Elton John and Brandi Carlile: “You have to have hope”

Elton John had a vision for his next album, and part of that was a desire to push himself to new creative heights. He had just completed a record-breaking global farewell tour spanning over 50 years of hits and found himself energised; his goal was to channel that energy into a new record. But reaching the point where his creativity could flow would become the greatest hurdle he’d ever faced in the studio. Pressure came in many forms. First, the album was to be a collaboration with another artist, a friend who had in the course of 20 years of their relationship become family, who in turn had grown up looking to Elton as her idol. A lot was riding on its success, both professionally and personally.

That friend was Americana singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile, whose smaller profile in the UK is at odds with her regard in the US as a respected 11-time Grammy winner. Elton’s ambition for the record was for her to not just feature on one or two songs, but the entire project. “I didn’t want it to be one line her, one line me. I wanted it to be harmonies. I wanted it to be a proper duet record,” says Elton of his aim to create a truly collaborative album in a manner unlike anything he had ever recorded before. 

Carlile adds, “We kept the ballads to a minimum, because he was like, ‘Everybody will expect us to get together and do power ballads. Let’s do uptempo, positive, uplifting songs.’ And I was like, ‘Well, that’s kind of an amazing assignment.’” 

Collaborating with them was writer Bernie Taupin and producer Andrew Watt, who had recently delivered the star a global hit with ‘Hold Me Closer’ featuring Britney Spears, and worked on tracks for Elton’s chart-topping 2021 album The Lockdown Sessions. Essentially, the magic ingredients were in place for a successful — if daunting — recording session: they had 20 days to create enough songs to fill an album. Given the magnitude of their combined credentials, it should have been plain sailing. But art with true depth is rarely as easy to deliver as it might initially appear on paper — even for Elton John. Following the expansive Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, notwithstanding various health challenges, including a hip replacement, Elton hit a wall. 

“To be honest with you, I had an adrenaline crash between then and the start of the album,” he says when we meet at Metropolis Studios, west London, on a chilly February afternoon. “I wasn’t feeling very well, and we went in with nothing prepared. So, the first two or three days were very fraught. I was very, very unhappy.” A frustrated Elton tantrum was bubbling away. “I was full of self-doubt, and we wrote two or three things in those first days. But the album really didn’t get started until I had a complete meltdown.” In classic Elton style, lyric sheets were torn to pieces, iPads were smashed, cursing ensued.

From early fractious personal relationships through to eventually getting sober, Elton is no stranger to pushing himself to breaking point so that something new, something better, can emerge. “Once I got over the self-doubt, Brandi wrote a song called ‘A Little Light’, which was on the day that Israel invaded Gaza,” he says. “Brandi was staying at her house next door, and I had all the newspapers on the table, and I was saying, ‘Why are we doing an album when all this is going on? It seems inhumane to be recording.’ And she said, ‘We’re going to see the positive; we musicians need to bring the world together. That’s our purpose.’ And she went away and wrote this lyric about being positive, and that really turned the album around.” 

“Alright sunshine / With the papers on your plate / I see the sorrow in the headlines / And the worry on your face / I guess it’s no fun to have a heart / While we are living through these days / But there’s still a lot of beauty / Dancing circles ’round this place,” sings Carlile, before Elton joins her:“That’s why we’re gonna get up / Point our chin towards the sun / Say a little prayer / And count our blessings one by one,” they sing in unison. 

Sure enough, the project started to take root, and other songs began to bloom. Across those 20 days, the four immersed themselves in the music, pushing their ideas and imagination in ways that Elton hadn’t expected. “I’ve never really gone into a process like that before, and it was frightening for me. I was really, really afraid. It’s always good to have fear, but I had a lot of fear,” he says, hands clasped tightly as he speaks. “But after we got off to a really bumpy start, it all settled down. The tenseness, the anxiety in the studio helped the electricity of the album without question.” At the end of the recording process, the four left the studio with 14 songs, 10 of which feature on Elton and Brandi’s new album, Who Believes in Angels? “We were so happy,” he exclaims of the music. “It’s got balls, and it’s got freshness, and it’s got energy. Exactly what I wanted it to be, and it came out exactly how I visualised it.” 

Elton goes on to say that it is one of his best albums since Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. “For me, it was the energy on that album that I wanted to capture,” he enthuses, specifically referencing the vigour and vivacity that the songs convey. The collection is a glorious exploration of the sound of Elton John, dipping its toes into his greatest hits in a way that showcases that discography with inflections to the past, while never at any point feeling rehashed. The 10 tracks that made the final cut are knitted with moments that recall the artist’s musical evolution, from the reverberating psychedelic melodies of album opener ‘The Rose of Laura Nyro’ through to intimate closing piano ballad ‘When This World Is Done with Me’. There’s an effortless fusion of the familiar and the new, an affectionate acknowledgement of the past while openly embracing the present. It acts like a bookend to a remarkable career. 

“I didn’t want to go back and make an album that I’d done before,” says Elton. “I wanted to push Brandi, and she pushed me, and Andrew pushed both of us to an intense degree, Bernie as well. And in the end, we were just roaring. We were recording a track a day, and instant first takes.” 

Those winks to the past were the basis for crafting new songs. “When I write with Elton, we start with the lyric and a couple of those inflection points that you’re talking about where you hear these 90s references, those 70s references, and even 80s moments in there,” says Carlile of the writing process. “Those were also on Andrew’s menu. He wanted to get those moments in there where suddenly you’re like, ‘Oh, is that ‘Pinball Wizard?’” Recreating the vibe included Watt borrowing the drumkit used on 1973’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album — which actor Ben Stiller had bought at auction. On the wall, Watt hung a copy of Elton’s release ‘17-11-70’ — the live recording of a radio broadcast from 1970 — as well as posters of Laura Nyro and Joni Mitchell. “We were definitely visiting scenes across the eras. It was fraught, and it was exciting,” enthuses Carlile of the creative cauldron they had on the boil. “Andrew wove those into the tapestry without ever making it feel retrospective.” 

For Carlile, who discovered Elton’s music as a teenager when he was releasing albums Made in England, The Big Picture and The Lion King soundtrack, indulging in Elton’s rich discography was akin to being that proverbial kid in a candy shop. A decade later, when the Americana singer-songwriter began releasing music, she wrote Elton a letter that caught the superstar’s eye, asking him to feature on her album. That bold move resulted in the duet ‘Caroline’, a song on her third album. Their bond formed quickly, and when Carlile married and had children with her wife Catherine, her relationship with Elton moved beyond one of fellow musicians and blossomed into genuine friendship. The bond was strengthened further when Elton and his husband David Furnish went on to have their own children. The two families continue to spend holidays together.  

Nine cameras were placed around the studio during the Who Believes in Angels? sessions to document the process. In one of the many videos, in a comical moment Elton pauses and turns to Carlile, Watt and Taupin to ask of his playing, “Is it too Lion King?” 

In an album that has tipped its hat to Elton’s past, was it hard to consciously stay away from doing anything too referential? “For him? He doesn’t do referential,” says Carlile. “Everything’s just forward, forward, forward, very fast, very decisive, very certain.” 

“Also, it’s very important to know that we played with musicians that we hadn’t played with as a band together before,” notes Elton of recruiting Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, Pino Palladino on bass, and keyboard player and guitarist Josh Klinghoffer. 

Carlile and Elton set up base in one studio, for writing in and doing their takes, while the others were installed in the studio next door. “The band was frantically working out arrangements in the B room while we were writing songs,” explains Carlile. “They would get piped what we were working on, then they would come in and they would know it because they could hear it coming together. It was a really spontaneous, self-conscious process, which I think is so cool. You can hear it on the record.” 

The first song they recorded that nailed that energy is the storming bop ‘Little Richard’s Bible’. It’s a rollicking ride dedicated to the singer and pianist Little Richard, who had a convoluted history with his sexuality, first speaking about being attracted to men, before declaring in interviews in later years that he was no longer gay.  

On nailing the track’s tremendous tempo, Elton says he simply had to channel its subject. “You have to play it like Little Richard. He was my idol, and he was a huge influence,” he says. “And it was so quick to write, I have to say. I put it down to Chad just playing a hi-hat, and I put the piano down straight away. The band played on it afterwards, and I just fucking hammered the shit out of it. It was such a joy to do.” 

“He was stressed,” says Carlile, of that day in the studio. The process had not been going well, and Elton was… well, being Elton. “When it got to that song, he got to just destroy the piano… he was just beating on the piano, the glass was shaking. It was unbelievable. When he was doing those solos, I couldn’t fathom how loud and vital it all was…” 

“A one-take piano tape,” Elton jumps in, excitedly. “I had such a blast playing it. I dunno, it’s like Little Richard was inside me or something.” 

The song was conceived by Watt, who Carlile describes as “a straight guy, a very straight guy”. Watt was excited by the concept of Little Richard being Elton’s hero, and Elton being Carlile’s hero. “He thought about the evolution of queer history,” says Carlile. “How Little Richard was never really able to embrace his queerness, or he would, and then he would kind of fall back into religious dogma again.” Carlile says Watt called Taupin and suggested writing a song about Little Richard and his Bible. What if Brandi and Elton could help celebrate something that maybe Little Richard wasn’t always able to?  

Elsewhere, opening track, ‘The Rose of Laura Nyro’ is a six-and-a-half-minute epic that launches with a deliriously trippy two minutes of acid-fused synths, before building to a monumental close. The song pays homage to lesser-known artist Laura Nyro — who died in 1997, aged 49 — another queer artist whose music Elton is enthralled by. Carlile says of the day they were working on the song: “I started reading about Laura after Elton introduced me to her. So, I’m reading about her and I’m like, ‘Holy shit, it’s her birthday!’” 

“And then ‘Little Richard’ was mixed on the day of his birthday,” Elton chimes in. 

Carlile grins. “That was the first finished song on the record. And when it was finished, I went, ‘I’m going to read about Little Richard some more,’ and I pulled it up: ‘Oh my God! This is his birthday!’ Things like that kept happening throughout the record.” 

On the title track ‘Who Believes in Angels?’, it’s Carlile’s turn to pay reverence to her idol. “It’s the one moment where I wrote about what that experience was to be in the studio with Elton, and our friendship. Our friendship grew up in those studio sessions because neither one of us came in there a hundred per cent. And we had to get each other through it. And that’s when you become real friends and family.” 

Their previous collaborations had been recorded separately, so gambling on 20 days locked away in a recording studio with not just your icon, but your best friend could have easily gone sour. “My God, she knows what she wants, and I love that she doesn’t have to make up her mind about anything,” says Elton. As they talk and bounce off each other during our interview, their bond is evident — as is Elton’s regard for Carlile. “Some artists, they just go, ‘I’m not sure about that.’ Brandi knows exactly what she wants, and she’s going to fight for it. And I know what I want, and I’m going to fight for it. We agree because she’s always right. She’s got amazing intuition. Her music ability is just ridiculous.” 

“Everybody says, ‘Oh, Elton supports younger artists.’ He does, but not unconditionally,” says Carlile. “He tells us if we need to musically step up a little bit, and he’s always been honest. You don’t just give Elton a record and get this exuberant response. You get a nuanced response from a master,” says Carlile, before explaining how her idol has pushed her to explore new musical avenues. “When Elton bought me the electric guitar, it was him saying, ‘OK, enough folk music. You need to transcend this a little bit.’ It was a masterclass. It was like being in school.” 

“I love her so much and not just as a person, but I love what’s inside of her musically and creatively,” says Elton, pointing his finger to drive his message home. “And it hasn’t really touched the surface. I think it’s beginning to, but it’s got so much further to go. She’s like an embryo at the moment, and she’s done a hell of a lot to be an embryo, but she’s going to just burst.” To illustrate, he tells how, in 2019, Carlile performed Joni Mitchell’s entire Blue album at a sold-out show at Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles. “She pulled it off brilliantly. She has no fear. No fear of what she can do.” 

By contrast, Carlile says she was apprehensive about stepping into the studio with her musical hero. “I was afraid to work with you,” she confesses, turning to Elton. “I was just afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep up because you’re very fast. I was afraid that my whole life’s work of culminating this lyrical style, that’s really so influenced by Bernie, would result in you not being able to write to the lyric, or just not being inspired by it.” Even more challenging was that confronting her fear and “figuring that out” had to happen in the studio with Elton because he didn’t want to work on any ideas beforehand. “I went in there in an existential spiral, and he was in one, too. Mine was just a lot quieter than his,” she says with a smile. 

Had either of them given any thought to what would have happened had the process not paid off as well as it has? “If it hadn’t worked out?” Elton looks perplexed at the thought, before declaring affirmatively, “I knew that it was going to go work out. You’ve just got to get to that point.” 

But Carlile had a Plan B if the sessions failed to deliver. “I would’ve gone back to school and worked on a fishing boat,” she jokes. 

Elton is emphatic that they had it nailed before they walked into the studio. “It’s unbelievably satisfying, and to do it that quickly. I mean, three weeks is nothing. Most people take three weeks to do one fucking track. We did 14 tracks.” 

The album’s April arrival seems more fortuitous than ever. Originally intended to be released last summer before Elton’s eye infection scuppered the original schedule, in this uncertain year, Who Believes in Angels? comes alive as a glistening eulogy to optimism, a radiant, torch-bearing tribute to hope in uncertain times that reflects Elton’s vision of a better world. 

Case in point, on third single ‘Swing from the Fences’, the two parents invite their children to dream big and aim high, the rhythm and the melody infectious as it ripples with joy. It’s the song every parent needs their children to hear in the current social and political climate.  

“It’s stressful, that’s not lost on me,” says Carlile — who was born in Ravensdale, a tiny town in the US state of Washington (population 555 according to the 2020 census) — as she reflects on the obstacles currently facing the country. “It’s something I wake up thinking about every day. I don’t think that people like us have a choice about whether or not to be political. We just wake up political by being gay, especially in America. And I live in a house full of women. I’m raising women, and I’m not going to pretend that I am not worried. I’ll work it out through my art, and I’ll advocate, and I’ll be an activist, and I’ll do the best I can with my life to help.” 

Her message to younger kids, especially those identifying as LGBTQ+, is to not lose sight of hope. “I think every toxic belief system is loudest and scariest right before it dies. And I really do believe we’re witnessing the last throes of a dying animal when it comes to hatred for LGBTQ people. And if we can just get through this ‘darkest before the dawn’ moment. I really do believe that this is the evolution of what’s going to happen before these ideas are gone. It’s bad right now because it’s dying.” 

Elton, who lived through the worst of the AIDS crisis before emerging stronger from it to start his world-changing Elton John AIDS Foundation, has also witnessed the slow march towards greater queer equality. He nods gently in agreement, his brow slightly furrowed. “Gay people are very strong. It’s like, don’t fuck with them, don’t fuck with us. When it comes to what actually matters, don’t fuck with us. They’re going to make a noise.”  

It was during the recording of the album’s closing song that Elton found himself confronted with a hard truth: his mortality. ‘When This Old World Is Done with Me’ has Elton singing about his death: “When this old world is done with me / Just know I came this far / To be broken up in pieces, scatter me among the stars / When this old world is done with me / When I close my eyes / Release me like an ocean wave, return me to the tide.”

As Elton hits the chorus, putting music to Taupin’s lyrics, the weight of the words falls on him. “I lost it for 45 minutes. It’s all on film. I just sobbed and sobbed and sobbed,” he says of the emotional moment that was caught by one of the nine video cameras. “I put a track down with the piano, and then I went to put the voice on, and Andrew said, ‘No, no, no, not today. It is not the time, record it tomorrow. You come in, you play it, you sing it, and you do it in one day.’ And that was how it was done the next day, first thing in the morning. That’s what you hear.” 

It’s a song that likely resonates even more deeply with him now, a year and a half after its first recording. Since then, Elton has endured another medical hurdle, experiencing partial loss of vision due to an eye infection last summer. In October, at the New York premiere for the documentary film Never Too Late, which follows him on the Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, Elton told People: “I don’t have tonsils, adenoids or an appendix. I don’t have a prostate. I don’t have a right hip or a left knee or a right knee. In fact, the only thing left to me is my left hip. To be honest with you, there’s not much of me left. But I’m still here.” 

It’s unlikely a determined man like Elton would let death simply creep up on him unplanned. “When you’re 77 years of age and you have a family and you have two children, there’s only a certain amount of time you’ve got left. Hopefully, I’ve got at least another 20 years,” he says, determinedly. “But when you’re actually confronted on a song, it’s like, ‘Oh my God.’ It really surprised me. I wasn’t expecting it. I don’t like talking about it, but you have to be realistic.” 

Having survived the darkest of days in addiction, the prospect of confronting questions of survival isn’t new to Elton. “I didn’t think I was going to die [in my addiction], but I knew that if I carried on, there was a good chance it was going to happen. And I woke up and smelled the roses, and things have been great since, but it doesn’t mean that I haven’t been through strife, operations and everything like that, losing the eyesight in this eye, which happened after the album,” Elton asserts. “But there’s always something tough I seem to be tackling.” 

His defiance rings out in the first single from the album, ‘Never Too Late’, in which Elton sings with fearless gusto, “You’re an iron man baby / Fuck off heaven’s gate!”

The words ‘never too late’ are used by Carlile in a Joni Mitchell tribute she wrote for The Times after she managed to convince the legendary singer to join her on stage at the Newport Folk Festival in July 2022. “I find that phrase really inspiring,” says Carlile. “I think that we need to bridge the gap between the generations so that we can pass that wisdom back and forth, pass energy up from the younger generation, pass wisdom down from the older generation, and get together and mix it all up. Actors do it all the time. Young actors get to work with older actors in film all the time. Musicians don’t do it as often as they should.” 

As we speak in the studio following rehearsals ahead of Elton and Carlile’s appearance on The Graham Norton Show, other than one night at the Palladium, whether the album tours is uncertain. “We’re leaving it up to the mystery,” says Carlile. 

If the new music has achieved anything for the rocket man, it’s a sense of renewal at a time when others might be more interested in slowing down. “I push and push and push, and it’s music that gets me through it. My family and making this album made me feel so good about myself. I’ve left the old Elton John behind, and here’s the new one.” 

“He doesn’t dwell. He just moves… through big things, big problems. If he were in quicksand, it would never catch him. He’s just going to sail across the top of all of this,” adds Carlile.  

She would know. Away from the studio, promo tours and red carpets, although Elton counts innumerable celebrities in his coterie, it’s evident that few are as intimately close to him as Carlile. I ask her what everyday Elton is like when she comes to stay at his home in the UK. “He is explosively funny. You can’t keep up with him. He is going to win in a battle of wit. He’s encyclopedic about music, always enthusiastic. He’s calling people, helping young people, generous, and just kind of a blast to be around.” 

As reflective in its sound as this new album can be, it is the new, the next, the future that most excites Elton. “I can’t live without music. It nearly killed me, but it also kept me alive, and it keeps me alive today. But not the music of the past so much. Although I do listen to jazz and stuff like that, but it’s the music of the future that keeps me alive,” he says emphatically when we discuss his championing of new artists on the Rocket Hour Apple Music radio show. “Lola Young was number one. How great is that? She’s always been incredibly talented. It’s taken her four or five years, just like Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter.” 

He cites Cleo Sol, Gia Ford, Nia Smith and Elmiene as artists he’s excited about. “There’s a guy called Humble the Great, who is absolutely wonderful. Hot Wax, who’ve been around for a while, have their first album out this year. There’s a South African artist, Moonchild Sanelly, and Soft Launch, they’re a very good-looking young Irish band,” he offers, reeling off name after name.  

“Jalen Ngonda, I interviewed him on Rocket Hour. About two summers ago, I saw him at Nice Jazz Festival live. And he was absolutely incredible. He was on before the main act. There was hardly anybody there. And by the time he finished, it was packed.” Any others? “Nectar Woode, she sent me her album. She’s amazing.” 

His advice to new artists seeking to establish themselves while nurturing a long career is simple: keep singing. “Just keep trying to play live. That’s the way you improve as a musician and songwriter. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing to 40 people. The more experience you get playing to nobody, the better. Because when I played in Musicology, we played to hardly anybody sometimes,” recalls Elton. 

“That experience stood me in great stead for when I became Elton John because I had backbone. And backbone is so important, because the worst thing that can happen to you in the industry are things like X Factor and instant fame on television where you have no experience of playing live. You get put on stage, you go, and you can’t do it. That’s the worst thing. American Idol — just the worst.” 

He continues, “Take risks. Go and play in a pub.” 

“And honestly, make friends,” adds Carlile. “Get a community around you.” 

It’s this notion of communing, of coming together, that Elton and Carlile have at core connected on. From the jam sessions at Joni Mitchell’s home, to which Carlile would invite artists along to sing and share music, through to Elton’s collaborative spirit — raising other voices on his 2021 Lockdown Sessions album and the Rocket Hour show — through to their coalition with Watt and Taupin on Who Believes in Angels?, the pair have an unswerving belief that through connection, tomorrow might just be OK.  

“I never underestimate the human spirit. The human spirit has endured the most grisly things you could ever imagine — the Holocaust, Vietnam, famine in Africa,” says Elton. “It is an amazing, enduring spirit. There’s more spirit in the human body than you can ever think. And if it comes to the fore, it will come up in the right way. I’m a great believer in that.” 

After all, if you don’t have hope, I begin to say… “You don’t have anything,” Elton finishes my sentence. 

“It’s very difficult,” he continues. “You have to have hope because the whole world will be all over the place. When I go to bed at night and I say my prayers, which I do, I focus on the good things and hope. I believe that it’s going to be all right. It’s going to be fucking hard, but it’s going to be OK. You have to. Otherwise, where do you go down — into the fucking pity pit? No, I’m not going to be like that. 

“As musicians, we bring people together. When I do a concert, I don’t care who people vote for, what religion they are, it’s not my job. I bring people together in one place, and they have a good time. It’s like in the theatre, you write a musical, all sorts of people go, and if they love it, job done. That’s all we can do,” muses Elton as we wrap our time together. “We’re not grand and think we’re going to change the world. It’s a fucking complex thing, but it plants little seeds.”

As we say goodbye, the air outside is still stingingly cold, but the sun is out on what feels like the first day of sunshine this year. A relentlessly overcast and grey January has finally given way to some blue sky. It feels like spring is tapping at the door. Elton, Brandi Carlile, Bernie Taupin and Andrew Watt may yet be right: it’s enough to lift the spirits, a little light.