Elton John At the Troubadour - Fifty Years On

It was fifty years ago today, Tuesday, August 25, 1970, that Elton John played his first American concert - the first show of a six-night engagement at the Troubadour Club in Los Angeles.  UNI Records president Russ Regan, eager to promote his newest discovery from England, was able to get the club packed for Elton's debut.  Among the celebrities who attended Elton's show that first night were Quincy Jones and his wife Peggy Lipton, Linda Ronstadt, Brian Wilson and Mike Love of the Beach Boys, Van Dyke Parks, Randy Newman, David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, as well as a then-unknown drummer/singer named Don Henley.  (As fate would have it, Elton had already attended a show by the Dillards at the Troubadour shortly before his own, and the opening act was Longbranch Pennywhistle, a duo comprised of Glenn Frey and J.D. Souther.)   But Regan outdid himself by getting Neil Diamond, then the biggest singer-songwriter in America and another UNI artist, to introduce Elton at the beginning of the show.  Part of the reason the club, which had a maximum seating capacity of 300 people, was so packed that night, was because people were under the mistaken impression that Diamond was going to perform there that night. 

Elton, backed by guitaist Caleb Quaye, bassist Dee Murray and drummer Nigel Olsson, didn't exactly get people up on their feet the way the Beatles had in their American debut on Ed Sullivan's variety show six years earlier.  He opened the show with "Your Song," and the response was more polite and respectful than raving.  After a couple of songs on the piano, the guests started talking to each other over drinks, and Elton suddenly found himself reliving the many times he played at local pubs in England, where the clientele would converse over a pint or two and pay little attention to the music.  Frustrated that he wasn't breaking through, Elton kicked his piano stool out from under him, declaring, "Right!  If you won't listen to that, you'll bloody well listen to this!"  Then he started banging on the piano keys like Jerry Lee Lewis.  The fire in him had been lit, and Reginald Dwight became Elton John at that moment.

The crowd responded ecstatically.  Applause and cheers replaced the low din.  With a set that included "Bad Side of the Moon," "Sixty Years On, "Country Comfort" (which would be released in America in January 1971 on Tumbleweed Connection), the explosive "Take Me to the Pilot," and a cover of the Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Women" (already performed live by Joe Cocker on his own tour from earlier in the year), Elton had the audience eating out of his hand.  (Sadly, singer-songwriter David Ackles, with whom Elton shared the bill in his six-night residency at the Troubadour, didn't get similar attention.  Ackles, a favorite of Elton's, was destined for obscurity despite his cult status in Britain.) In a review of the show in the Los Angeles Times the following day, music critic Robert Hilburn declared, "Rejoice. Rock music, which has been going through a rather uneventful period lately, has a new star. He’s Elton John, a 23-year-old Englishman whose United States debut Tuesday night at the Troubadour was, in almost every way, magnificent . . ..  His music is so staggeringly original that it is obvious he is not merely operating within a given musical field (such as country or blues or rock) but, like Randy Newman and Laura Nyro among others, creating his own field."

Over the next five nights, other celebrities attended Elton's Troubadour shows, including teen model Kathy Davis and singer-songwriter Leon Russell.  Russell (below), a revered LA session musician who had recently begun his career as a solo artist and who had already amassed a wealth of production, session, and songwriting credits in such a short period that he was called the Master of Space and Time, was at his peak in the rock music world in the early seventies.  When Elton saw Russell in the audience, he almost froze, because he, like everyone else then, was heavily into Russell's music.  But Russell looked back at him from the audience, using eye language to assure him that he was doing fine and to keep going. The two met backstage afterwards, beginning a friendship that would last until Russell's death in 2016.

The Troubadour engagement was just the beginning.  A six-night residency at the Troubadour North in San Francisco immediately followed in early September, and that engagement was followed up by shows in clubs in New York and Philadelphia.  In late October, Elton would return to the States for more shows on a full-fledged tour, which turned him into a bona fide star.  I'll talk about that later.

It should be noted, though, that Elton's Troubadour debut showed how much had changed in pop at the beginning of the seventies.   Pop stars were no longer made in America by a New York-based variety TV show like "The Ed Sullivan Show," which in 1970 was less than a year away from its final airing.  Now they were made by the tastemakers and the movers and shakers in Los Angeles.  In America, as well as in Britain, rock was becoming not only a cultural force but also big business, and Elton John would become a big star . . . ready to give his fans the business.