Handstands and Fluent Fusion

By William Bender

If 1969 was the year of the supergroup, 1970 will most likely go down in history as the year rock began searching for a superman. The candidates have come from everywhere--especially from such fretfuL or dissent-ridden groups as the Beatles, Jefferson Airplane and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. One reason behind the search for individualism is that youth in America, as elsewhere, has become less interested in rock as a mind-blowing communal expression and more curious about what individual musicians may have to say. What the rock world seems to need right now, therefore, is a high-talented, low-keyed, protest-free approach to life and sound that will appeal equally to the flower child in the young and the gardener of verses in the old.

The most likely candidate, so far, is a tousle-haired Englishman named Elton John, 23. Because he burst on the U.S. scene only four months ago, it is too early to tell whether John is a superman. But he is certainly a one-man music factory with a rich bag of assorted talents. He plays piano with the urbane primitivism of a Glenn Gould thumping out variations on rock 'n' roll's Jerry Lee Lewis. His singing style ranges from a Mick Jagger snarl to a delicate, insinuating plaint that recalls Jose Feliciano. As a composer, John has already turned out more than a dozen of the year's best songs--in styles that include country rock, country blues, just plain country, gospel, soft rock and classical rock.

Porky Pig. His record albums--Elton John and Tumbleweed Connection, the latter to be released this week by Uni Records--are as different from each other as they are elegantly superior to much of what rock has produced in the past year or two. Part of the credit for that must go to John's favorite arranger, Paul Buckmaster, 24, whose deft classical touches--sweeping strings and poignant little solos by oboe and harp, for example--lend both drama and restraint to John's big beat. The first album is already in Billboard's top 25. Tumbleweed, earthier and more direct, ought to be one of the big hits of 1971. John's first U.S. tour--last week he all but filled the Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and two weeks ago jammed Manhattan's Fillmore East four times in two nights--shows off a natural stage presence and timing worthy of a veteran stand-up comic.

John has been doing his live act only since last summer. Perhaps that is the reason he seems to want to sell himself more than he really has to. He comes on with a long cape looking a bit like Michael J. Pollard impersonating Batman, and gradually sheds down to a star-patterned T shirt, slacks and a Porky Pig button that lights up. Then, kicking away the piano bench, he goes into an old-fashioned rock-'n'-roll finale and plays standing up, kneeling down, even handstanding on the keyboard with feet high in air.

John began playing piano at home at age four. Later he studied piano and theory formally for five years at London's Royal Academy of Music. Then he chucked the classics for pop, joined the British group called Bluesology and adopted his current name, figuring he would just never make it as Reginald Kenneth Dwight.

In 1968 he and a lad named Bernie Taupin both answered an ad in a British pop weekly; a record company was looking for composers and lyricists. They didn't get the job but they have been together ever since, Bernie writing lyrics, Elton music.

Holy Moses. Their current songs defy categorization because of Taupin's almost cinematic imagery and John's fluent, original fusion of recent pop forms. Border Song ("Holy Moses let us live in peace/Let us strive to find a way to make all hatred cease") is more authentically gospel than anything Anglican has a right to be. Imported or not, it has quickly been picked up and recorded by blacks like Dorothy Morrison and Aretha Franklin.

In a graceful love ballad, I Need You to Turn To, John plays the harpsichord with a delicate touch that creates just the right pinch of pink-cheeked, Highland-flavored romance. Songs like My Father's Gun and Talking Old Soldiers show the clear influence of The Band in their concern, respectively, for the history of the old American South and the ever-present pain of growing old. It is an influence freely and proudly conceded by the composers. One thing most of the songs have in common is a relentless rhythmic build-up from a quiet beginning. Burn Down the Mission, for example, starts out like' a country stroll and ends like a hell-bent Georgia stagecoach.

Beyond his music and potential as a major singing star, Elton John also symbolizes a subtle but highly significant change in a field where once no composer worth his suede jacket would be caught dead without a guitar. Slowly, surely, the piano is gaining ground. Partly, this reflects rock's recent absorption of jazz and the blues, in which the piano has always played a predominant role. More important, many of today's leading rock composers find the range and nuance of the piano more suitable for the personal, diverse and poetic turn rock is taking.

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