Member Since: 1/6/2012
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Elton John drags Gaga, Miley; praises Lorde
Quote:
"I look at Miley Cyrus and I see a meltdown waiting to happen," says Sir Elton of the former child actress turned pop star who recently marked her coming-of-age with a bout of simulated sex with the singer Robin Thicke at the American Video Music Awards. "And she's so young! But she's got two records in the top 20, so who is going to stop her?"
He is calling from his house in Holland Park, West London. He has brought his sons, Zachary, 2, and Elijah, eight months, with him from Los Angeles, where he lives for most of the year with his partner, David Furnish. He is in town to promote The Diving Board, an album in which he returns to the impeccable form of the mid-Seventies, his golden age.
Fame is on his mind, and not just because he has enjoyed, and suffered, through 40 years of it.
The Diving Board features poetic lyrics about the dangers of celebrity, set to elegantly simple piano pieces. The album's title is a metaphor for the disorienting experience of fame; of being on a giddy high you could fall from at any moment. And while the lyrics are by his regular collaborator, Bernie Taupin, the themes reflect the concerns of a man ready to dispense advice to any famous friends who are prepared to listen.
"The secret of success is: don't let everyone know everything," Sir Elton continues, his voice increasingly clear and animated as he warms to his subject - although the clarity is occasionally muddled by the sound of babies burbling in the background. "Keep some of it to yourself. It's why I'm not a big fan of the internet. There should be some privacy, some mystique left. Even with me. All they talk about is the hair, the flowers. Actually, they don't know me at all."
He returns to his ability to foretell celebrity disasters. "Maybe it's a British thing, but I can spot a car crash before it happens," he claims. "I was in my dressing room in Las Vegas when they announced that Michael Jackson was playing 50 dates at the O2. I turned to my agent and said: 'He won't do a single one of those.' I could tell you he was going to die. He'd been doing drugs for so long, he'd been a mess for so long - and I've known Michael since he was 12 or 13 - that it was never going to happen. Everyone was saying it was going to be great and I was saying: 'Hello? Are you looking at the real thing here?'"
Does he have any advice for his friend Lady Gaga, whose extreme public persona must surely be hard to reconcile with her private reality? "With Gaga - who I love, she's the godmother to our children - I'd like to be able to talk to her right now, but I can't get through to her. And there are times when you have to listen. When your persona begins to take over your music and becomes more important, you enter a dangerous place. Once you have people around you who don't question you, you're in a dangerous place."
"When you get famous you get complacent," Sir Elton says. "You stop listening to new things. But my album's sound reflects the fact that all the things I love at the moment are stripped down. Lorde had a big US hit with a song called Royal. It's just her voice and a drum machine, and it's beautiful in its simplicity. It's the kind of direction Gaga should be going in. The Arctic Monkeys made a great first album, a few more that weren't as good, and now the penny has dropped: they've realised that they're a very good band and they're not bad looking either. And John Grant and I have become buddies. His music can be bleak, just as The Diving Board is bleak at times, but I don't mind that. I love bleakness and sadness. I can do bleak all day."
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http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news...-1226719114826
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