One of the greatest, most varied, most influential musicians of all time, David Bowie altered not just his sound on nearly every record but also his appearance and character. His remarkable career made him one of the best-selling artists in history, with an estimated 100 million recordings sold globally, thanks to his distinctive style. Many of his contemporaries, including the renowned British pianist and singer Elton John, discussed his work over the years.
What is Elton John’s opinion on David Bowie?
Elton John discussed his legacy and passing in an interview with SiriusXM just a few weeks after David Bowie passed away in 2016 at the age of 69. He said, “Well, if it wasn’t for David Bowie, I would never found my original producer Gus Dudgeon and Paul Buckmaster, who arrange the first three albums for me. Because when I heard ‘Space Oddity’ I though it was the most incredible record I probably heard for a long time up to that point.”
“The production and the arrangement of that song, I said: ‘Whoever did that I really wanna work with them’. So I got in touch with Gus Dudgeon and Paul Buckmaster and we did the Elton John album together and many, many more albums. So I’ve got David to thank for that. There’s been so many incredible words said and written about his in the last couple of days. It’s so wonderful, we all know how inspiring he was. We all know what his music stands for, the music speaks for itself.”
“He was innovative, he was boundary changing and he danced to his own tune, which is really rare. But what I loved about him towards the end was that his incredible privacy during what must have been ten years of incredible bad luck with illnesses, heart attacks, cancer, whatever, he kept it private in an age we live in Twitter, where everyone knows everything about everything, he kept it to himself. He made two albums without anybody know he was making them.”
Elton continued, “‘He had obviously treatment for his illnesses without anyone knowing or anyone say anything. That is the mystique of the man because we know David Bowie the figure, the singer, the outrageous performer. But we actually don’t know anything about him. That’s the way it should be in music and should be in any art for whatsoever. The dignified way like he planned his death as a song on the album called ‘Lazarus”, on the new record ‘Blackstar” is as if he wrote that song about his death and he obviously did.”
“It’s incredibly chilling when you hear it. That to me is a true artist, they don’t make them like that anymore. We’ve lost a huge, huge talent that influenced so many people. He influenced me with his humor. The first show I ever saw him do was the Finsbury Park Astoria in London. Bernie (Taupin) and I went to see. Roxy Music opened, (Brian) Eno had long hair, lipstick, and nail varnish that shows you how long ago that was. David did Ziggy Stardust, amazing. (He is) irreplaceable.”
They were not close friends
They had not been close friends since Bowie said something in a Rolling Stone interview in the 1970s that Elton found offensive, despite the fact that Elton had complimented the musician’s work after his death. In an interview with The Evening Standard, he discussed whether or not they were close, stating: “‘David and I were not the best of friends towards the end. We started out being really good friends. We used to hang out together with Marc Bolan, going to gay clubs. But I think we just drifted apart.”
Elton said, “He once called me ‘rock’n’roll’s token queen’ in an interview with Rolling Stone, which I thought was a bit snooty. He wasn’t my cup of tea. No, I wasn’t his cup of tea. But the dignified way he handled his death, I mean, thank God. I knew he’d had a heart attack on stage in Berlin years ago, but not about the cancer. Everyone else take note of this: Bowie couldn’t have staged a better death. It was classy.”
When all the performers took the stage to sing the last song, “We Are The Champions,” during Freddie Mercury’s tribute performance in 1992, the two had already sung together.
Elton John paid tribute to Bowie playing “Rocket Man”
Elton gave an homage to David Bowie at his performance at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles one week after the musician’s passing. He played his iconic song “Rocket Man” after talking about how listening to “Space Oddity” helped him locate the people who worked on his early albums.