A few days before Elton John kicked off his record-setting, seven-night stand at Madison Square Garden in August 1976, he told New York Times writer Henry Edwards that he was ready to ready slightly ease up on the bombastic elements of his live show.
“The last time I played New York, I made an entrance perched on the shoulders of Mr. Universe,” he said. “My sense of the ridiculousness had gone about as far as it could go. That’s why I’ve decided not to look like Mae West on this tour. Still, the show will be humorous, have its tongue in its cheek, and be in thoroughly bad taste.”
When the residency began on Aug. 10, Elton kept to his word. He didn’t come out on Mr. Universe’s shoulders, and he wasn’t dressed like Mae West or any starlets from the Golden Age of Hollywood. He instead emerged from the wings alongside his nine-piece band in an elaborate Statue of Liberty costume, complete with a silver sequined cape. But he soon shedded all that in favor of “a more restrained outfit,” to quote the New York Daily News, that included a “jacket trimmed in gold sequins with a portrait of Carmen Miranda on the back and a sequined banana around his neck.”
That was a far cry from the bare stage he played at the 500-seat Troubadour during his U.S. debut just six years earlier, where he was joined only by drummer Nigel Olsson and bassist Dee Murray. But during that relatively brief window of time, he’d enjoyed an incredible, uninterrupted run of hits with few precedents in music history outside of the Beatles.
That’s why he was able to travel the world on a customized private jet known as the Starship, spend his downtime hobnobbing with Elizabeth Taylor and John Lennon, and book seven nights at MSG, breaking the record that the Rolling Stones set when they played six the previous year. (It’s never been proven that Elton booked one more just to top them, but it seems entirely possible.)
It’s difficult to pinpoint the precise moment that Elton-mania peaked, but August 1976 is a prime candidate considering the fact that “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” was Number One the entire month, and it coincided with the MSG run.
New York Daily News writer Michael Pousner captured the madness in an Aug. 5, 1976, article that was entirely about his efforts to land an interview with Elton. “Sorry, maybe he’ll talk to you when he releases his next album,” he was initially told by a publicist. “Might want some publicity then. By the way, we have another artist, Cliff Richard, who could use some publicity now. Want to talk to him?”
Pousner had no interest in Cliff Richard, and wound up backstage at the Spectrum in Philadelphia, without any commitment for an actual interview. But he did find himself just inches away from the Jackson Five. “Elton,” Pousner heard an “agent-type” say. “You wouldn’t mind if Michael Jackson came onstage for a moment, would you?” Michael himself witnessed this entire exchange up close as he “eyed Elton anxiously,” and was surely crushed by the response. “Sorry lad,” Elton said. “Maybe next time.”
The sort of hypersonic fame that gives you the power to disappoint Michael Jackson with a curt “sorry lad” doesn’t come without a backlash. And many rock critics, especially the kind enthralled by David Bowie, Kraftwerk, and all the young punk bands, weren’t exactly feeling the guy who recently issued “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart,” “Grow Some Funk of Your Own,” and “Island Girl.”
“I’m the person rock critics tend to hate the most,” John told the New York Times on Aug. 8. “And I quite revel in it. You see, there is currently a trend among rock critics: only if you are genuinely bad, will they love you.”
This is more than a little unfair since the critics were praising a lot of genuinely groundbreaking music of the time, and Elton’s newest LP, Rock of the Westies, was underwhelming, especially considering everything that came before it.
“But beside the fact that Elton John is a great live entertainer, his records, while commercially essential to his career strategy, have come to seem more and more artistically inconsequential,” Rolling Stone‘s Stephen Holden wrote in a very mixed review. “As for the album’s new songs, they barely accomplish their objective of providing the latest in synthetic boogie. Though this stuff may be great live, it doesn’t hold up on record.”
The Rock of the Westies songs might indeed have been great live, but we’ll never know since he dropped most of them from his concert repertoire almost immediately. By the MSG run, only “Island Girl” and “Grow Some Funk of Your Own” remained. (He hasn’t played a single note of music from Rock of the Westies besides “Island Girl” in a live setting since 1979. And even “Island Girl” forever returned to her island after 1990. When you read the lyrics, you realize that’s for the best.)
The rest of the set was mostly focused on big hits (“Bennie and Jets,” “Rocket Man,” “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” “Your Song”), but he did veer into some deeper cuts almost never heard today, including “Hercules,” “Empty Sky,” “Love Song,” “We All Fall in Love Sometimes/Curtains,” and “Tell Me When the Whistle Blows.” And midway through, Kiki Dee came out for “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” and her own song, “I’ve Got the Music in Me.”
This looks like a dream set for most fans, but John Rockwell of the New York Times was not impressed. “Listening to this music provides a sudden insight into what it must be like for parents confronted by their children’s dubious musical taste,” he wrote. “Mr. John’s music provokes an indifference in this listener so complete as to preclude any trace of hostility…The problem with Elton John, one might timidly suggest, is that his music is too facile. There is precious little passion beyond the passion of the fan. The songs with all their catchy hooks, sound too much alike. Bernie Taupin (who writes the words) doesn’t really engage on any level below the obvious and Mr. John’s music flows along in a watery way – fast and faceless. It’s wallpaper music of the most banal sort.”
A few months later, when Elton came out as bisexual in the pages of Rolling Stone, the review was still fresh in his mind. “I doubt if John Rockwell was even at the concert,” he said. “It was the most piss elegant review I’ve ever seen: ‘Performers come and go but we rock critics who have to deal with them…‘ I thought, ‘Who the fuck is John Rockwell!’”
Very few major musical artists were courageous enough to come out of the closet in the Seventies. It’s tough to say how much the backlash impacted Elton’s career since it coincided with a series of underwhelming, cocaine-fueled albums. But what’s clear is the MSG residency was not only the end of Elton’s 1976 world tour, but the end of an entire era of his life. In the months that followed, he parted ways with his touring band, and announced an extended break from the road that lasted until 1979. The MTV-era comeback fueled by “I’m Still Standing” was several years away.
Billy Joel had just dropped Turnstiles when Elton hit MSG in 1976. It was such a colossal dud, peaking at No. 122, that Columbia considering dropped him from their roster. Few people would have predicted he was on a trajectory toward making a seven-night run at MSG look like amateur hour.
All these years later, Billy and Elton are no longer on speaking terms following a very public spat in 2011.Billy is on an indefinite hiatus from touring as he recovers from the neurological condition normal pressure hydrocephalus, and Elton has lost the majority of his vision due to an eye infection.
But that hasn’t stopped him from playing the occasional concert, even though he wrapped up his 330-date Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour in 2023. He’s set for two nights at Mexico City’s Estadio Banorte in early October, and Rock in Rio the following month. If you’re heading to any of those shows, don’t expect to hear “Island Girl” or any other Rock of the Westies songs. You’ve got a far better shot of Kiki Dee coming back for an encore of “I’ve Got the Music in Me.”
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