Elton John on Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan — and 'One of the Joys of My Life': Brandi Carlile
The 'Never Too Late' icon, in conversation with his country star collaborator, reveals he only looks forward (though dueting with John Lennon 'was a bitch')
Rob LeDonne writes Notable and recently interviewed Maren Morris and Kris Bowers about the music of The Wild Robot, including its soaring anthem “Kiss the Sky.” You can reach him at rob@theankler.com
I hope you don’t mind, I hope you don’t mind, I hope you don’t mind that I put down in words . . . the second edition of Notable.
Hello!
Today marks the Disney+ release of the Elton John documentary Never Too Late. And no, it’s not about how long it took John to achieve EGOT status (believe it or not, that only happened with his Emmy earlier this year for his farewell concert special). The new doc, directed by R.J. Cutler and David Furnish, John’s husband, is an expansive and rollicking reminder of Sir Elton’s unbelievable life and career.
His gargantuan cultural presence was something I was reminded of during my conversation with John, 77, whom I interviewed alongside Brandi Carlile, 43, to discuss the title track they concocted for the documentary. John is maybe the only man in history who can drop names ranging from John Lennon (he recalled how difficult it was to harmonize with him) to Chappell Roan (the two have become fast friends and FaceTime regularly).
He’s a legend, he’s an icon. In fact, he was just named TIME’s Icon of the Year this week. As for this year’s Person of the Year? Actually, never mind. I think I still have 2023’s issue lying around, which bequeathed Taylor Swift with that honor.
Speaking of honors, awards season kicked into turbo drive this week. Yesterday marked the beginning of final round voting for the Grammy Awards, which wraps Jan. 3. Meanwhile, preliminary Oscars voting ends today in 10 categories — including song and score — with the shortlists to be announced on Dec. 17.
This week, there also were a slew of nomination reveals across the landscape. The un-canceled Golden Globes unveiled its contenders for best original song. Last week’s Notable subject Maren Morris and her collaborators scored a nod for her Wild Robot anthem “Kiss the Sky,” while Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (together with helmer Luca Guadagnino) received a nod for a track from the Challengers soundtrack (“Compress/Repress”).
Robbie Williams with his own documentary’s anthem, “Forbidden Road,” was also nominated, alongside two songs from Emilia Pérez: “El Mal” and “Mi Camino.”
In the category of pop girlies infiltrating awards season, Emilia star Selena Gomez (who just announced her engagement to Benny Blanco) was nominated for her role in the film; she’s up against Ariana Grande, nominated for the endless meme-well that is Wicked, for supporting female actor. Miley Cyrus also scored a Golden Globe nod for “Beautiful That Way,” her just-released ballad for the acclaimed Pamela Anderson film The Last Showgirl, directed by Gia Coppola, which hits theaters today.
Cyrus’ track scored a Critics’ Choice Award nom too, joining a group that almost exactly mirrors the Golden Globe noms for the category — except in place of Williams, Kristen Wiig scored a nod for her road-trip ditty “Will and Harper Go West” for Will & Harper.
Last night was the Billboard Music Awards, where the aforementioned Ms. Swift became the winningest artist in the show’s history, with 10 new BBMAs including Top Hot 100 Artist, Top 100 Songwriter, and naturally, just the show’s plain old Top Artist. Happy 34th birthday, Taylor! (It’s today.)
Of course the news wasn’t all hot fudge and gravy this week. Did you see those new allegations about Diddy? All right, what about those other allegations? Elsewhere in problematic-ville, new Michael Jackson songs were recently discovered in a storage unit. Thankfully we have the press tour for the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown to take our mind off it all.
And if your head is still spinning from this year, don’t worry. That’s kind of how Brandi Carlile feels when she’s recording with Elton John. “My only ritual,” she told me in our three-way sit-down earlier this week, “was just fucking keeping up with him.”
The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship
Rob LeDonne: How did you two first meet? Do you remember your very first encounter way back?
Elton John: I do. I was playing in Las Vegas at a residency there, and Brandi had written me a letter saying that she’d been a fan of mine all her life. I was aware of who she was because I’d heard her music. She said, “Would you ever be prepared to play or sing on one of my songs?” I think I got a phone number for her. I said, “If you can come to Vegas, absolutely, let’s do it.” So she came and from that moment on, we became the closest of friends. I just fell in love with her. We are cut from the same cloth. Her talent is so enormous, and it’s just one of those magical things that happened. You say yes to someone. You meet them. You fall in love with them. And you have a lifelong friendship.
RL: What are her qualities that immediately made you think, “Oh, this is my person”?
EJ: Her music was fabulous, but when you meet certain people, it’s like you’ve known them all your life. It was the same with John Lennon when I met him. Not many people come across like that. Some people have been standoffish and shy. But we hit it off. We have the same sense of humor. There was no question in mind that I wanted to know her much more, beyond just that one occasion. It’s led to a friendship that’s been quite amazing. Collaborating with her and playing with her has been one of the joys of my life in my recent years.
RL: Brandi, you’re in the same sentence as John Lennon. I mean, that’s what I heard.
Brandi Carlile: I need to think about that and just take that in.
RL: Can you remember your earliest memory of listening to Elton?
BC: Yeah, I do. The first time I ever heard Elton John’s music was a CD I borrowed from the King County Library [in Washington state, where Carlile grew up] called Here and There, and I listened to the song called “Skyline Pigeon.” I had read the lyrics already because I had discovered Elton [while] doing a book report in fifth grade. So to say I was a fan when I wrote Elton that letter is a pretty significant understatement.
When a child chooses a hero for whatever reason, that’s a real crossroads in their life. It changed a lot about the kind of young woman I was going to become. I remember hearing that music and thinking, “This is actually what I’m going to do. I’m going to write songs like this. I’m going to learn to play this instrument. This is going to be a job for me.” So meeting Elton that first time and having him respond to my letter, it doesn’t feel anything really short of mystical some days.
EJ: It is mystical. It’s brilliant.
RL: What was the book report?
I was 11, in fifth grade, and it was a book report about a boy called Ryan White. I was reading and learning about the AIDS epidemic. And it was a pretty heavy discovery of Elton, because alongside him I discovered a lot about my own worldview and the way I wanted to sort of walk through the world, you know? This man had done so much already in his life at this point. He was really caught up in the concepts of sobriety, he was raising money for people all over the world with AIDS, he was helping people and making personal connections — and writing fabulous music.
It set a bar for me that wasn’t just musical, and I never really stopped looking to him in that way. And I never do, even though now we have a much lighter and much more familial and irreverent friendship. But deep down, I know who he is and what he’s done.
RL: Brandi, you just uncovered the craziest deep memory. I just remembered being in a car with my mom when I was maybe around the same age, when a DJ was talking about Elton, and he was saying something about bisexuality or homosexuality. I said to my mom, “What’s that?” and she explained it to me for the first time in simple terms. Anyway, I’m gay, and Elton, I guess you spurred that earliest thought.
BC: Wow. Well, that’s what I mean; these pillars are important.
RL: Elton, you’ve always been active in finding new artists, going out of your way to give them their flowers, and you respect the new generations coming up. I interviewed Ryan Beatty earlier this year, and I know your co-sign was such a big moment for him. Why is that kind of discovery so exciting for you?
EJ: I’ve always been more interested in the future than the past. I’ve had an incredible past, and I’m not going to forget it, but I don’t dwell on it. One of the great things about watching the documentary was that the music that we made from ’70 to ’75 was so great, and I went, “Oh, this is really good!” I was very proud of it.
But for me, because I do my own radio show on Apple called Rocket Air, I get into contact with all these new artists, like Chappell Roan and Allison Ponthier. Allison actually came to the screening of Never Too Late in New York, which was so great. I’d never met her before and it was an exciting moment for me.
It’s great to watch these people grow. I know I’m not responsible for their careers, because they have the talent, but I can give them the exposure that they probably wouldn’t have on mainstream radio. That’s what I love. And there are so many great young artists out there from every genre of music that need exposure.
RL: I know you FaceTime with Chappell Roan, for example. What kind of advice do you give to younger artists like Chappell?
EJ: Well, sometimes, you know, they get a little overwhelmed. Chappell was a little overwhelmed with her sudden success — although she’d been writing for a long time, it really kind of ballooned very quickly. I just try and calm her down and say, “Listen, it’s fine. It’s fine. Do what you want. Don’t listen to anybody. Walk at your own speed. Do not listen to the record company saying, ‘We want another album, we want another album.’ Do it when you’re ready to do it.” I’ve got that experience. I’ve been through everything in my life as far as knowing what to do in music, seeing people come, seeing people go. Sometimes they disappear much too quickly.
I’m kind of a survivor; one of the people still around at 77. I’m probably as popular as I was when I was younger, and that’s been a miracle. But it’s nice to be able to pass that stuff on and see the results in people. There’s this English singer Raye, who’s a wonderful artist. She left her record company on principle and did what she wanted to do. And it just completely was successful. I admire her so much for doing that. She took a stand and her result was her own vision of what she should be doing. It just exploded.
Billie Eilish is another one. I remember seeing her first album just crawl up the Billboard charts every week: Word of mouth, word of mouth, word of mouth, and it just suddenly got there and she’s become one of the greatest female artists I can think of. I mean with the new album, it is just extraordinary how good it is, and you can say that of all her albums. Every single one is different and every single one is an improvement. How great is that? I get so much energy from that.
BC: And she can do it live.
RL: Brandi, what is it about the documentary that moved you?
BC: Well, it was incredibly moving to see all that archival footage, you know, because I was sort of like journeying backward through my discovery of Elton’s music and the culture around Elton as well. I felt that I was seeing something nobody had seen before. The way that the pieces all added up made a lot of sense. It inspired me to write the song, so I could do what the documentary does, which is create a really comprehensive picture of Elton and his whole life leading up to this point and this latter-day serenity that he has.
The documentary also does what the song does because it forces him to stop for just a split second and reflect on everything he’s accomplished and everything he’s overcome. I love that. He also really knows how to laugh at himself better than anybody I’ve ever seen. So I wanted to do what the documentary does. I was inspired by that.
EJ: She certainly succeeded because the lyric, when she handed it to me, was so easy to write to — because I knew it was about me, and I knew what the song should sound like. It was done very, very quickly, and it was just so inspiring to be given something like that. The documentary was originally going to be called Farewell Yellow Brick Road, which is the title of the tour, so the song at the end of the documentary was going to be “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” But now the documentary is called Never Too Late and it sums up exactly what it’s all about. With the song at the end, it tells the story so much better than “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” did. It’s just one of those things that are happenstance; it just comes along and it’s fabulous. I’m so indebted to her for writing the song.
RL: “Never Too Late” speaks to the documentary and your life itself and vice versa. It’s a testament to keep going.
EJ: Well, it’s nice to have a new song at the end because I’m all about looking forward, and that’s what it says in the song.
RL: Brandi, when you presented what you worked on to Elton for the first time, were you excited or were you nervous about what he would think?
BC: It was genuinely the first lyric I ever set down in front of Elton John. I didn’t think about it. If I had, I may have never done it. I took a page out of Elton’s book and I just wrote the thing and set it down and hoped for the best. And he started singing it with that iconic voice and his concept of the melody came out of his mouth, but it was my words — my life flashed before my eyes honestly.
RL: Brandi, did you write the repeat of “never too, never too” in the song’s chorus?
BC: That’s Elton. That’s Elton! There are other things in there that are so iconic. The minute you hear the piano, it could only be Elton John. Even the way he sings certain lines.
EJ: It wasn’t “You take one line, I’ll take the next.” The harmonies are really beautiful on this. After she put her vocal down, I had to sing the harmonies. And harmonies are so hard to sing on someone else’s phrasing. I did that with John Lennon in “Whatever Gets You Through the Night,” and it was a bitch to be honest with you. It was the same with her. You have to get that harmony spot-on and sounding so beautiful, like the Everly Brothers used to. It really was a challenge, but it worked out so beautifully.
RL: Speaking of singing, I’m wondering what studio rituals you have if you’re about to cut a vocal? Do you drink a special tea? Do you light a lavender candle?
EJ: I don’t have any rituals. I just say, “Put the red light on and let’s get on with it.” I’m very quick at this kind of thing.
BC: He’s so quick and benevolently impatient that my only ritual was just fucking keeping up with him. I was getting the lyrics written as fast as he was writing the music.
RL: Thank you both so much. And don’t forget: It’s never too late!
EJ: Yeah, it’s never too late to do anything in your life if you have the courage to do it.
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