Elton John, 1973
the original Piano Man and original inspiration for my photo adventures
Elton John performed at the Hollywood Bowl on September 7, 1973. His was not the first concert I attended, but it was the first legit rock and roll concert experience in my life.
I had seen The Lovin’ Spoonful and the Cowsills at Disneyland during Spring Break, April 1968. It was only a few days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, and John Sebastian introduced “Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind,” a single from 1965, with a political tone - reinforcing to my young but aware mind that the status quo was a choice between two evils.
In 1966, while on our annual family holiday in Tokyo, The Beatles performed at the Budokan. They were staying in the same hotel we were in - the Tokyo Hilton. However I didn’t learn about it until 1995, when The Beatles Anthology was broadcast on television and I saw the aerial shot of the Hilton and told the friends with whom I was watching, “That’s the Tokyo Hilton. We stayed there every June and July from 1966-1969.”
The captions proved me right, and my friends were impressed that I could recognize the hotel. What they didn’t know was that documentary told me about everything I missed about the Beatles in Tokyo. The Beatles who stayed in the very same hotel we did. Surely my dad would have known about it - he strangely knew so much about The Beatles1. He was the one who not just encouraged me to watch them on the Ed Sullivan Show, he made snacks for my sister and me so we would stay in front of the television set - a late night for us as we were 6 and 3 years old at the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
In January of 1972, my best friend and I rode a Greyhound bus from Santa Barbara to Orange County to see The Carpenters perform at Anaheim Convention Center. We spent the night with one of her relatives who lived in Buena Park and took the Greyhound back home the following morning. I think because it was The Carpenters, both our parents didn’t think anything could go wrong. And nothing did. AND concert fever gripped me. It was so EASY to do this on my own!
There was ONE fantastic thing about The Carpenters, apart from parents approving of them. Richard Carpenter played a Wurlitzer electric piano. So did Ian McLagan of Faces, and I wanted one. But when it came to asking my parents to buy one (we already had a piano), I stressed it was the kind of modern piano The Carpenters played. Done!
In the Summer of 1972, just as her single, “I Am Woman” was starting to get radio airplay, Helen Reddy played at a small outdoor annual festival in a community about 30 minutes away from my home and I saw that show - and the festival is one we all attended anyway as school marching bands from all over the State participated in the Parade of Flowers, and there was a majorette competition. Twirling a baton was a big deal for teenagers in the 1970s. Reddy played later that night at the high school, and I saw that as well. A local band called Antler opened. I remember nothing about them except their name. You can’t forget a band name like Antler!
A week later, I spent several days in Los Angeles with a group of friends from school to see JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR at the opening of a new venue, The Universal Amphitheater (it is not there anymore - replaced by a Harry Potter theme park attraction) on the lot of Universal Studios. Sure, this was a concert, but it was a theatrical performance, its advertisement stated, and since I went with 5 of my schoolmates, felt curiously like a field trip “to the theatre,” especially since ticketing for those shows was done by mail order only - it truly felt like school.
So, yes, I had already seen performers with national presence and radio hits, but in the smallest of venues with captive audiences who were there for the overall event. And I can’t really call any of those shows “rock and roll,” because even though the Lovin’ Spoonful rocked, they were kinda folky too. And it was Disneyland, so rocking out was seriously limited.
Elton John’s concert was the first concert I attended that was specifically about the concert and the artist and rock and roll, and it was at the venerable Hollywood Bowl, summer home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra! The Bowl’s posted capacity is 17,500 and the place was packed - sold out.
September 7 was six weeks before I would have my Learner’s Permit (meaning I could drive if a licensed adult driver was in the car with me). So my sister and I had to be driven to the concert. My dad won the award for Girl Dad of the Decade for his 1973 duties alone. He drove us to quite a few concerts before I had my license, and he did not embarrass us by being our “date,” or visible parental chaperone2. Sometimes he dropped us off and picked us up, and sometimes - such as in the case of this Elton John concert, waited for us in the car, parked in the venue’s parking lot. Surely he could hear the music. Granted, it was alone time for him… he could nap, smoke, listen to the radio or the ambient sounds of the concert. I never realized how incredibly cool it was of him to offer his teenaged daughters a semblance of independence by not attending a concert with them - and was content simply being their chauffeur.
My parents also were not too censorial about who I could see or not, but they were delighted when I wanted to see The Carpenters and Elton John because of the PIANO. I’d taken piano lessons since I was about 5 years old. I wanted to learn the organ, because I was obsessed with “Green Onions” and would refuse to let my father stop the car if it was on the radio when we were parking. I asked him what that glorious sound was, and he told me it was an organ and then I demanded one. He refused, saying “we have a piano you don’t play!” and then the piano lessons started.
When I started taking piano lessons, I just couldn’t get it. It took about 5 years before anything made sense to me, and then one day, I woke up and could play just like all the other 10 year olds. By 1972, I had mastered a Beethoven Sonata! Pathetique. The second movement, the adagio, is the one I played best. And I kind of can still play it today. This → link ← is to Rudolph Serkin’s recording of it. His is the interpretation I like best. Even Billy Joel3 (in the documentary directed by my former PBS colleague, Susan Lacy) said it was the most beautiful of Beethoven’s melodies, and I concur.
Ironically, once I became adept at a keyboard instrument, I stopped taking lessons because I was now driving and going to concerts to see keyboard players. In the last months of 1973, when I did have my Learner’s Permit but was still being driven to shows by my dad, I saw Elton John, Faces, and Electric Light Orchestra in rapid succession. And then I turned myself into an Apple Scruff for The Band (two keyboard players!) while they were in the studio with Bob Dylan making PLANET WAVES.
EVERYONE in my school loved Elton John. It seemed like he was a universally loved artist and when I told my friends that I had seen him at the Hollywood Bowl, no one believed me. I told them about new songs he debuted from a forthcoming album4 (and I still wonder if, in real time, they realized I had seen him and heard the new songs that I mentioned by title). I told them about how the t-shirts were being given away as you left the parking lot - one t-shirt per passenger in the car. But they cynically said I could have bought one on the street. The saying “pictures or it didn’t happen” wasn’t a turn of phrase in the 1970s, but people thought it and meant it.
I didn’t take any photos of Elton at the Hollywood Bowl. I didn’t think to!
I had been taking pictures since I was about 5 also. I just hijacked my parents’ camera and turned them into the subjects, when as their first-born, I was previously the main subject matter. I photographed the dog, street scenes, everything. I loved movies, so I also hijacked their Super 8 movie camera. I made little 1-cartridge movies. I made a 6-minute movie as a final project for Environmental Studies class. The other name for a contact sheet is proof sheet.
I would use the camera to prove I attended these concerts. Thanks Elton! You inspired me; you put me on this path and this is where I have arrived.
The next concert I saw was Faces. I shot Super 8 movies of them, and then lurked around the limo area at the stadium, met Ronnie Wood and Ian McLagan, got their autographs and told them I filmed a bit of the show. They asked when they could see the film. I got their itinerary and hotel fake names and met up with them a week later.
This could only have happened in the 70s. And it happened equally with boys and with girls (see Cameron Crowe and his whole career!).
I never underestimated or doubted the power I held simply by being a teenaged girl.
An Unchaperoned Teenaged Girl.
In a postmodern move, I designed the book cover long before I started figuring out the chapters - but this is what my Substack is for - to work out the kinks and to get feedback.
The rest of the Elton John and Faces stories are in the book.
I may be a conspiracy theorist, but the coincidences freak me out. When I was planning a holiday for the South of France to pay homage to Exile on Main St., and gawk at Nellcote in Villefranche-sur-Mer, my dad told me to book into the Hotel Negresco in Nice (about 10 miles away) because The Beatles stayed there the last time he was there, and he had been staying there whenever he had business in the Mediterranean. I did, and could only afford it because his employer had a company suite… posh doesn’t even begin to describe it. But WHY did my DAD always cross paths with or know about The Beatles??? He was born in 1922, which made him old enough to be their dad.
When I saw ALMOST FAMOUS, I was immediately reminded of instances like this one. Unlike the movie, neither of my parents ever said “Don’t take drugs” out loud to embarrass us in front of other kids, but they did drop us off at shows. Crowe and I are the same age, and I followed his trajectory through his bylines, which often stated his age, and I would be green with envy at his moxy and his work ethic. Although I own a copy, I have delayed reading his memoir until I finish writing my own. Same age, same era… I don’t want his memories to overlap or inform mine. We all do so much conflating of things past already.
I know everyone refers to Billy Joel as The Piano Man BUT Elton John & Bernie Taupin’s song “Tiny Dancer” self-references its narrator as a Piano Man, and “Tiny Dancer” was released in 1971 and Joel’s “Piano Man” was released in 1973. The two pop music pianists are friends and fans of one another, so I don’t see it as anything but a coincidental homage, but I’m also being a pedant, because that’s just how I am!
Elton played several songs from GOODBYE YELLOW BRICK ROAD, which wasn’t released until a month after the concert. I remember the moody “Funeral For a Friend / Loves Lies Bleeding” medley as if it were yesterday. He also played the title track, “Goodby Yellow Brick Road,” and “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting.”
Your dad was awesome!
Is that YOUR Elton John T-shirt from that show?