go, you know, locally and just with a few people in the actual office, and I got sworn in. My wife was there, our kids were there, and it was really a magical thing. And I'm really proud to be a born again American. Okay, you say your wife is Danish, how did you meet your wife? That's another

good one. My wife's Danish. I've always had this connection with Danish people. Our record producer Chris Thomas was seeing this Danish girl, a very beautiful Danish girl called Tina. Now, unbeknown to me, I'd met Tina a couple of times, but unbeknown to me, her best friend was my wife to be Kay. And at that period time, for example, Chris Thomas's girl was Tina, Rick Astley's girlfriend was Lena,

another Dane. All right, it gets really interesting. And so on Tina's birthday one year in nineteen eighty nine, Alton through a party for Tina because she was about to get married to Chris Thomas, and it was a birthday party. So I was sitting next to this beautiful Danish girl called k and the party was in Paris, so it was a very romantic place and it was a very

romantic evening. And that was it. We were submitting with each other and we were together for a couple of years, and then we got married in nineteen ninety two after we had our first child, and it's been wonderful. Were over thirty years now and really happy. Is this the only time he had been married? No, twice before. First time was when I was nineteen years old. At that time, I got Diana Partridge pregnant when I was living in London,

and we had a little boy called Tam. Tam is now an engineer and a writer, songwriter, filmmaker, musician, and he lives in Cornwall in Southwest England, which is a beautiful part of the world. My second marriage was to Rosa, a Mexican girl from from Los Angeles with a wonderful family, and our marriage spawned two children, Jesse and Daniel, and they both still live in California and Kay. As I've told you, it was Danish and I brought her over

here to live with me in California. And this has been the one that's um, that's lasted obviously, and there's no end in sight. Thank God. I'm tired of all that running around and it's over. So how many kids do you have with your present wife? Four with this this wife? And unfortunately, back in two thousand and one, we had a tragedy and we lost our firstborn, Oliver,

in a drowning accident in our pool. It happened when I was on the road with the Alton John Billy Joel Tour and we were in Chicago playing a show that night in fact, and we had two nannies taking care of the kids. At that point. Oliver was nine years old, Juliet, my favorite and only daughter, was four,

and Charlie they was two. So they were well shepherded and well taken care of while we were in Chicago doing this celebration for my birthday, and tragically, our little boy got away from the nannies, found his way into the pool and took up a tenth type of thing in there, which she had always been told you can't take that, you can't take anything into the pool, and he did and he got tangled up in it. The nanny didn't get to him in time, and he drowned.

I got this news when I was on we just played the set of the show in Chicago, and I'm backstage and I'm signing next to Elton and with Kay and I get this call and the road manager said, Davy, there's a call for you. And I said, I'm not taking a phone call right now, and you know we're doing a show, and he said, no, you've got to take this call. I took the call, and this this poor doctor had the job of telling me this unbearable news that that our son had died in a drowning accident.

The shock was so immediate. I was obviously very angry and denial. It was like, what do you mean? Who is this kind of thing? But finally I realized, okay, this is the worst news that for any parent, and I went and got my wife, I held her, I told her what had happened. She immediately fell down, and you know, Elton and grabbed her at the other side and was holding her up to just the most unimaginable feeling and changed our lives, obviously in every possible way.

He was a wonderful little boy. And what I've tried to do when I finally stopped drinking and drugging and doing all the other stuff because I felt that I felt that I had a license to drink, to drug allisas to kill myself because I was so miserable and so upset because what had happened. And then I realized that, you know what, I'll be honoring him much better if I stopped drinking, stopped drinking being an idiot, and and act like a human being and face up to these

things and that's what I did. And so that's how we honor our child. Now. Every year we celebrate his birthday and we celebrate his his death date. And it's the only way we could we could get through this thing was by facing up to it properly and by staying together through it, you know, helping each other. So, yeah, that was a total tragedy. And all also my children, my other children helped me so much during this period of time. Alton was a massive help, and my bandmates.

But I could never have gotten through it without my wife and my kids and are close friends. Wow. So it's type of thing you never get over, really right, you never get over it, but we've learned to, you might say, deal with it because over the years, what happens this kind of situation, what happened in my case

and in my wife's case. Anyway, it starts off being like this giant boulder in your heart, and then as the years go by, it gets a little softer, less jagged edges, and it becomes more of like a small manageable that still breaks you up when you think about this wonderful little boy that we lost, But you know, you get to a point where you can actually go ahead, go on and deal with it and possibly help other people who are going through similar situations, which we have done.

I've given help to a couple of friends who've had similar types of tragedy because I've realized that people just need to talk about it. You can't just hide away and not talk about it. This is something that has to be faced and dealt with, and you know, and you make it part of your life, you know, not something that defines you, but something that's part of your life that you treasure. And so I'm very grateful. Okay, talking about your kids, are they off the payroll? No,

I don't know if that ever happens. Bob, my youngest is definitely not off the payroll. Elliott's um just turned eighteen last November, and he's a wonderful singer, a beautiful looking kid, and he can't wait to get the hell out of school, and he's also an artist and various things. The next and Lion Charlie, is a sound engineer, also a songwriter, and another musician, brilliant piano player. He went to USC here in California for piano and for music production,

so they're kind of in the family business. My favorite daughter, Juliet, who's actually on her way to New York City today. She devised a wonderful business. Her name is Juliet Johnstone and that's her website and everything. And she decided to start painting on clothes about just when COVID was kicking in, and it turned out to be a wonderful idea because many pop stars, models, various personalities, celebs, whatever started wearing her clothes. So it's wonderful that she's doing this and

she's got this ridiculous business. And recently she painted a guitar for me for my seventieth birthday. I'm coming up for seventy two now, but I she painted. She finished it in time for me playing Dodgers Stadium with Elton in November, which was awesome. So I got to take that guitar on stage and use it. And you know,

a Bob, I'm blessed. I have some amazing children and I'm a very lucky man because it's always kept me a little bit grounded in my life, because you know, we take our kids everywhere when we travel as much as we can whenever it's possible, and so they've seen the world many times in different places, and I think they've really enjoyed that aspect of it. And they love their own Uncle Elton, you know, or Auntie Elton, you know, whatever,

however he prefers to be called. And you know, they've got some great friends because of the life we lead and their own talents. And they've really helped me because I mean I listened to their their music. I listened to what they're listening to and it stuns me occasionally. Okay, you talked about your daughter painting a guitar for you. In the room we're in right now, I can already see like twelve guitars on the wall. How many guitars do you own? You know? I have no idea. It

sounds gross to say, but I really don't know. I'll find out more accurately when this Farewell Tours over, because we have three totally separate rigs outrun the road, which one of them, for example, is just leaving Australian Zealand where we just finished. Another set is in the New York area, and another set is in Europe waiting for us to start the next leg of the Farewell Tour in the end of March. So each rake contains about twenty five guitars, I would say maybe thirty, so that's

ninety there roughly. I've got another a few dozen at home, along with various satars and various other things that I don't take on the road with me anymore because they're just too delicate. So yeah, it's a lot of stuff. But in my retirement, I intend to play each and every one of them. I intend to get back and give each one the love that they really deserve. Because I'm very blessed I have so many instruments, so it's wonderful I do, and we get to them whenever we can.

But sometimes I feel that they're being ignored and they're not being giving the TLC they deserve. So I'm looking forward to retirement when I can line them all up and honor them for their part in my life. Now. A lot of guitarists have favorite instruments, whether it be brand in model, or you know, those of us who played guitar. I don't want to say that. I mean, we all played guitar after the Beatles. Know that if we went shopping with guitars, every guitar sounds a little

bit different. And there are people who take that guitar on the road. There are people who only use it in the studio. Do you have a couple of favorite instruments? I do. I definitely have a couple of go to instruments. Right from the beginning day when I first joined album, for example, I wasn't playing much electric guitar, but I had an electric guitar. But Alton tells a wonderful story about me plugging in at the Chateau when we went to make the first album, and it's a great story.

It's not entirely true because I did own an electric guitar, so that was a Fender Stratocaster. But as I started playing with him and I was able to buy a couple of other instruments, I realized that my real favorite was going to be a Gibson Les Paul, and then later a Gibson Flying V. Because I began I began to like the solid guitars because the sustain was more evident and more clean, So I really loved that aspect of Les Paul's. So yeah, my favorite really has been

a Gibson Les Paul. Second has probably been a Flying V or a reverse Flying V, and then would probably become the strat, you know, the Fender stratum. But the other thing, Bob, is I I have so many guitars. I mean I have a double neck made by a company called Fernandez, which is completely jaw dropping brilliant. Um. I use it for a lot of slide guitar and regular one. I want to switch from neck to neck,

and it has the most pure gorgeous sound. So I mean I I have so many of them, and so many mandolins, electric mandolins, so many acoustic guitars, electric acoustic guitars, so that I can use them live also, So yeah, plenty of instruments. We have them coming out of the Yang Yang. When you know, whenever we go to make an album, there's so many dough Bros and Mandolins and

Mando cellos and stuff, dulcimers, you know, you name it. Okay, you have twenty five guitars approximately in three different rigs. Someone who's not sophisticated would say, why do you need twenty five guitars? So why do you need all those guitars? Well, one good reason is a backup for each guitar. There's a prominent For example, I need to have my number one less Paul. I need to have a backup for that less Paul. I need to have my favorite flying v or reverse fee and a backup for that one.

I need to have my favorite strat vender strat and a backup for that one. I need to have my favorite acoustic guitar that I'll be using in that particular rig and a backup for that one. I need to have an acoustic guitar open tuned because for songs like Rocketman, I use a particular open tuning which is pretty amazing, pretty special, So I need to have a guitar tuned

in that tuning as a backup. Also, because you know, the main thing I don't want to do is hold up a show when you have a problem like a string popping and it's in a bad part of this song where you can't just get through it with the rest of the strings. So I have backups for each and every instrument. And then for example, I'll have another couple of guitars for songs like the Bitch Is Back for example, bitches back when I recorded that I did that, and an open g tuning very similar to the tuning

that Keith Richards uses. He uses five strings on his tuning, I use all six, so there's a slight difference there. I learned to play g tuning from John Martin, famed British guitar player who tragically died way too young. So yeah, there's there's various tunings and I'd like to have a backup for that one as well. So it might sound a little over the top for some people, but really

there's a good excuse for them. And then also, if Alton decides on a tour he wants to do Mona Lisas and mad hatters, I have to have a mandolin ready and a backup for that mandolin. If he wants to do a honky cat, I have to have a banjo and a backup for that banjo. So luckily I have all these wonderful instruments so that I'm never sure

of one, and I've got a wonderful guitar tech. I mean, Rick Salazar is an absolute genius looking after all these different guitars, looking after the various tunings, keeping each and every one of these instruments in tip top shape. It's just I couldn't do what I do without him. He's just amazing. Okay, you mentioned Dodgers Stadium this year, and of course you played with Elton in nineteen seventy five Dodger Stadium. It's the same building. But what was different

about those two gigs. Well, let's see, the first one was earlier in the year. I think this last one was November seventeen, eight seventeen, nineteenth and twentieth, I want to say, and end of November, so it was much colder and darker. For one thing, the gigs in seventy five, I can't remember exactly when they were, but they were either September or early October, and so it was the majority of the shows were in daylight and I could see people. I could see this sea of people. It

was just such an awesome feeling. And we'd never that stadium hadn't been used since the Beatles played there, so there was a lot of these things going on where we were doing. There was firsts were happening that many people hadn't done since, for example, the Beatles. So that

was a very magic gig. And it was special in another way too, because we were having to do excuse me, we're having to do this particular show with a new band, basically because Dan Nigel had been let go at the end of nineteen seventy four, so I was tasked with putting the new band together once we decided on who the members were going to be, so in nineteen seventy five, so it was all these different guys and it was wonderful. I mean, we had a great band. It was rocking,

It was totally rocking. But this time, for me, the difference was after doing it for fifty years, after playing some of these songs for fifty years and writing stuff, and yeah, I don't know. It just had a really emotional feel about it, thinking, Wow, we're never going to play these songs in America again, and that really is what it is. We're never going to play them live again.

So it was wonderful to see really close friends. They're really good musician friends, people you know, like Date, the wonderful David Page and James Newton Howard and just all these brilliant musicians. Alice in Chains showed up to see us so much. Just good friends, Eddie Vedder all these cats came to see the show because they're big fans, you know, and it was wonderful to see them backstage. I must say one point about seventy five that blew

me away though completely. We were backstage in the trailers waiting to go on, and there was people before the show, in the middle of the interval and after the show. This is on the seventy five show. So one of the wives, I believe it was Caleb Quay's wife, Pat. She had a really Cockney accent, fantastic London accent, and she suddenly says, in a very English accent, Yeah, that's Gary Cooper out there. And I think to myself, Gary

Cooper is fucking dead. I'm pretty sure. So I go over to the window, pull the curtain back and it's Carrie Grant. So I go, oh my god. I love Carrie Grant had to be like my favorite actor growing up as a kid in Scotland. His movies were all over the place and anyway, I just loved the suaveness about him. So I went out and had a chat with him, and he was knowledgeable about what we were doing.

He was saying, oh, yes, I'm really enjoying the interplay between you and the other guitar player and you and Elton, and the way you guys or look at each other and smile and laugh, and I was just like going, this is unbelievable. I'm talking to Carrie Grant, somebody who you know. When I was eight years old we first got a television in Scotland and I'm seeing like one of his movies, like The Bishop's Wife or something, and

there he is backstage it does you say to him? So, yeah, that was a There were more stars in those days that were maybe I'm a bit more jaded now, Okay, you know you mentioned your retirement. This is and people can't see my air quote a farewell tour. There are a lot of people who are going through the motions for the money. I've seen the Farewell toured twice. Elton is really digging it. So I just don't see Elton retiring.

I mean, George Street was the first one to do is I'm retiring from touring, but he ended up playing single dates. You're closer certainly than I am. What do you think is really going to happen? Well? I really feel that when we finish off, I believe the last concerts in Stockholm, I want to say July eighth. I think that's right. I must say that, as far as I'm concerned, touring wise, we're done. This is going to

be it. We're done from touring. There's a part of me that obviously thinks, knowing out in the way I do, it would not surprise me if sometime in the future he decides to do maybe a Vegas, a small residency, a short type of thing, because he started to enjoy some of those shows too when we got into that. From between two thousand and five and two thousand and fifteen or so, we had a couple of shows that were very There were a lot of fun to do. They were a little tedious at times. That whole that

idea of doing something that we weren't used to. But I wouldn't be surprised if he went if he knows what it is now, so I wouldn't be surprised if sometime in the future he maybe does something different, maybe with a small orchestra, or maybe something entirely different. I have no idea, but that's just my take on it. I promise you. We haven't discussed anything. We haven't talked about any of it. You know. He calls me about all kinds of stuff, and we're not going there just yet. Okay.

So I didn't see the Vegas shows. The red piano and the other one. What was different about playing in Vegas as opposed to a usual tour. Well, I was at first, I didn't like the idea at all. I just thought it was I was terrified. I thought, you know, going to Vegas, that's like a musician's graveyard. I did not like the idea at all. But then when the fun of it, the fun aspect kicked in, we realized, okay, this is a good giggle, and we we trimmed it so that we were never there for longer than three

and a half weeks. There was no I can't I can't understand people or artists who are able to stay there for a residency for a whole year or whatever they do. Impossible. I'd go completely nuts. So we would go there three times a year for round about a month. The one thing that was good about it was I

was closer to home. I could literally come off stage because the shows in Vegas end early there because they want people back, you know, in the casino, they want people at the tables and the machines again, So the shows would end about ten pm. I would literally have my car ready to go backstage. I'd jump in it and I'd be on the road before people were out of the theater and home in three and a half hours, you know, quick drive. I'd just drive myself home, So

that was a good aspect of it. And obviously being able to see my my wife and kids more regularly because they could come out to Vegas. Also, the Million Dollar Piano Show was a great It was slightly more I was, well, a lot more sophisticated. There was various people who helped put it on. Mark Fisher, a wonderful designer who did a lot of the Stones things, and Sam Pattinson in England, and they were assisted by Tony

King and and Elton's manager slash husband, David Furnish. So you know, it was a little more of a of a I want to say, smooth, sophisticated and classy show. You know, we were wearing like Gucci suits and then Burberry suits, and then finally for the Million Dollar Piano Show, sorry for the Farewell tour, where we're wearing Gucci, which is fine. I mean it's very sharp looking, it's very sharp rock and roll. I like it because it remains the Beatles. I'm a massive, huge Beatles fan. Nobody bigger

than me. They'll we all say that, right, But yeah, I like that aspect of it. I do think at some point for me personally, I'm getting over the suits because, you know what, I got into this business because I'm a typical musician. I'm revolutionary. I don't want to wear

the same as thing as everybody else. You know, I was wearing afghan coats and floury shirts and beads and bell bottoms as you probably were back in the earliest the late sixties, already seventies, so the idea of having a uniform still rubs a little bit, robsby the wrong way. So I'll be glad to get out of the good cheer or whatever suit is I'm in and back to some interesting clothes. It's the same songs in the same order every night on this tour, right it is. It's changed.

I would say four or five times. We've changed song selections, We've very rarely changed the order of things. We've tried things, but each time we seemed to go back to the same,

the original thing. It's worked well. The only song that we took out that I really miss is All the Young Girls Love Alice, which I thought really kicked ass and I thought a lot of the fans loved the fact that there was a really deep cut that was in there, but we kind of substituted that with have Mercy on the Criminal, which is another another deep cut, and that seems to go down great. People love that too.

So Mona Lisa's was in there for a couple of tours way back when we started, and and a couple of songs have come and gone and don't Go Breaking My Heart comes in when like for the Dodger Stadium, Kikid came out and did her party piece on that song, and then dual Leapa did her her thing with Elton. Instead of it being just backtrack, they still used the backtrack, but they were able to use Doua's voice life which was great and Elton live, so that was awesome. Okay,

during the show, is there anything prerecorded? No, we are We are totally one million percent live. I mean, we have a couple of vocal samples that we've recorded ourselves several years ago, which we still use on a couple of numbers, which we bolster our own live vocals with um similar to the way that bands like The Eels, do you know they most bands who have fairly prominent. Background vocals tend to use a couple of samples here and there. I don't think there's anything unfair about us

using them here and there. And we still love doing the background parts because they're they're really meaningful parts that when we wrote them, so it's fun to do them live too. Okay, you're the music director, What exactly does that mean? Really, I'm like a glorified bandleader. Really, I mean it's not really. Music director is something that people started calling me many years ago. And you know, I don't really give a shit if they call me that

or not right frankly, but Alton's announcing me on stage. Yeah, he always says, this is Davy, my band leader. And I love that. That works perfectly for me because the whole thing about music director started the second time that d and Nagel were let go and I was asked to stay when I was again tasked with the job of or somebody's going to have to run the band

through their paces tish them the songs. Because as far back as especially the second band I'm talking about in the early in the mid eighties, when after the end of nineteen eighty four, when when Dan Najeel let go of that time. I had to come up with a band, and it took quite a while for me to be comfortable with the musicians that we had, and by the time and we got to the end of the eighties, I was very happy with it. We had people like Charlie Morgan on drums, Bob Birch came in on bass,

Guy Babylon on keyboards. Eventually we got Nigel back, which was great. He was out of the band for something like seventeen years. So when I think of the various combinations of bands I worked my way through. We had some wonderful players. Don't get me wrong. We used to you know Jonathan Moffatt sugar Foot, you know from Jack Michael Jackson Stuff and his band. You know Romeo Williams, all these different players. Jeff backs to play with us

for a while. James Newton heard. Obviously, Ray Cooper has been in and out of the band, and he was more of Ray was always more of a floating member, but when he comes back, he's always my permanent member. Ray and I go out to dinner all the time on the road. Were the food freaks of this tour. So we tend to dine out as much as possible. Okay, have you been to Noma in Denmark? I wish i'd had, but I believe it's closing the end of this year.

Ray and I have got our sightset for going there when we're there in early July, so we're hoping we can we can get in. Okay, So what's the best meal you've had on the road. Well, for me, you can't go wrong with no Bo. We love Japanese food. No restaurants are in very many of the major cities, I'm sure you know that. Although in Atlanta we found Umi, which is a ridiculously great Japanese restaurant in the Buckhead

area of Atlanta, which we love. That area. There's some wonderful restaurants and a couple of friends of mine own the restaurants and they started this place and it's just unimaginable. It's so great. So it's definitely on a par with Nobu and maybe slightly better in some areas. So I'm

big on Japanese food. But obviously when we want to take some of the guys like I take Rick, my tech occasionally he likes Japanese food, but he's really big on steak, so we'll go to one of the many wonderful steakhouses, of which, as you know, there are several. We just love great food, so it's one of it. To me, it's one of the biggest, big joys of life. So I make sure that I eat well on the road.

Do you work out on the road. I have a set of stretchers that I do every morning, and I swim whenever I can because I like to swim at home. Right now, I'm I'm undergoing a bit of shoulder problem, so I'm doing physical therapy for that. I've got wonderful therapists here in my area that are helping me out. So yeah, as we get older, you know, fifty years of guitar sling and Bobby, you know that's like you play guitar, you know, imagine doing it every other night

on stage for three hours. You know, suddenly your neck and your shoulder starts to give way. So I have guitar players neck and shoulder right now. Okay, Elton has a huge catalog. If I were to call out a song, would you be able to play it right like that? Or what would it take to recall it? Well? Put it this way, if it was one of the ones I played on, absolutely, I mean, because there are quite a few that I didn't play on leading up to you know the band. Oh, let's face it. If you

see his greatest hits, I'm on every track. So yes, if you caught a few mentioned a track or a deep cut that I played on, I'm pretty sure I could play it for you. And doeselt never call out? I mean, you've been with him all these years forget to farewell tour? Is he ever just playing and say let's play you know, Harmony, or let's play Teacher, I need you or whatever. Well, he'll suggest, you know, we'll

be talking about sets. We do that, him and I do that before each tour anyway, and so we'll come up with things like you said, Harmony, you know, high Flying Bird or whatever to be. The thing is, he has no fucking idea how to play these socks. So this is why they call me musical director Bob, because when it started happening, I realized he didn't know the songs, he'd forgotten them, he didn't know how to play him.

So what I decided to do. I've got a very good friend called Adam Chester, who's a wonderful piano player, singer, songwriter. Adams a dear friend. He loves our music. He loves Elton's music, all his sides. One day I called him up and I said, Adam, I need you. I'm tired of showing up for a TV rehearsal, for camera rehearsal. Elton's not there because he want rehearse. I'm tired of doing a band rehearsal without piano. I'm just sick of it.

So would you like to be my Elton? And he went yeah, So, so I bring him in with the whole band. He's not perfect, he sings the songs really well. We do a change of key depending on where Elton's voice maybe at the current time or whatever. And so that by the time Elton's ready to come into rehearsal, we're really good to go. We have the arrangements down, everything's totally good to go. All he's got to do is remember his part. So and he does that so quick,

Elton so fast. There's a good reason. I mean, he hates the rehearse and I don't blame him. It's can be a thankless task. I do enjoy it when it's fun because these songs are so playable, there's so much fun to play. They're not fun to play if somebody's not enjoying it. So I don't I don't even think about putting Alton through that that phase of it. I wait till we're not perfect, and he's pretty much ready to just go, Okay, what was that chord? What's this chord?

And then we work it out and he plays it. And usually for a tour, he won't need more than about I don't know, an hour to two hours rehearsal, and that's for a major tour because we're all good to go. He comes in for you know, an afternoon, we do a few songs, we have a tea break, we do another few songs, we have a tea break, and then he goes, I think that'll do. Let's just go and do it. So really, we rehearse when we

were on stage, and we've always done that. So many of the of the jams and the various moves, the maneuvers that we get into doing on stage are all done purely live. We just work him out as we're playing. And he's always loved to do that, and I love that, and you know, as soon as he might play a little thing and rocket Man and I'll jump on it and we'll use that for a while. And you know, it's all about you know, ebbs and flows, and we know each other so well that we do that, and

the band follows us, and that's the way it works. Okay, let's go back to the beginning. Edinburgh. What'd your parents do for a living? My mom was a wonderful old Scottish housewife. I have two sisters, so there was my My two sisters are one is ten years older, the other one is twelve years older. So I was the baby. I was the afterthought. And my dad worked in the Department of Agriculture. He was a civil servant and he

was also very worldly person. He very well read. Taught me a lot about stuff and about manners, about respect. He was a really good man. And he also helped me so much with my soccer career because football is like a religion in Scotland. I mean not American football, I mean the real football, so that kids in America in Britain, they grew up with football. So I was fitball crazy when I was a kid. That's what they

call it fitball crazy because I loved it. And every waking minute I was in the park or I was in playing in teams, I was playing for my city, I was eventually playing for Scottish schoolboys. So I loved it. So Dad was great. He was very supportive and all that stuff. He had a very serious injury. He had rheumatari arthritis. It really crippled him from quite an early age. But he'd still show up at every soccer game that

I played as a kid. I mean I'm talking in the rain and the snow, you know, typical British weather, and he'd show up. And when I started playing guitar, he was the one who said gave me the most encouragement. You know, other people were saying what are you doing? You know, like my teachers at school would say, well, that's a waste of time. Only one teacher ever said

to me, you're doing the right thing. Carry on, my art teacher when I he asked me what I was going to be, when he was asking the whole class, what are you going to do when you grow up? What are you going to do when you leave school? And my answer was I'm going to be a professional musician, sir, And he basically was ready to hit me over the head with a book and said that's stupid. There's no way give that idea up. So um my dad was the one who said, don't listen to those guys. You know,

believe in yourself, go for it. And so by the age of fourteen, I was playing in pubs, which is where most folk music is played, because I I kind of graduated from being a massive Beatles fan. I am again a massive Beatles fan again, but in those days, learning every George Harrison like by listening to the radio Radio Luxembourg or Radio Caroline, one of those pirate ships or are rolling stones to it, I'd learn all the

parts right there sitting by the radio. I graduated from that to listening to folk guitar players who, in my mind, were way better than anybody I was listening to on the pop scene. I was listening to people like the Incredible string band John Martin, Bert Jansch, Pentangle, Joni Mitchell. Suddenly I was hearing I'm going to like, what the hell these people are the real stars, you know, And then I started to hear bluegrass people in America, and

I'm going like, Okay, this is way advanced. This is the stuff I want to play. So that's the reason that I started playing more acoustic guitar, mandolin, banjo, dulcimer, and then eventually star a folk singing guy called Archie Fisher played the saitar and he invited me to his home to hear it one day, and I heard it and that I've got to get one. And of course i'd heard Jarles Harrison playing on Norwegian wood and thought, okay, I'm in. I'm sold. You know, I'm a sucker for

a great siding instrument. Anything strained, and I got one, which I still have to this day. I got it when I was eighteen. I still have it to this day, the same one. Okay, so you're growing up, are you the kind of kid who's a loner? Remember the group? You're a good student, bad student. I was a good student. I was good, but I was lazy because I was

more interested in music. I did just what I needed to get by, and I was very upset with my dad said you got to go to extra math tuition because you're failing and you are not allowed to fail this class. So I hated him for it at the time, but I did end up getting my result all levels. Over there, they have all levels and A levels. All level is like high school. A level is more like what you do to get into college. So I got

six A levels, which stunned me. I was surprised as hell, but it meant I was ready to go to Art college because that was my major. And I decided, just before I was going to go, I'm not going to go to Art college. I'm going to go to London. So I had about well, my mom gave me what she had in her purse. It was eleven pounds, which

was about twenty bucks. So I got on a train with my banjo, my guitar, my mandolin, and I went to London and I looked up a guy, Noel Murphy, this wonderful Irish folks who just passed away a few months ago. Unfortunately, Noel had said to me once when he heard my playing in a pub in Scotland. He said, listen man, you're crazy good. He said, if you're ever in London, looked me up. Well. When I heard that,

I thought, okay. I went to London and I went to his apartment and I knocked on the door, and of course he answered it and said, um, what the fuck are you doing here? That was literally it. I mean, I went, you know, we started playing. He said, okay,

you might as well play, So we we. We began this very successful folk duo partnership, and we were a massive draw on the on the folk scene between like I don't know, sixty seven and sixty nine, and then I graduated to something a little more I don't know what you would call it, um folk pop or something magna carta, a band like that. And see, there was all this folk rock stuff going on at that period of time, and very many folk physicians like myself, we're

getting snapped up by bands. Um, Dave Swarbrick got snapped up by Fairport Convention. Rick Wakeman got snapped up by the firstly by the Strobs and then by yes um people like Ralph mct hell were coming on the scene. I was playing with him also Kat Stevens, and then I got you know, I was starting to do session work. So when I did that a little bit slower, a little bit slower, how'd you get session work? Okay? Well I got session work because basically from from my studio, sorry,

from my playing in pubs and playing in folk clubs. Basically, people would just call me up. They would hear me, and they would say, look, I think you'd be great on this record. Will you do it? And I was like absolutely, I mean I never turned a gig down. You don't do you don't turn a gig down. And so I started playing with those kind of people, you know, obscure kind of folk artists, but who had record deals.

Colin Scott, Ralph mctel was a bit of bit better known Kat Stevens obviously, and Gus Dudgeon, Elton's producer at that time. Wait, before you get to Gus, you knock on Murphy's door, you have twenty dollars in your pocket. Do you end up sleeping in his apartment? What is your lifestyle like before you work with Elton? And did you ever contemplate giving up? Okay, this is a good run up to that, Bob, So I'll tell you what happened. So I'm fifteen years old. I'm working with a partner

who's a wonderful singer called Titch. So we go by the really original name of Titch and Davy, and we get really interesting people digging our stuff. Again. Folk clubs, all folk music took place in pubs in those days. That's just what happened. I think it went to coffeehouses later on, but pubs were where it was very rosy folk clubs, and again I was playing banjo at this By this point, people were going shit crazy. Whenever I play one of the Dubliners reels or something Irish tunes,

they'd be going nuts. Per serk. So I was already a bit of an item. When I was fifteen as a banjo player, we suddenly started getting gigs supporting people like the Incredible String Band, and there was one band called the humble Bums. I don't know if you're aware of Jerry Rafferty, yes, and Billy Connolly right, was still my friend to this date. Billy Connolly couldn't believe again my playing and what was going on with us. So we became firm friends. And this is again, is all happening.

When I'm fifteen and sixteen years old. I continue to be close to Billy and these other guys who are hearing me play, and they're all going, Jesus christ Man, you know you can do this or you can do that. So me and my friend Titch hitchhike to Liverpool and we we just got there. We don't know anybody. We end up staying at my aunties house and Soot, which is about half an hour on the train from Liverpool. And we go to Liverpool because the Beatles are from Liverpool.

So we go there thinking maybe somebody will discover us. So we go to this area of very dodgy area near the Bluecoat Museum where some of those guys studied, and found this very very dodgy club called the Green Moose. And we went in there and there was all these hippies and folk singers, and there was one guy called Willie Russell who's a friend of mine to this day. He was a poet, writer and wonderful, wonderful singer. He

we got on immediately. Willy Russell turned out to be one of the greatest playwrights and he is one of the greatest living playwrights in British history. He wrote. He went on to write Educating Rita and Blood Brothers Shirley Valentine, and he's you know, living. He still lives in Liverpool and has a place in Portugal. Anyway, I digress. Willy

and I became firm friends. So suddenly you had me, Willy Russell, Billy Connolly, Noel Murphy, this kind of kind of gangster folk people, and we could drink more and smoke more harsh than anybody else, So we were rapidly getting a name. So I kind of had I was ready to go to London. People weren't that surprised when I showed it up there because they kind of knew who I was. So yes, Noel Murphy, apart from saying you know, what the fuck are you doing here, said okay,

well you better come in. Maybe we should think about talk about this, So you know, we rolled a few splits, talked about what we could possibly do together, and obviously him being an Irish singer and me being an exponent of the tenor banjo and mandolin acoustic guitar, we could do this folk duo. So we were first called Murph and Shagas. That's another one of my names. Shagas was

a name that he came up with. You probably know what a haggas is, Bob, or maybe you don't, yeah, but anyway, he thought, well, Davey resembles a shaggy Haggas, so I'm going to call him Shagas. So that was my name for a couple of years too, and then eventually we decided to give ourselves more of a band name, and we called ourselves Draft Porridge and in the in the latent days of the folks in there, Draft Porridge became quite a thing. So all this kind of thing

was happening. People are starting to talk about us. We were getting this massive following, and eventually I get starting to ask to do sessions. So that's where the gust thing comes in. Okay, so Gus calls you, do you know who Elton is? At that point? He's an empty Sky, which wasn't that successful the first self titled album, Tumbleweed Connection, never mind the live album and the Friends soundtrack. You're called by Gus? Is this just another gig? Or do

you say? Wow? Well? I had heard about Elton from Gus because Gus and I took a meeting. We had metturing sessions for this group, Magna Carta that I was with for about a year, and before I was a bona fide member of that group with a three piece folk group. Gus was producing them, so I was actually a session man on that thing too. So that's where we first met and we took a meeting sometime after because I was so bold away by what he was

doing and the way he made my instrument sound. He was obviously a schooled engineer as well as a great producer, so we took a meeting one day and he told me, he said, I worked with this guy called Regge and his real name, he's calling himself Elton John and he said he's just had a big successful show in la and you probably be hearing about him, and I went okay,

and that's the first time I'd heard of him. And I remember going back to Scotland a few weeks later for a visit with my folks, and my dad and I were watching a show called Top of the Pops which I think is probably still on in the UK, and Elton was on doing border song and I remember thinking, well, this guy's got a killer voice. I love his piano playing, and look at that head of hair. My dad and

me both said, look at this guy's here. He's got this thickest, coolest looking head of hair we'd ever seen, right, And that was the first thing that kind of I noticed about him. So anyway, I went back down to London and I've done a couple of months later or something, Gus calls me and said, look, I'm doing a poetry

album with Bernie Taupin. The idea is for to do acoustic album whereby yourself, if you're into it, Caleb Quay, Sean Phillips, the American musician, and a couple of other people here and there are going to be in the studio. Bernie is going to recite his poetry and you guys will play whatever you want in the background. You bring your guitar, your sitar, your mandolin, and Bernie's just going

to read poetry. You're going to smoke a lot of dope, and then you're going to play whatever comes into your head. So that's what happened. I showed up at the studio. I met Bernie, who was a great guy. Straightaway, got un fantastic with him, and that's what we did. We sat around and got to know each other. Gus was producing, Clive Franks was engineering. Clive went on to be our

front of house guy. So this album was so much fun to record because Caleb and I were just We got to know each other on that record, and it was obvious that at some point we would do some other stuff together. It was just one of those things. So after Bernie's recordings, I guess Bernie must have said to Elton, you've got to check this guy out. And I got the call to do the mad Mare across the Water thing, and I showed up with more stuff

than they asked me for. I was booked to play banjo on a song called holiday En, so I brought my banjo. I also brought my mandolin, and for some reason I brought my sitar and walked into the studio. In those days, he was he was reg so Gus introduced me, and he was very very shy. Elton was sitting his piano, didn't he wasn't really into eye contact. He was just looking at the piano and it seemed quite shy and nervous. And I said, okay, well can

you play me the song we're going to do? And he played the song and I straight away said, well, I don't think it's banjo on that. I think mandolin is going to be better. And he said okay, let's try that, and then to go one more. After we ran the song down a couple of times. He didn't have an intro for it, and Gosus said well, how are you going to start it? And Elton said, well, I'm not really sure. And I said, well, why don't

you just start it? It's just me, like a nineteen year old kid from Scotland, and I said, why don't you just started straight in? I said, it sounds like you've just come in with that bust, and I last that just come in you me and I'm coming with the mandolin and the piano, and that's what we'll do. And he went, okay, let's try that soap full of shit young scotsman, you know. So we do that, and

every he goes, that's great. So here I am surrounded by people like Herbie Flowers, Barry Morgan, I mean, brilliant musicians, Chris Spedding, Ray Cooper, all these great wonderful session players, and I'm sitting there and going, okay, this is really getting interesting. I'm working with these guys and straight away you could tell, okay, these guys are they're the cream. I've done a bunch of sessions, but this is another another world, you know. So then the next song he

asked me to play. I believe it was the song that they had originally wanted me to try, which was the title track of that record, mad Man Across the Water, and I found out later they tried it with a couple of other guys. They tried it with Mick Ronson, who was also a dear friend of mine, and Michael Chapman, another friend of mine, who was a wonderful folk guitar player.

They'd done versions and for whatever reason, it hadn't been what they needed, and so they said, this is the riff for the piano, like for this song I have. So he played the riff for Madman and I was sitting there next to him with my guitar, and I said, well, what about this? And I'm very much a first I'm I'm an ideas guy, and my first ideas are usually the ones that are best, just the way it works with me. And I played what I thought, and they all said, you know, Elton Gus and Steve Brown was

the manager at that point, that's it, eureka. So we cut it and yeah, and I went on to play on a few other tracks on that album. See on those in those days you probably know this, Boblem. I'm sure you do. And those days when artists were doing an album, they had to do, you know, a three hour session, you know, you had to get at least one track done, usually more. If you could do more, you would, you know, so for a day's work, say if you were doing two full sessions, you'd hope to

get three finished tracks. And we did, you know one of the next afternoon as we got a tiny d answer leave on and I think we did some more. Yeah, that's what I did the overdubs on holiday and I did suitar and and extra stuff on that and yeah, so the work rate impressed me. The songs really impressed me. Elton's voice, the piano playing, I mean, I was hooked. I thought, this this guy is great. I mean, it's

the best thing I've heard in a long time. So I went back to my little cottage in Oxford Shore where I was living with my first wife and our little baby. And a few days later I got the call um from Steve Brown who who said, um, he would like you to join his trio. He wants to be a quartet with you on guitar. And I was like, wow, okay, I said, well that's really I'm flattered. I said, but can I think about it? And he said of course, you know, um, and I said you know what, I

don't need to think about it. I'm in I'd love to do it. So that was it. And believe it or not, between that conversation, I saw Elton a couple of times shopping in the King's Road and he was so he was a different character. He was friendly, exuberant and buoyant, and maybe because he realized that I wasn't just a bullshitter or something, and we became We were good mates at that point. But I still hadn't met

d Murray the bass player. I'd met Nigel, but I'd never played with him because they didn't play on the albums in those days. So here I am, this upstart guitar player just turning twenty, and I'm arriving in the chateau nor rehearsal because, as I told you at the beginning of this whole thing, Alton makes to rehearse. I said, aren't we got to at least have a run through with Dea, Nigel and you, and now it's gonna be fine. So we get there and we literally start playing together

in the chateau, and that's how it all started. Okay, a couple of questions. Yes, the sounds are very different from your perspective. What's the difference with Gus Dudgeon as a producer Chris Thomas. Wow, Well, I find that all producers are really different because they all put their own mark on things. Gus being an engineer at Decca Records

before he even became a producer. I mean, he was one of those engineers with a white coat and the whole thing, like in Abby Road they had in the early days, and so he really learned about how to make up instruments properly and the the whole thing. And we began to have a wonderful relationship because thinking about you know, Alton was the only other melodic guy in the band. He played piano and occasionally he would do an overdub on Melotron or far Fisa Oregon if something that was

lying around. But really I was the guy doing the other instruments and guitar overdubs obviously, and bought other textures who wanted and we'd employ them in every album. It was a very very very close knit now and that happened for all these classic records now in the eighties when Alton when we reformed because Alton famously or whatever got the original band back together. At the end of nineteen eighty one called me saying, I want to get Dea nageling you together again with me, just the four

of us, and we go back into the studio. This time I want to go in with Chris Thomas because I've been working with him and I'd like to try that, And I said great, So we all went to We did a whole year of touring before we did an album, which was kind of cool. Who went straight into touring and obviously it was like we'd never stopped playing together. And so after the year of touring, we went to Montserrat,

George Martin's air studio out there with Chris producing. And we've always enjoyed that way of working, by the way, that residential area where you're kind of prisoners together. You're all in one area, you know, where you get to live and work together and have breakfast and maybe come up with an idea of dinner together and go to bed and wake up start again. So we've always enjoyed that way of work. So Montserrat was a natural follow on to our work at the Chateau and also at

Carriboo Ranch. So we get to Montserrat. I had met Chris previously. I met him up at Paul McCartney's studio in the malof Kintire when he was doing one of Paul's albums, and we got on very well, and what a great guy, you know. And I loved his work on Beatle's White album. I loved his work on Tender Stuff,

which I was starting to hear. Chris and I became very close because of what we were started doing straight away because he also, like me, likes to work very quickly, and also like Gus, Gus was always a very quick worker. So we're very fortunate that all those guys liked to work the way that Elton liked to work, which is,

hang onto your hat. You better be stayed with us because this is going to be fast, and we don't fuck around the studios like Howard Ground to us, so that once we've run a song twice, we're ready to take it. I mean I'm talking about from when it's written, run down, played and recorded. That's what we do, you know. So it's like hang on to your hat because we

ain't stopping for anybody. So Chris was quite used to work in that way and loved it and loved what we were doing, and I loved what he was doing because it was a different way of approaching guitars as well, because he brought that more chiangly sound of the of the eighties guitar wise in but he loved again what I'd do Les Paul Wise. In fact, we began to

call my Les Paul work BF cheese. And the reason for that became was who we came to an overdub and he'd say, you know what, I can really hear some big fact Gibson's on this, and I would say, yeah, that's a great idea. So big fact Gibson's became, you know, this term for really loud, overdriven Les Paul sound, you know. And so yeah, Chris and I get gotten great for all these records. And but in the eighties Elton did

change around quite a bit. You know. He went a couple or three albums with Chris, then back to Gus again for a couple of records and then a live album, and he kept having hits, which was fucking awesome. So yeah, it was as far as the difference between them, I must admit I equally loved working with Gus and Chris Thomas. Both brilliant in their own way. Okay, so you're asked

to join the band, you're at the chateau. Everyone had a fantasy of what the chateau was until the Beg's documentary showed it and looked like kind of a dump. So what was the chateau like? Well, it was pretty run down. I mean it really was, definitely, but let's face it, it was a French chateau. I mean, from the outside it looked incredible. It was like two buildings, both chateau esque and their design wonderful old buildings, beautiful

old buildings. And one building was the residential part. The other side was where the studio was in. And when I say run down, you know, they had sweeping staircases stuff like that, but there were It wasn't much a dormant There wasn't like old fashioned, beautiful framed guilt photograph. There was nothing like that. I mean, any pictures in the rooms, which were kind of shabby too, were just kind of something stuck up there and pinned up there.

It was definitely not somewhere suave. This was somewhere where you'd probably go to make a porno movie, right, And I believe later on sometime in the late eighties. That's exactly what started going on there, which is tragic, but it was the idea of being in France, being about twenty miles from Paris and the middle of nowhere, all living together, you know, waking up, going down for breakfast, having a bit of baguet and some cheese and some coffee,

and then starting to play. That's what it would be like. Literally, I would come down in the morning and Elton that would already be there sitting at an electric offender rose piano, playing away and obviously writing something, and I'd grab a baguette and a coffee and I wander over to where he was sit down, and I vividly remember him starting to write things like Honky Cat there and thinking, oh banjo straight away and late, you know, later in the day,

would be working on something and he'd go, oh, this song called Salvation another wonderful deep Cup, which ended up being the first track that we actually recorded for those sessions. I remember the way he started Rocketman and we were looking at each other at this point, the four of us, and going, okay, this is really really special because during Rocketman, when we were mucking around with the basic idea for it.

We'd start doing backgrounds. D and Nigellavy, we start owing and I and we've never sung before together, but straight away it sounded like, oh, okay, this is going to be fun, this is going to be really great. And again, because we were so self contained, Alton keyboards, Me on guitars and other strain instruments, Nigel and drums, and D on bass, and all of us on backgrounds, we didn't

need anybody else. Because he didn't want to have a live I didn't want to have a livish orchestral sounding record. He wanted this one to be a band, to sound like a band, you know, And I think we achieved that. Okay, that's successful, and you're on the road. Meanwhile, now you're a member of the band. To what dig we are you saying I'm getting a steady paycheck, but maybe I'm

missing out on other opportunities with other people? You mean? Yeah, Well, you know, Bob, here's the here's the kicker for the whole thing. Because as soon as we started doing this um honky Chateau, this first album, I mean, Madman Across the Water was already doing very well. It was starting to do stuff in the chart, so that was exciting knowing that there was something happening for when we went to the States. But Honky Chateau, we finished it in

two weeks. It was all. It was done in two weeks, so straight away it was quite obvious, Okay, we're going to get back to London. We're going to do a concert at the Raw Festival Hall with our orchestra, so we're going to promote madmu Across the Water. We'll do it with you know, all the guys who played on the record, and then the second half will be the band set, no other way around. Band will do the

first half set and we'll promote the new album. We'll play the new album live and the second half will be the orchestral set with the whole of Madness Across the Water and a few things from like your song, Border Song, Burned Down the Mission, you know all that kind of thing. So already there was this plan. We were on this train and nobody was getting off. It was like, this is what it's going to be. So we did the festival whole show, which was televised as well.

I believe there's some kind of anniversary thing coming out around about now, about that we did. That show went off great, and a couple of weeks later, we're going off to America and I'm going there for my first time. Twenty year old kid going Okay, this is crazy. And I must admit at that point after the Festival Hall show, I was a little bit. I was a little bit unsure.

In fact, I told Elton. I called Elton about for the gig and I said to him, look, you know what, I think you need a tried, intrude, you know, rock guitar player, because I don't know if I'm really into all this. Posing See, the band never told me. The other guy has never told me what is what their live show was like, so I had no parameters. I'd know nothing. I'd know, you know, no idea what to expect when we got on stage that first time. And not that it was that outrageous, but it was different.

And I was coming into a scene that I was wholly unfamiliar with. You know, I was a little folk musician. Granted I'd played some good shit on the album and I was often running, but I had an awful lot to learn. So I was unsure. So I said to Welton, you know, I don't know if i'm your he said, you're the guy. He said, I know it. I knew it as soon as I met you, as soon as I heard you playing. I've you've done the first album.

It sounds great. Let's just go with it. It's going to be cool, You're going to be fine, and so we went for it. Yeah, okay, Well let me ask you this. Famously, Bernie writes the lyrics, gives him to Elton. He comes up with the melody the song to what we were others involved, yourself included obviously. Do you mean during that writing Yeah, okay, during the writing process, we'd all be I mean, occasionally he'd be on his own and maybe he'd finished something and rushed through and say, guys,

listen to this. But much of the time, in fact, most of the time, we'd be all sitting together, either in the breakfast room, where we had a little semi sarkle of instruments and so we could all play whenever we wanted, or in the studio, where he'd well, maybe we'd we'd go from the breakfast room over to the studio to record a track that we were happy with. Let's lay that down. And after we'd laid that down. He would say, Bernie got a Bernie wouldn't even be there.

Most of the time, we just look at another lyric and go and put it up there on the piano. And he started fucking around. And we were just on the basic track for the for the first song, and he's already writing the second song. So I would be sitting next to him with an acoustic guitar, and I have a pad of paper with me, and I start, you know, sketching down a couple of chords. When I see where he's going with it. D would be plunking

away in the background. We'd all would all be listening, so that by the time the song was actually written, we all felt invested in it because we were we were all there, and you know, occasionally there would be the odd thing of oh what about that instead of that or something, you know, but it was just like this machine that wouldn't stop. And Elton was on such a role which carried him on. Really. He went on this role for so many years where he was actually

the song write up, no question about it. It wasn't until later on in the seventies when I started writing a few things with him and other people did and again in the eighties that he started. He was on such a role in such a thing for what he was doing. It's kind of like I think Leononan McCartney must have felt that way when they were writing their their you know, classic songs that that five or six year period. I often liken that. I mean not saying

that we're the Beatles or anything. I'm just saying I liken it to that time when the creative creativity is so off the charts that you really have to hang in and pay attention to keep up. But on the good side of it, because you feel a part of it, you're totally invested all the way, you know, And that's what it was like. We were a band. Let me just put it that way, Bob, you were a band. Okay, fifty years later things are different. Did you ever say, hey,

maybe I deserve credit the publishing. No um, because there have been a few songs where I have gotten publishing because I did care write several songs with him. I don't know, I reckon, I've written about a dozen with him, you know, proper compositions. Maybe maybe he's many as twenty. I've encountered them, to be honest, I often did toy with the fact that some of the bigger guitar driven hits, you know, I would think, m that's me all over there.

There's not much else going on at that point, you know, and I would I would toy with the idea. But you know, I've got to tell you and all honestly, I've never my relationship without and there's never been about that. I would never go to him and say, yeah, what about my my guitar parts there, I've got to tell you, Bob and all honestly, I have seen so many bands break up because of that fact. Right there, people squabbling over well, that's my bit, so I should get a

part of that or and that's my part. We were a band and didn't think. We didn't presume to jump on the train that most other many other bands have done. And you know, we stayed together for that reason, and I think that's very important. Okay, there is money involved. Who did you negotiate with from then to now over compensation?

There's not been much negotiation allowed, to be totally honest with you, Back in the day, it was John Reid, and John's was a brilliant manager, absolutely brilliant and really made the whole thing happen. His exuberance and his understanding of rock and roll, his already his experience from working with Motown, and just his old knowledge and his gunghole attitude. That was the train that we were all on. And

John was very fair. There was very There was a great deal of difficulty coming negotiation wise from Elton's proper manager of the whole thing, who was Dick James. It was quite some years before they could, you know, move out of that situation. So Dick had Elton locked up into a pretty tight situation. So that was the first thing that caused breakdowns if you like, or where we could never get certain things sorted out. When I started writing with Elton, when it became okay, Davy wrote this

with Elton, there was never any issue. That's what it was, you know, Davy, Elton and Bernie, And as I said a little while ago, there's many many songs like that. So I'm certainly not going to pick bones about a couple of songs that have done me very well in my career that a lot of fans and guitar players have held me in great esteem for quite frankly, it's

been worth it. To me to have the position that I still have after all these years, and that I still enjoy because quite frankly, Bob, I know too many bands that have broken up for bad attitudes, and you know, I'm fine put it that way, Okay, irrelevant of the songs, like you're on this final tour, how do they decide what you make? Well, that's become more of an issue of it's a band. It's Elton John is now a brand, not a band. It's now a brand. You must have

seen that coming for several years. It's not a bunch of musicians anymore. It's a brand you have. You can now have Elton John Walmart glasses, you can have this. You can have Elton with a leaper, you can have Elton with um you know, various other artists. He doesn't always consider that his band is on a par with what he does, or at least his management don't. I'm pretty sure Elton feels the same way. When we are doing the Farewell tour, we're all on stage. It's just

a band the same way as it ever was. You know. It's me and Nigel and Ray and Elton up there with the other guys doing our best you know. As far as the money aspect of it, we are. All I can tell you, Bob is that we're paid very well as musicians. Okay, let's go back. Conkey Chateau is a huge success. The next album is Don't Shoot Me. I'm only the piano player. You know, back when there was so much less information about musicians and music, I fame it and I read it all. I family remember

Elton saying, oh, that album is a throwaway. When I love that album, tell me about making that album. I love Don't Shoot Me as well, because I stepped up. I gained more confidence as a rock guitar player by that point, and we had done a couple of tours. One of the things about the early days was recording tour album, tour, separate single, tour album. To you know, it was always we were working very rare. We were not working for that first five or six years, seriously.

But Don't Shoot Me was especially fun for me. Also because I had bought a few guitars in America. I'd bought the less Ball. Actually, Elton gave me a Les Paul that I picked out for him on a tour. I picked out a Les Paul and the old Man's guitar shop that you might remember, of course, said he yeah, and he wanted a Les Paul and I said, well, see that one up on the pedestal up there, that's the one you should have. And he said okay. So

I played it and he took it. And when I had some guitars on about a month later, he said take my Les bowl. So I was like, okay. So I was happy. I still have that guitar too, of course, but one second, tell me about the guitars getting stolen. Uh my god, Bob, what a nightmare? What a what a fucking nightmare. We were doing a tour of England and this was right before we recorded Don't Shoot Me and No Sorry. This was after Don't Shoot Me. This was after we recorded Don't Shoot Me. Sorry. I'm I'm

getting a missing album. So do you want to tell the Shall I tell this story first? About this? No, I'll just keep going. I can follow you my audience. Yeah. So we've done a tour in Sheffield, so this would be late nineteen seventy two, winter of nineteen seventy two, after Don't Shoot Me and I band I have picked up a couple of guitars. In the States. I picked up also the third mandolin ever made by Fender, and it's an electric mandolin, and the serial number is zero

zero zero zero three. And I treasure this little thing and it sounds killer on stage. I've never had electric mandolin before. It sounds amazing that one. I had another guitar that I bought in Nashville, which was a sixty sorry, a fifty eight les Paul gold Top with soapbar pickups. I adored this thing and it sounded incredible. D had two bases. I had also my my strat. I had another offender. I had a less special, one of those wonderful one pickup ones at Leslie West used to play.

So Yeah. The truck driver without equipment decided he was tired one night, and after the show he pulled into like this part car park by this pub and locked the truck up and went to sleep. Came down in the morning and the whole truck had been stolen. They took the whole fucking truck and all these instruments were taken, and it was just horrible. My first experience of that,

it didn't go well with me. It happened again in the future, but this time that it happened was like, Okay, I'm not going to be too much of a collector. I'm not gonna pick up really really wonderful ancient instruments because I'm scared of traveling with them and having them stolen. And I have great instruments still to this day. But that was a real setback, one that you learned to live back, to live with, you know, But okay, I

didn't like it. Frampton famously got his guitar back decades later, although there was a plane crash involved, etc. Now with the internet, have you ever found the stuff that was stolen resurface? Wouldn't that be great? Because I promise I'll look at because along with that hall that they took, they also got an acoustic Gibson mandolin from you know, like early nineteen hundreds, like nineteen eight or something that was in the hall and it had my name on

the flight case. Now ten years later, I'm doing a session in LA for Eddie what's his name? Who's Eddie? Who? Oh? How am I forgetting his name? Who produced Hendrix Nye Kremer and Hendrix Eddie Kramer? For god, I'm so sorry, Eddie. You're probably gonna hit me the next time I see you. And he said to me, oh, I'm working with this Polish band and they have one of your mandolins. And I'm what, what do you mean? He said, yeah, this Polish rock band. They've got you one of your mandolins.

I saw your name on this flight case in get ask and I'm going no, so immediately I get people on it. And of course this is the early eighties, you know, cell phones are still not happening there and there's nothing like that. No, I can't run over there and nail it down all the rest of it. So I never did get it back, Bob. But I'm I'm looking at I have my sources, people who troll around looking for things, because I'm sure I'm going to see those a couple of those instruments again. As you say,

with the internet, Spanish show up sometime. Okay, let's go back to Don't Shoot Me Right. What a great collection of songs on that record. Daniel was almost too easy to record because we were literally sitting around the piano. He wrote the song. The whole song start to finish in about twenty minutes, and let's cut it, okay, Gusta let's do it now. Okay, we did. We sat down, played it down once, fixed out a couple of things in the arrangement, played it again, and a third take

we got it. We got the master. That was it. It was just beautiful, relaxed, laid back feel, and we just cut it live obviously electric piano, Elton singing live, vocal, drums and bass, and my acoustic guitar, and it just sounded so great when we heard it, and immediately everybody was going, single, that's got to be a single. It's

just so singable and so cute and so beautiful. And then one of the things that I loved about this about Daniel when I think back to that track and the way we cut it, were the overdubs that we put on it because we kept it very, very sparse. But straight away we'd fallen in love with the melotron. I've always loved melotron flute sounds thanks to the Beatles. You know that wonderful Strawberry Fields sound at the beginning of that. I've always loved that sound. So I said, hey, Alton,

you know what, we need a solo on this. Why don't you play a solo on melotron with that wonderful fluty sound. He did the solo and and the beginning of the track. He just threw in a little thing at the beginning of the track, and the first time we ran it through, he played it and that was it. It was done, and it was like, okay, well that was easy. So then I said, well, you know, the solo sounds so cool. It's got a great little melody

that you composed on the spot. And I said, why don't we have a little bit of banjo playing mandolin style but way back in echo And Gus said, that sounds like a good idea. Let's do it. So we fucked with the marks and did our usual playing around and we have this wonderful banjo that people often wonder, what is that during the soul of Daniel? But yeah, it didn't even much. And one of the cool things about it was to get the vocal that Gus thought

should be on that record. He walked out up one morning, because usually what we do is we do all the vocals at the end. We changed that, you know, as we as we progressed, and it probably was with Daniel. So Gus woke Elton up at seven thirty one morning and said, Elton, I want you to come and do that vocal and he was like, what, I've come fast asleep. He said, well, I just wanted you to do the vocal when you've kind of got a sleepy voice. He said that would be fucking easy because I'm half asleep.

So Elton arrives the studio and Gus says, okay, let's just do a vocal on it. So's he's wrapped up in his fur coat and his shades, you know, and his headphones obviously, and to run the track and it sounds exactly like it should do. He's got that slightly husky sound about it, and that was the vocal we use. Okay, My two favorite tracks on that album are Teacher I

Need You and Elderberry Wine. Any stories you can tell me about those two, Yeah, because actually another wonderful overdubbed story on Teacher I Need You, which I love too, by the way, and again it just showed the way that we were a band. I mean, it's just a band playing on that track and all the vocal the background vocals, which were a lot of fun to do. But on one of the overdubs there's that there's that

wonderful teacher A teacher, Oh yeah, teacher. Well guests who played the buddom That was Elton Wow, because he had the idea for doing that overdub and said, well, why don't you fucking play it? You know what it is, do you just do it? He said, I'm not a drummer. I said, it doesn't matter. Anybody could do that. So we take one of Nigel's Tom's out to the studio and Elton did it. And I tell you something, Bob,

I bet Alton doesn't even remember that. He'll probably hear this and he'll go, did I Because there's a lot of things that I do remember details, and that was one that I thought was so cool that he did that because it was such a fun song and very much inspired the whole record in fact, was very much inspired by Mark Boland because we were kind of in glam rock phase that then. You know, we were wearing Granny Takes the Trip clothes and you know, lyrics suits

and platform shoes, the whole thing. We were all the way into that whole thing, very much in competition with the Bowie thing. Dave Barry was another friend, but also it was all new competition. All these records were coming out at the same time. You know, you'd get a t Rex song and one of ours and one of David's and it was just a wonderful time. And the

other one you mentioned. The other song you mentioned was Elderberry Wine, which I love because it's so loose, and again very early take of the track, we decided it sun It's so cool for two reasons. I really loved that track. Two main reasons. One that we discovered what could happen with double track and the piano and then using the very speed turn it down so you got that wonderful you know, pub effect, pub pub piano effect, you know, which we went on obviously to use that

on many other songs in the future. But it was Ken Scott who showed us that trick, and it did require to play the song. It wasn't like he just could take that track and somehow magically have it album. Had to play the part again. And so when we heard the sound, we all went, oh my god, because nobody'd ever heard that sound before on anything. It was the first time I'd ever been used. Like shit, we are actually innovators. Now we're doing a beatleshit. Here, you know.

And the other thing was when the guitar parts came around for that song, because suddenly, when I double tracked the rhythm part and the little lines in there, they're all on one track, the same kind of shit started happening. We're going like, oh, that sounds a bit like George and I love what we're doing here. And and then it repeated itself on Midnight Creeper and again on the

arpeggio things on Have Mercy on the Criminal. We started to use these double trackings in a way that I think the Beatles were using them kind of, and you'd get a slight out of tuneness that would that would just bring that sound that would made people just go, oh, fuck, I love this, And we did. We loved every thing we were doing. We're so excited about the process of the recording that we were just lost in that world.

That was the joy of it. Since we're this deep into the album Crocodile Rock, what fun that was to do, Bob, I mean, what great fun and what a great little track. And you know, ballocks to all the people who said, oh, he's just doing this this thing, and you know, that's a really cool little track. If people think the time

to listen to it. It's a brilliant track, great work by Gus because the idea was we wanted to do a little bit of a rock and roll tribute but also a bit of a send up, hence my kind of ventures shadows type and Dwayne Eddie takes on that. There's about eight tracks of guitar and now all doing different things because we wanted that to give, you know, to show our love of rock and roll. And obviously the la la la la la la rich Alton did and you know what a cool little song. And I

think who was it tried to sue us. I think it was Pat Boone or somebody tried to sue us on the track said it was Speedy Gonzalez or something. It's like, oh, please get a life, you know, but um, great fun. We weren't doing anything. At least people were talking about us, and I think that's something we had to realize. You know what, we're going to get this. This is going to happen now because people are buying our records and a lot of people are are listening.

So that's a good thing. Okay, Next comes Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. When does it become a double album, Okay, I believe. Actually it was quite early on. I want to say the idea was already in the back of their minds because of the success of Punky Chateau and Don't Shoot Me Massive, and then again of course, now the Black Catalog is started to sell. The live album is suddenly a hit, so is the Elton John album, and it's all starting to sell. So they're obviously thinking,

all right, we've done this. We've done a live album, we've done this, we've done orchestra done it. We'll have to do a double album. So I know there was talk of doing it, and I even remember a working title of silent film talking Pictures. Wow, that was the working idea for the thing. Anyway, we're in the Chateau and we have, as usual, we have so many songs as a lot of songs. By the way, Elton usually refers to yellow Rick Rhode is what's Davy going to

play on this one? Because it's just it's just so guitar heavy, which I love because we we we employed so many different sounds, ideas and whatever, and it was just so much fun for me and for everybody because we were all getting off on it, but there was many, many songs and the idea of doing an opening track that was going to be something majestic and had an instrumental We knew that's what we wanted to do. So Elton wrote the first part the piece, and I don't

mean I don't mean the synthesize of piece. That was all done after by David Henschel when we decided we need something at the very beginning before the band comes in with the slow movement, and so Elton and I Indian agel we knew what it was. We'd already Elton had already written love Lives fitting I had worked out my guitar parts what I thought they should be on

that song. And we did the whole thing from the beginning of the quiet part of Funeral for a Friend all the way to the end the basic track, so there wasn't any gaps in it. And that's a long time. That's got to be I don't know, nine minutes, something like that, eight or nine minutes. I'm not sure how long it is. But it was so exciting because you know, we've always liked the red light in the studio. When the red light goes on that's like religion. You're in

the studio, shut the fuck up. But of course we're just about to start funeral for a friend, the most quiet, delicate, haunting, beautiful thing, and Ellen's by the plan of and I can hear Alton going one, two, three and instead of four, and we just all completely fall about and there was this wonderful far and obviously the tension was so but as soon as he let that go and it's we have a tape of it somewhere, it broke the tension and we all kind of relaxed a bit and we

stopped laughing, and then we started again and did the whole thing through. And then as is my one, I started the over dubbing guitars and went pretty crazy on on that whole thing too. And you know, it was great because you have a song that lyrically, musically is

already done. You know what's coming up. So we were already having ideas about where we would do background vocals, where we would do this, what we might add at specific points and the song, and nobody really was was telling us do this or do that, because it was only gossip was obviously there and not being a musician that wonderful ideas person and greater interpreting your ideas. But nobody was telling us anything. So it was us doing exactly what we thought would be right when when we

were doing it, okay, you know this was about it. Really. A couple of years later it became standard de camp vocals and a punch in. Well, you guys conscious of that, or you say leave the mistakes in or what was the philosophy? Um there was in the days that we started. It was more a question of punch ins. Because Alton's vocals were always so good. There was never a question of having to do well. You know, we didn't think about it because it wasn't the way that we worked.

As you mentioned, it happened a little bit later on. I don't say Elton's vocals was so great. I remember him saying to me one time round about the Yellow Brick Road period. Oh my god, he said, I hate my vocals on on mad Man across the Water. They drive me fucking crazy. And I'm going what I said, They're so amazing because they're so young, they're so you they're just unbelievable. They're vulnerable, but they have that sound.

That's why people like you man, So so we carry on with all that, and really the comping thing didn't really start to happen until the early eighties when we did the Chris Thomas records, because he had already started working that way with Chrissy Hyend and Pete Townsend on his solo album and stuff like that. So Chris was versed in that and Alton wasn't. He thought that was

a great idea. Why not? And he still did a couple of vocals where most of it he had and they just do a quick comp to get certain things here and there. But um, I've most of the things that I've been experienced when I've experienced Alton doing a vocal bar one when need to don the Sun go down to me? That was an interesting one. Well that

was nineteen seventy three. But he threw the wobbler of all time during that vocal m He literally was so frustrated and kept thinking that it sounded like shit that he it was like, fuck, bas I don't want to do this anymore. Said it to Anger Hunk, and if j doesn't like it, said it to Lulu and we were cracking up, obviously because it was funny what he was saying, I mean, he's very funny guys, you know, And he wasn't laughing. He was deadly serious. He said,

I hate this. I don't want if this vocal goes on the album, I'm gonna fire everybody. I mean. It was one of they say, you know. And of course when he heard it the next day, it was like, oh, that sounds pretty good. And you know, but for the most part, doing vocals with Elton or a pleasure because he is so good, I mean live, I never hear him sing outitude an ever period. Okay, let's stay with the album. You mentioned earlier All the Young Girls Love Alice.

That happens to be my favorite song on the album, which people tend out to talk about but you were doing for a while, but fare Well tour, tell me about that track. Well, that was just a riot to do. Again in our in our beatlesque way of working that we developed, we were just into furthering all these different sounds and having fun doing what we wanted to do

and making up different sounds. When Elton had written Alice, we loved the song straight away and I had this idea around the riff that actually the riff was his piano riff. I didn't invent the riff, the actual damped vamp little dirt. It's actually a piano lick, God bless him. And I learned to on guitar and double it and

it was sounding great. And then I thought, oh, what about if I used my Uni vibe on this, which is a really cool pedal in those days where if you floored the pedal it had this wonderful super wobble effect like a fast Leslie cabinet or something wonderful hairy sound. And I just added a bunch of crunch to it through my own amplifier and used my volume pedal then to bring the whole thing in out of nowhere, so you don't hear anything until you hear this good invitation. Well,

I've been doing it for fifty years. But it was such a blast to do because as soon as people heard that, it was like, oh fuck, we love this. And of course I double tracked it just to be a show off. And yeah, it was just a riot, Bob, because to have that much fun, it's almost not fair. It shouldn't be allowed. You know. We were having so much fun, you know, and it was serious work. We knew that and we knew it had to be great

whatever it is what we do. But we were going through this phase of it seemed like almost everything he wrote and that we recorded together and the way that we orchestrated things, we had this magic thing that was going on that people loved. And I've heard so many people talk about all the young Girls Love Alice and like you, many people think that that is just such

a classic album, which whit is. But getting back to what you said earlier, because of the amount of good songs that were coming up, there were no songs that we were recording that were sounding like B sides. For example, usually when you're recording something, you have a few extra tracks and Okay, that'll be a B side or whatever. Nothing sounded like a B side on good By Yellowick Road.

So suddenly we had like fifteen sixteen tracks and we're going, well, Gus, we're going it's got to be a double album then, because now the first track on the album is going to be half of the first side, so it's going to have to be a double album. So that's when it all became that's the target, and that's when the running order became important. And Gus is actually a wizard

at that. He's great at doing sequencing a record, and we knew what the beginning was going to be, but we let him go with the rest of the sequence sing pretty much and what about Saturday Nights all right? Well, we knew that was going to probably, you know, annihilate some people because of its aggression and the whole thing. And wow, what fun that was for me to do because on the basic track of that one, again it was we had tried it to record that previously. The

song had been around for quite a while. He wrote it back in when we tried to do an album in Jamaica, and for one reason or another it didn't pay off. I mean, the main reason was the studio was just not possible. It just didn't have the ship we needed to do a record down there. It was just what it was. So we went back to the chateau. So we knew the song in our head and I already had an idea of about some intro parts and

how I would do, how would approach it. And Alton was really Adam meant that there would be no piano on it. He just loved what I was doing so much. He said, I just want you to keep going. I

had another guitar at, another one out, another one. So being a guitar player, as you probably saw, apart from the bassic guitar, all the way through, suddenly there was like, I think eight guitars on the intro, but by the time we got to the solo section, there's like ten guitars, and on the second half of the guitar solo there's twelve guitars totally rocking out, all maxed out, you know. In fact, one of the biggest sounds I got guitar wise came from a little Fender Champ amplifier that many

people use as a practice amp. Well. I found that by turning everything up to hell obviously and turning your guitar up to hell, and then you got the sound from Monster sound. I found out later that that's the sound that John used John Lennon used on Revolution. I found out when we were chatting one day about guitars, and I was like, really, is it does I can get it now because it's such an in your face sound and it's so distorted it makes sense, you know.

So yeah, I had the best time with doing it, and after i'd kind of done with all my guitar parts, and then the slight part at the end of the solo. I said, you gotta play piano on this. You got you gotta do. Jerey Lewis, you gotta do Little Richard, you know, do you somewhere on the track. So when the pack piano first comes in at the beginning of the chorus, it's not in for the first two verses. Obviously, the first part of the song. It comes in that lisando.

As it comes in, it's like, all right, it's a Nott John song. And then it really makes sense. But it was such fun to record. And he always talks about him dancing around the studio when we were cutting the track, and it's true he did. He had a long, long micro phone chord because nothing was wireless in those days, and he was right, you know, jumping over instruments and amplifiers and cabinets and come on, you fuckers. He was shutting recording this track. But it all worked. You know,

the aggression certainly paid off on that track. It comes out you know what that is as soon as it starts, and again, you know, we played the shit out of that and thanks to Gus and the engineers and the way that we were working at that point. We were just doing whatever, and everything was on hell. You know, all the settings were on hell. So the next album is Cariboo. Cut it the Ranch and niter Land, Colorado with a high altitude. How did you end up cutting there?

And what was it like with the altitude, etc. Bob, you know what, you asked the best questions. I knew this would be a long chat we have today. Caribou. The plan to go there was because simply we'd run out of residential places and the chateau was getting old. As we mentioned, it was starting to get a bit rough around the edges. We just wanted somewhere a bit different. We tried Jamaica. It was a kind of a letdown.

We'd heard about Carbo Ranch because of Joe Walsh's album Barnstorm, and I'm a huge Joe Waltz fan and a buddy of Joe, and I adore him. He's just a great, great player and a great man. And we heard that album and me and especially me and Elton were just like, oh my god, listen to these silence, listen to the guitar sounds, you know. So we decided to go to Carbo because it was a great sounding studio. What came

out of there sounding great. So we made the trip in January, that's our usual time to go and make a new album. That became our time, and off we went January, not knowing how fucking cold it was going to be there and snowbound. It was amazing beautiful, and we each had a log cabin to stay in, wonderful beautiful log cabins, beautifully, you know, with um brass beds and wonderful quilts and weighing nicer than the chateau. Luckily, lots of snow gear, and there was snow plows up there.

In fact, the first day I arrived, I went looking and walking around the property and ran into this guy working on a snow plow, and it was Terry Cath from Chicago, and we right and we became great friends there and then, and it was just it took a couple of days to get used to the studio there because it was so different. There was no windows in it,

even though and it was a very large. The thing about the chateau that was so special was that had these floors ceiling windows and because you know, obviously giant double thick windows because in the country, no, we didn't have sound to really worry about. There was no other outdoor sound. But Cariboo had no windows, so we were back to that kind of a little bit claustrophobic studio vibe. But it was a big room so that was okay.

The altitude really fucked with us straight away. We all got kind of headaches and stuff and found that we had to take aspir in the morning or something like that. Nigel got hooked on oxygen. We all kind of did, actually, but Nigel still has it on stage these days. That's

from Cariboo Ranch, believe it or not. And we found, to our surprise that Elton was singing about another ton and a half higher than he usually does, so that when you listen to the songs of Caribou and Captain Fantastic, which we recorded there also and the following album, he's singing so high. It was very difficult for us to reproduce that, you know, after the mid eighties, because he couldn't sing that high anymore. He was done after his throat issues. He couldn't get up there, so we had

to eventually scale everything down. So going back to that, his vocals were wonderful, but incredibly high. You know, everything was pitched really high. You might notice that the next time you hear a track from that album. We loved working there because we suddenly we made our own. The only difference is we didn't have like a little breakfast

practice room. Everything was in the studio, So we just have our breakfast in the lodge, all hang out there, do our thing, go for a snowmobile, have a ride and a horse, you know, do whatever you know, and then go to the studio and start writing recording. There's a track on there called on the first Caribou album called I've Seen the Saucers, which is a very very interesting song. I've always thought it was a it's a great deep cut, but the one that not a lot

of another fans have really paid much attention to. I don't think, but I really think it's quirky and a lot a lot of fun. For that track, Ray Cooper had the idea of using a water gong on it. Now, Ray when he does things, he didn't never do anything by halves. So Ray's gone was I don't know, ten feet in diameter, and we had we've had that in the studio It was hard enough getting in the studio. Then we had to find a tank big enough to

drop the water going into because that's the idea. You hold the gong suspended above the water and then you slowly drop it in. So it goes from this gone right the support studio. We almost drowned the studio. We almost ruined it with and mold and shit. So but the sound was great. The sound was great on that track. So the next time you hear it, listen for the

water Gone okay and the Bitch's Back. Bitch's Back was special, um because we wanted to do it was obviously going to be a rock track, and Elton wrote it very quickly and he said, I want, you know, I want a really different intro, something really machine gun doing something different, you know, And I went, okay, well that, so I did the g tuning idea and came up with, um what it was, which is essentially doing a bark or they're going to did a little bit, a little bit,

a little bit bad about and do the inversions with your first and third finger and sorry, your second and third finger for all your guitar nuts out there. And it's a great sound and the way I got that sound was by plugging directly into the console, not through an amplifier, so that sound has got a really high end kind of fipip sound to it. It's that direct sound to it. So we did two guitars like that, and then I added a couple of heavier guitars later on.

We were always great for varying the textures of whatever guitars we put on. We would make sure that there was one was a bit different from the other, and then if a lead guitar track, it was obviously from the other four. So I'm the Bitch's back. Had the two direct inject guitars doing the riff, then a couple of overdriven guitars doing that, and then like a solo

sign guitar doing other pickup links. But again, a really fun track to record, and we had Tar of Power come up there for a few days to do some horns, and so we had a built in sec solo with Lenny and those guys up there. So it was awesome. Okay, going to the next job, which you referenced earlier, Captain Fantastic, which is also cut in Caribou Ranch. There's a lot to dig in there, so maybe leave that for another time. But I'm only going to ask you because your memory

is so damn good. My favorite track on that is tell Me when the whistle Blows. Remember anything on that? Oh? Absolutely, What a great song and what a different song. Because it's such a unique song. We all thought right from the off, it's got to be a really different treatment, different from the way that we'd play anything else. We were going for a real, a real soul blues type of thing, and the idea was to cut it with electric piano, so none of that melodic pianos, regular acoustic

piano stuff, really nice dark electric piano sound. D's bass and Nigel Strump's really cut it like that, leave it sparse, and then later I would overdub some guitar lines. And that's exactly the way we did it. The idea from my guitar sound. I kind of stole a couple of tricks from a couple of other guitar players. I stole an idea from Steven Stills about using the bass pick pick up on your guitar and taking all the travel off that pickup so that it's really round sounding and

really cool. And I stole a couple of David Gilmore ideas with the way he kind of approaches notes so that you'd hear all the inflection of just one guitar, not a whole bunch of instruments, and so it was a very style. It was our most stylized track we've done up to that point, I think. And then we asked Gene Paige to do the orchestral arrangement because we loved what he was doing with that Philadelphia soul sound

and his stuff was just off the charts. It was so cool and at first, in fact, when we first when we heard it, none of us liked it. We heard it, but it was so fucking weird that when we heard it as far as it was like, really, oh my god, that's a bit cheese, and then there's a there's this, But then you know, the more we heard it, he was like, Okay, got it because he's a really special was a very special arranger. Okay. The album after that also cut in uh Colorado Rock of

the West. He's one of my two favorite tracks on that you actually have a writing credit which has grows some funk of your own. What happens there? Well, well, that song I love on the album The way the track comes in after Island Girl, because it follows Island Girl, which is the Puppy first hit. I think off the record, the way it grows some funk comes in couldn't have been more exact the way I imagine it when we wrote it. We wrote it the night before and Elton's room.

We were screwing around writing. We wrote a couple of songs in His and His Lug happen that week, three songs in fact. But Gross and Funk happened after we'd written the song which is the opening song on the album, the medley, Yell Help Um, And that was purely my idea from I was listening to a lot of Jjkle stuff back then, and I was based in my rhythm

ideas for that song on that. But Gross and Funk was much more of a Okay, here's a great rock riff, but what about changing the key so that starts off with a slamming rock driff and then goes into a two part harmony guitar line. Down damn down, Dada da. So it was like, oh, yeah, this is gonna work because Caleb and I were doing two guitar parts, and then later on in the song, Ray Cooper was able to use the vibes in such a way, the Eddie

Kendrick's vibe at the end of the song. You know, the musicians we add in that band allowed us to do some great things on that album. Apart from Caleb and Me doing the guitars, which you were really astounding on a lot of that record. But James as keyboard, James Newton Harder's keyboard on the album is fucking unbelievable. James and I have always really worked well together and had a lot of fun together. Yeah, so it's all been so much fun. I think you grow some funk.

I believe Kicky and I did some background vocals on that song as well. Okay, the next album is Blue Moves in the fall of seventy six. This is simultaneous with Elton coming out as gay, which is not a big deal today. I think it's been over emphasized. I don't think it really was as big a deal as they said back then. But the album was not as successful. Sorry seems to be the hardest word. Ended up being a huge hit. Did you get a bittersweet vibe from

the reception and what was going on there? Yeah, to me, even when we were recording the album. There's some great stuff on it, no doubt, absolutely no doubt. But as it went on to me, it was a little it was almost like diluted. It was almost like fresh orangues. It's been diluted. Suddenly it became not what I remembered it being. And it wasn't because suddenly there was seven people in the studio instead of four, you know, or five when Ray would be a part of the band

as well. It was more than that. It was like, hold on, how many people were in that band? Shit to Elton, myself, Ray Rogier, Pope, Caleb Quay, Kenny Passarelli, James S. Newton heard Roger Pope? Is that right? Roo? So yeah, seven people a lot of people. It's a lot, a lot more ideas. And I think Alton was being extremely generous in suggesting that we write some songs it. It was so very very kind of him in that way.

It kind of in a booknd to what we were talking about earlier about about if people think they should get a piece of a certain song on this record.

I feel that Alton was more bringing us in that particular band into songwriting, which was a very generous thing to do for any artist or any musician, I feel, and I don't think it hurts the record in that the way the record turned out, because it turned out to be a much more to me, a much more sober collection of songs than anything we'd come up with before. Things that didn't quite make sense to me. To me, it wasn't cohesive as cohesive any of the albums that

we've done previously. That's again chefs my personal opinion. I have no idea how the rest of the guys feel about it. And I think that the album cover and the packaging kind of the album covered that is the insert and the picture was kind of happy, and that was fine, But the album itself all being blue with that Patrick Proctor painting, it was fine, and I guess it's what they wanted to do at the time, and it was very artsy, but maybe for me I thought

it was a little too artsy. Okay, do you realize the end is coming? After that album? Elton breaks up the band? You're on your own? Did you see that coming? And what did you feel when that happened. I did see it coming. I didn't know what was coming after it. I did see an end to the thing, and we'd talked a little bit about stuff and because of his health mainly and the amount of work we were having to do to tour with all the product that was out there and the demand to see Elton and the band,

and it was phenomenal. It was a wonderful time. But he was very, very straight up about it. He sat the whole band down with Sean Reid, all of us together, and he said, guys, I can't do this anymore. I'm done. I have to dissolve the band because I don't know what I'm going to do next. I just need time for myself to recover from what we've been doing for the last seven years or whatever I've been doing. I need a break. I need to be me and find

myself and have rest, etcetera, etcetera. And he gave everybody a really nice handoff to say, you know, you guys have been amazing, and all the rest of it now all down the line. For myself, the situation has always been a little bit different. Elton's always been in touch with me. I think the longest period when he didn't call me was after what he decided to do another band thing and I was already working with Alice Cooper and then that segued into some work with Meat Love.

So I was already a very busy session guy, and he wanted to work with with other I think he wanted to work with other people. He had asked me a couple of times about doing a couple of projects, and I did a I think I played on one of his solo records, A single Man. I played on one track of that. So I've always been in touch with him more than anybody else music wise, hence the

musical director kind of tag. But I did get up in jam with a band that he had right before we got back together in nineteen end of eighty one beginning of eighty two. He had either a tour I think that encompassed that Central Park gig that he did where he wore the Many Mouse sorry not many Mouse, Daisy Duck costume, Donald Duck costume. Right, he had Central Park and back then he had d and Nigel back in the band, but he had two other guitar players he had Um I kind of Tim Rennick, I think,

and Richie Zero. I want to say that's my guests UM and I think, I don't think Ray was even in that that band and some background singers, three background singers who I can't remember who they were, so it was different, but it wasn't people who were owning the music. I didn't feel I want to see it at the Forum when when the show came through, and you know, Elton said, well, why don't you get up on a song?

And I got up on bite your lip, get up on dance and blew some some rock and slight guitar and it was great good to see him see them and do that again. But I could tell right then he wasn't happy with what was going on then, and if he was going to tour again, I could tell then. It was almost like it's going to happen very soon. And yeah, but I was just getting done with the meat loaf thing. He hopped to call me and said, I really think we should put the band back together.

It's so funny, Bob, because here in that phrase. I've heard it done jokingly in so many sitcoms and different things and used in different contexts. But when he said I really think we should get the band back together, I said, you're absolutely fucking right, we should. You know, it was just okay, let's do it. And again we went into Mark two and it went the same way. Okay, when he does break up the brand, how much does that fuck you up? How do you lift yourself off

the floor? Are you okay financially? What happens in that interim before you start to work with Alice Cooper, etc. Well, first of all, I started to do sessions with other people. I started to work with other producers like Richard Perry, robert A Pere, Bill Schnay because they again knew what I did, and they would invite me to play on their track and also artist occasional I would just say, would you come and play on my record? I'd like

Alice Cooper and people like that. So I built up some I was never really that short of work immediately following Elton, and my intention at that point was, Okay, well we're going into nineteen seventy seven. I just kind of take some time for myself. So I went to Tahiti for a month and almost didn't come home. I

fell in love with Bora Bora, absolutely loved it. Got completely away from music and anything to do with touring or anything, and really cleansed myself, you know, and and we finally came back and slowly got back into life in California, because I just started living in California. I'd rented a place in Hollywood. And to be totally honest, Bob, there was also an awful lot of the rock star

thing coming creeping into my my life. Then when I say the rock star thing, what I mean is dangerous amounts of alcohol and drugs and women started to creep into the picture. And it began to get very very dodgy and scary. Quite frankly, Um, I managed to come through the other end, but not through, you know, not from a lot of bumps and bruises and and and

you know, potholes, false starts and what have you. You know, as as we all do, as life, as life takes us, it can't all be up, you know, it certainly can't all be up. And I had a great time. I got to tell you, I went on for like a couple of years of really having a good time. I put it this way, I thought it was having a

good time. Um. Although the parties were quite legendary amongst the people who who came and enjoyed them for a couple of years, but like any other person in that situation, when you're hosting that kind of event on a regular basis, you suddenly wake up and go, well, either you don't wake up, or you wake up and say, you know what, everybody's around my house? I think what happened? What really shook me up? One night, it was about three four in the morning when a dear friend of mine happened

to be Lowell. George May rest in peace. So I'd dore little Feet, that one of my favorite things of all time. And Richie and Lowell and those guys would hang out at the house as well. So they were into notorious, notoriously into various forms of you know, stuff, and so they'd be they'd be fixtures in the house. But I was fast asleep on it, and it was about four in the morning, and it was Lowell's wife banging on the door, wanting to come in and party,

you know, and those kind of things. That kind of thing already happening, and people like Oliver Read the actor showing up. I don't know all of her fucking read and he shows up in my house, and you know, it was just bizarre. And I suddenly thought, all right, I'm gonna have to get again, a little bit of respectability, get that into my life. And I figured the best way to do that was to get married and have some kids. And that's what happened with my second marriage

and had two wonderful children. Rosa my wife at that time I met. She was a dancer with Alice Cooper's band. When I went to work with Alice, so you know, mister rockstar picks up the dancer. And the tour was Rose my wife at that time, and Cheryl Cooper, Alice's wife, with the two female dancers, and there were two gay guys, and you know, that period was it was kind of interesting because working with Id segued into working with Alice, and it was so much fun. It was just hilarious.

And Alice is still a dear friend to this day and his wife, Cheryl. That marriage at that time wasn't to be. It really was what I had mentioned to you. It seemed to be like a way of me gaining some kinds of respectability, responsibility also, but it didn't pan out. I just wasn't willing to stop my ways, my rock star ways, and I wasn't certainly wasn't ready the quick touring when Elton when the band came back together, So really that second marriage was doomed. And what about getting clean,

because Elton famously got clean. Yeah, I thought it was amazing when I was so proud of him when he got clean. Of course, like many, like many alcoholics and drug addicts, you know, it wasn't for me that time. When I saw him do it, I thought, it's so great he's doing it, and I was so happy for him. I was having a wonderful period of time because I just met my wife, my present wife, Kay back then in nineteen eighty nine, and he got sober in nineteen ninety so it was the perfect timing for me to

have this year getting to know my new wife. Oh, we weren't married at that point. We were together for the first two years, had a baby, and then we married in ninety two. But it was a wonderful time to have a vacation, really start enjoying family. This this woman I was in love with, and suddenly I thought, that's it. I found the right combination for me and you know, for her, I think. And we had a beautiful baby and we decided to travel everywhere together and

that's what we did. There was still a lot of party in going on, mainly drinking because the Danes are probably as big drinkers as the Scots, and I wasn't ready to stop drinking, definitely not. And ten years of that, my wife and I was still very much in love. But when we lost our son in two thousand and one, that was such a jolt. Obviously it sounds like a very weak way of putting it, but it shook me

to the core, obviously. But I didn't stop drinking for another seven years after that because I was I think I was on a course to killing myself. Nothing mattered. I didn't matter if I was around or not, and I was still when I got back to working. The band were always very you know, Elton was great. He was very supportive all the way through it. I mean he supported me in more ways than I can tell you, and the band were kind to me. It was difficult

because you know, I went back. It was right in the middle of the Billy Joe whole thing that I lost my son and saw that going back after four or five months of being away in dealing with that grief was really difficult. It was really hard, and you know, I found myself getting into antidepressions and stuff like that, which didn't help with the drinking. So I wasn't stopping any of it until the fall of two thousand and nine.

And with Elton, he invited me back to his place where we're doing in the middle of a tour, and occasionally over the years he'd invite me back for a few days and we'd hang out and you know, listen to music and do you know whatever, have dinners and just have fun, and to inviting me back after while we're on tour in two thousand and nine and the fall,

and he sat me down at breakfast one day. He just comes down for breakfast and we're having like bald eggs and toast and marmalade and cups teen we're chatting away and he just turned to him and he said, you know, I think you should do something about your drinking and your drugs and stuff. And my first I said, really, I said, the drummer is much worse than me. He said, I'm not talking about the fucking drummer. I'm talking about you.

So right there was a wonderful nudge from one of my dearest friends of all time telling me you better sort this out. It's time. So he got me on that path and from there I met several people who have been so helpful. And the people I've met in that program have just been so unbelievable. And yeah, I have not a drinks since two thousand November two thousand and nine or thirteen years, okay, over thirteen years. So you went to AA or you went to rehab, or

you did it yourself. I've done both, Bob, for good reasons. I did it myself first, and I was wonderful and got it and got the whole thing and adored it. And then some years later the beginning of this Farewell tour actually and I was having an issue with pain medication for neck and shoulder injuries. I've still go I'm still going through thanks a lot of guitars. And I decided to go to Eric Clapton's place, Crossroads, which I

had heard about from some friends. And I have a dear friend in music Cares Harold On, who helped me hook me up with that. And I decided at the end of a leg of the tour, and I sat down with Alton and said, look, in two weeks time, I want to go and sort this out. And he said I think that's awesome you're doing that so because I you know, I was worried about the pain medication and it never affected my drinking or anything like that, but I was worried about other ways of not being sober.

And I went to Crossroads for a month, had the best time I had, you know, wonderful counselors and therapists, and came out of there free of everything. And freedom is the is the key, Bob. In fact, that was the That was the reading I've read this morning. It was all about freedom. You know, when you have a life where you feel free and you're not worried about anything, you're not guilty about anything, you don't owe anybody anything, you're not concerned about somebody saying your name, and you

turn around thinking, well, what the fuck is that? You know? It's that's real freedom, and that's what I have nowadays. Okay, you cut us an individual project in the seventies, you put out an album last year. Did you ever have a desire to be your own act or these are just side things you had to get out of your system. Yes, definitely sight things, you know. The opportunity here to do my first solo record was when I just joined Elton literally six months in to play with him. He said,

I love what you do. You've got to make you right. I said, yeah, I do. I said it's not very commercial what I write. He said, doesn't matter. He said, I'm forming a record label and I'd love you to be one of the artists on it. He said, I have Kiki d I have a band called Long Dancer. I'd like you to be one of the artists on it. I said, I love tim. I'm very touched that I get to make an album. So I got gusts to

produce it. Um. I really enjoyed doing it. I used a lot of good friends like Joe and Armor Trading. I got to play piano on a couple of tracks myself, which was fun. I used Dudley Moore's drummer on a few tracks. I was able to use d and Nagel on a few tracks. I just and I used Elton on the opening track on the record, which was really great fun and but it was definitely not out of commercial venture and but one that many many people mentioned how much they enjoyed the music on it over the years,

and I'm grateful for that. It never got slammed because I don't think a lot of people heard it, quite frankly, but the people who did hear it seemed to love it. So fast forward almost fifty years to COVID and I'm sitting it home, thinking, wow, I'm going to be home for a while. This might be a good time for me to write some music and enjoy early retirement, because who knows what's going to happen. So that's exactly what happened,

except in this case what I've written something. I've got some talented kids, Bob, I've told you that I would say. There was one song I wrote it brings to mind. You know why all started again. It's to do with the Beatles, I suddenly thought, and I got the kids together, Elliott the singer, Charlie the engineer, keyboard player. I said, guys, why don't we just record a song. We're just sitting at home here, nothing's going on, you know, let's wrest

record something together. And they said, okay. So I picked here, there and everywhere. Well, just a great Beatles song, as you well know. And we didn't copy the Beatles version, but we did it in a way that was I think beautiful, and we did it all up in Charlie's bedroom, literally sitting on the bed doing it, and you know it said the acoustic guitar part first, then the Mandolins, then put some bass on it, and then I had Elliott sang on it, and then Charlie put some keyboard

on it. This is the way we did the whole record. Really. Obviously, as I started to write more, I started to concentrate more on the guitar aspect because I was writing a thing that was more my kind of record. And Yeah, what came out was just a really enjoyable collection of songs I feel, and Elliott sang lead on almost all of them. I sung the vocal on one and I did two instrumentals, and it was just a joyous thing

to do this stuff with my children. And the studio that I'm in right now belongs to my friend Marlin Hoffman, who's sitting next door, I think, eavesdropping, And we did the whole thing in the studio which is Marlin's home studio. Okay, what is one thing people don't know about Elton or a misconception? Quite a lot of thing that Elton doesn't remember about Elton. Elton makes a really good cup of tea.

Once in the studio in Book Studios, another residential place in Denmark, who were making a record called Sleeping with the Past, and I was doing a guitar overdub and he came over to me, came into the room where I was, had my amplifier and my guitar and put a cup of tea down and I said, oh, thanks, Helton, and I carried on doing the soul or whatever it

was I was doing. How to drink of the tea A few seconds later, put my guitar down, put the headphones down, and went out of the studio to find him. I said, Elton, this is the best cup of tea I've ever had. I said, how would you know how to make the tea that I love? He said, Davy, I've known you for like sixteen years already, surely i'd know how to meet you a fucking cup of tea. And there's another thing about album that people don't know that I'll squeeze in. And it's another domestic fact about

our hero, Sir Elton. He and I went up on we went up to see the Warner Brothers tour. It was a rock and roll tour with little feet tier of power Graham Central Station. This is in nineteen seventy three in the fall, and what a tour. And we were both little feet freaks. So he says, come on jumping my rolls. We jumped in the rolls with his driver. We took off up to Manchester. We checked into a sleazy little hotel, had some Indian food and went to

see the concert, which blew our minds. We ended up on stage with the Dubies and Lowell and all these people and having a great time. And we ended up staying, you know, hanging out partying with the band. And we came back late lately. We probably got back to my house in London about five in the morning. I opened the door and again I've got a nanny. My wife's

away at that time, the first wife. There is a disaster in the kitchen, my young son, Tam, who's only just coming up for a year and no by this time he's three. There's coffee, tea, milk, whatever you can find, PORI jokes, everything all mashed up together on the floor. And he's in the middle of the kitchen floor and I walk in and he goes Da Hi and Alton. We both look at it and he shrieks. Obviously he

doesn't like mess. And I said, oh man, I can't believe this, and he said, look, you take take take time upstairs and change him, clean him up, do what you gotta do. I don't know what that is. I'll clean up down here. This is Alton Joe. And I'm taking my infant son, my three year olds down upstairs to clean him up and bathe him. And I'm thinking, Alton's a good guy. You know, he's downstairs cleaning my kitchen. And I go downstairs and I swear it's fucking spotless.

So I don't know many other people who can claim that to have something that Elton has done for them, but a great cup of tea and a great kitchen cleaner. Plus he's my buddy. Great stories. Let's say it really is the end? Yeah, can you sit at home and be retired? I mean, is that really an option for you? No? I wanted at home and be retired. I would never do that, Bob, I'm not. I'm not that guy at all. I'll be I'll continue to make music forever. And I've

got a couple of things up my sleeve. One that I've been working on for many years, just gathering slowly gathering stuff for it, which is a documentary based on the original band and the way this whole thing came together. I mean, I'm talking about you know, Elton, Me, d Nigel and then later on Ray and it's really coming together and the stories are hilarious for the most part. Obviously there's some deep other kinds of stuff going on

in there. You know, there's everything you could imagine. So when this thing is over, I'm getting back to it and probably take me about a year to finish, I would imagine. So either the very end of next year or the beginning of twenty twenty five, there'll be a documentary and it's a tentatively titled Harmony. Okay, one other thing. If you're not working, you playing the guitar every day,

you know what. Normally I don't because I wouldn't necessarily pick up a guitar between tours because I just wanted to get away from music. But I found that, especially with COVID, as soon as I felt free enough and loose enough to do something for myself, the daily playing became fire against something that I haven't done for many, many years. So that's a very very acute question you asked me there, Bob, Because Yeah, I suddenly started to

enjoying it again. Because there wasn't a deadline. I didn't have to worry about doing a certain thing, working a new song, a song that we've done with Elton for the band. It was just all about what I wanted to do, and that's what I'm enjoying. I'm going to enjoy getting back to well on that. No, Davy, this is a natural point of demarcation before the band gets back together, and so many things, and they're certainly you know,

you talk about sleeping with the past. I got a lot of questions about that, but I think we're going to bring it to an end for today. So I want to thank you so much for spending this time with my audience. I've enjoyed this so much, Bob, and thank you so much for inviting me. Thanks for having me on here. And I'll call Dave Page to thank you for suggesting it. Oh listen great, I'm going to contact Page two in any event, till next time. This is Bob left Sex