Elton played the piano at my house on Lookout Mountain.” “He arrived, and the first place I took him to eat was Billy James’s Black Rabbit Inn. “Elton phoned from London and said: ‘I’m coming to town,’” Hutton told Music Connection in 2019. Hutton was a long-time fixture on the LA scene, and had offered to steer him through its complexities. Having befriended Danny Hutton, of the band Three Dog Night, in London during 1969, Elton arranged to meet him as soon as possible. “Once we’d booked in, we were hustled out again and off to the Troubadour, where The Dillards were appearing… They were incredible, just knocked me out completely,” Elton remembered. But despite being exhausted after the long flight, there was no time for them to rest. On board the bus, it took two hours to get to their hotel, the Continental Hyatt House, where Elton signed in as William A Bong. The California sunshine and the pretty girls all over the place. In the BBC documentary The Making Of Elton John, drummer Nigel Olsson recalled: “We got to the Sunset Strip and it was like being on parade. I mean, I’m a great lover of things that are done with taste… and double-decker buses don’t qualify.” I really couldn’t believe it, I didn’t think it was happening. I don’t know, it seemed like a cheap trick. “Everyone was sort of getting into a crouch and trying to hide below the windows. “I found that extremely embarrassing,” Elton told Rolling Stone. It certainly did ‘blow his mind’, but not in the way that Winter evidently imagined. I rented a bright red English bus, with the two decks, and I put a big sign on it: ‘Elton John has arrived.’ It just blew his mind. UNI Records’ effusive publicist Norm Winter has confirmed: “We picked him up in an authentic English bus. “We’d flown to Los Angeles,” Elton complained later, “thirteen hours over the pole in this jumbo jet, and we arrived to find this bloody great bus… ‘Elton John has arrived!’ and all that sort of thing…”Īlready anxious about how well his relatively untried band would cope in front of a sophisticated Los Angeles crowd, Elton was now further discomfited by the expectations that might be set up by his arrival aboard a double-decker London bus. The flight touched down on Sunday, August 23, just two days before Elton’s opening night at the Troubadour. 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. 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. “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.” 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. 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.įor Holder it was a calculated risk. 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.”ĭespite 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. One glimmer of light in the gloom was Travis Michael Holder, talent co-ordinator for the tiny but influential Troubadour club in Hollywood. Lyricist Bernie Taupin and singer songwriter Elton John pose for a portrait in November, 1970 in New York City (Image credit: David Gahr/Getty Images)
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