ELTON JOHN

In August 1970, Elton John, totally unknown in the US, played his first gig there, at the 300-capacity Troubadour club in Los Angeles. That one, audience-flooring show would prove to be a major turning point in his career.

Words: Johnny Black

Hello America! Elton John makes his US debut at Doug Weston’s Troubadour in West Hollywood, August 25, 1970.

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Ina poll in British music weekly Record Mirror in 1970, Elton John was voted the fifth-most promising pop act in the UK. However, at first even this minimal promise looked set to go unfulfilled. His singles failed in the charts, and his first album, Empty Sky, had made very little impression. And while his self-titled second fared much better, reaching UK No.5, he was playing gigs mostly in universities and small clubs. Even more discouraging, given that his singing voice was, to say the least, mid-Atlantic, all but one US label passed on signing him. Interest in Elton was so low that MCA subsidiary UNI Records, the home of Neil Diamond and not much else, was able to snap him up for an advance of precisely zero.

Elton’s business manager, the powerful music publisher Dick James, was on the brink of throwing in the towel, but as a last ditch effort he resolved to put a final 10,000 dollars into breaking Elton in the USA.

“At one point, the idea had been for me to play [LA club] the Troubadour with Jeff Beck,” Elton has said. “I’d met him in London and got along with him fantastically well. But Jeff’s manager stepped in and said that because he was already so big in the States, I’d get ten percent and Jeff would get ninety. He was telling my manager, Dick, that, ‘Jeff gets ten thousand dollars a night in some places, and it’d take Elton six years to build up to that.’ So I’m sitting there, wanting, thinking: ‘Ten thousand dollars a night, wow!’ And I hear Dick saying: ‘Listen, I guarantee you this boy will be earning that much in six months!’ And I say to myself: ‘Dick, what a dippy old fart you are!’ So the Jeff Beck thing fell through and I was sulking.”

It was now, however, that an unlikely alliance of British and American music biz bigwigs came together, determined, against the odds, to make Elton John a star. In London, for example, Elton’s booking agent, Vic Lewis, was burning up the transatlantic phone cables trying to secure US dates. Elton’s personal manager, Ray Williams, remembers derisory offers coming in at this point, including $50 for a show in New York.

One glimmer of light in the gloom was Travis Michael Holder, talent co-ordinator for the tiny but influential Troubadour club in Hollywood. Holder remembers repeated arguments with Troubadour owner Doug Weston “about my interest in booking a young British unknown named Elton John, whom I’d met at a recording studio in England the year before as he was recording Your Song, for his first appearance in the United States.”

Despite Weston asserting that his talent co-ordinator had no idea what he was doing, Holder booked Elton as an opening act for Jerry Jeff Walker. Weston conceded the gig but, notorious for the hard-nosed deals he drove, got Elton John’s trio at a meagre $500 for a week of gigs, during which they would play eight shows.

For Holder it was a calculated risk. He knew that Walker was rushing to complete an album, so gambled that the booking would be postponed and Elton would be upgraded to headliner status.

“I don’t know if Doug ever fully realised my treachery,” he has said, “but the resulting notoriety of that one historic appearance brought the Troub great clout – and gave my employer a new respect for me.”

With that six-night Troubadour slot lined up, Dick James convinced MCA to put up half the costs of a US jaunt, and Vic Lewis set about finalising a clutch of additional dates, including a further six nights at the Troubadour North in San Francisco, a one-nighter at New York’s Playboy Club and two nights at The Electric Factory in Philadelphia.

Your songs: Elton John and his lyricist writing partner Bernie Taupin in New York City, November 1970.

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So it was that, in late August, an LA-bound flight took off from Heathrow Airport with Elton, drummer Nigel Olsson and bassist Dee Murray, Elton’s lyric writer Bernie Taupin, record producer Steve Brown, sleeve designer David Larkham, tour manager Ray Williams and roadie Bob Stacey, in Economy class seats. The flight touched down on Sunday, August 23, just two days before Elton’s opening night at the Troubadour.