Davey Johnstone was on top of the world looking down on creation and he couldn’t believe what he was seeing and hearing. It was his first time in New York City. Here he was on the 20th floor of the Plaza Hotel, towering over Fifth Avenue, taking in the sound and fury of the street below.
“I was there for the first time, going, ‘Holy shit! This is like something I remember from movies and TV shows, and I’m here listening to fucking police sirens and all this shit going on down on the street,” he says. “It was quite a shocking moment for me.”
Johnstone had just finished his first US tour with the Elton John Band (“it was actually very successful”), and he, bassist Dee Murray, drummer Nigel Olsson and Elton were all taking a day off.
Johnstone’s first bite of the Big Apple did not disappoint. He was in a more well-heeled zip code than Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets but the vibe and the energy was there. He was absorbed. But before he could get too carried away with his thoughts, the phone rang.
“Elton called up and said, ‘Look we’re going to go shopping tomorrow, and I want to get a guitar,’” recalls Johnstone. This was when the rock ’n’ roll pianist was entertaining the idea of swapping keys for strings, if only for his own amusement.
The idea certainly amuses Johnstone now. Did Elton ever play guitar? “Uhh, no!” he says, cackling over the Zoom connection. “He’s tried a few times. It’s hilarious! And he loves guitar, and he just loves the whole thing about guitar, but…”
But he’s the piano player from Pinner, “a different kind of a rock star”.
“It was unusual, really,” continues Johnstone. “I mean, there’s been quite a few of them – obviously – Little Richard and Jerry Lee [Lewis] and that whole thing – but to be a rock star of Elton’s magnitude and be a piano player, he was always kind of trapped behind the piano.”
Johnstone was not long in the Elton John Band at the time. Elton’s producer, Gus Dudgeon, had worked with Johnstone when he produced Magna Carta’s Songs From Wasties Orchard.
In 1971, Gudgeon drafted Johnstone for Bernie Taupin’s eponymous solo album, then recommended him to Elton. Johnstone was hired as a session player for the Madman Across The Water sessions, playing acoustic guitar and mandolin, on four tracks.
Folk and folk-rock was Johnstone’s beat but he had everything the Elton John Band would need. He and Elton hit it off. Both liked to work fast. They had chemistry in the studio. Johnstone was hired just over a week later.
He had played his first show with the band on 5th February 1972, at London’s Royal Festival Hall. Rocket Man and I Think I’m Going To Kill Myself also made their live debuts that night.
The shows kept coming. Now Johnstone was in New York, and he needed little encouragement to check out its guitar stores. There was one on 48th Street that was already legendary… There was a bit of theatre about this place.
“So the four of us went down, and Manny’s, it was a music store, a very famous, iconic music store, and in those days, when you walked in the door, there was a guy checking out people who were coming in,” recalls Johnstone. “And he’d go over the microphone, ‘Now here’s Elton John and his band coming into the store…’ It was fucking unbelievable. We were looking around and going, ‘What the fuck!?’”
This was a different time, a more romantic era for the guitar store. Smoke On The Water had just been released earlier in the year. Would that have made the shop floor in that time?
Black, three gold pickups, gold hardware… Elton just went, ‘That’s the one I want!’
Who can say. But just imagine the regular crowd, some kid trying their first electric guitar out and then the tannoy announces the arrival of Elton John. It didn’t take him long to find the guitar he wanted.
“We go into the store and right, pride of place in the middle of the store – quite a big store, major for a guitar store, massive – there was a pedestal in the middle, and on top of this pedestal was this Les Paul [Custom],” says Johnstone. “Black, three gold pickups, gold hardware… Elton just went, ‘That’s the one I want!’”
Johnstone approved, took the ‘Black Beauty’ down and put it through its paces. He had no complaints.
“I tried it,” says Johnstone. “I went, ‘Yeah, it’s brilliant!’ And so he said, ‘Great.’ So he took it away, and he was quite happy with his purchase.”
Johnstone didn’t hear much about the guitar again. The touring schedule had them back out, night after night. Until disaster struck. Everything got stolen. Johnstone is unsure of the exact date – from what he has said, after their 9th March show at the Sheffield City Hall would fit – but he sure can remember what went missing.
“I’m not sure if it was the end of that year, or the beginning of ’73, but whenever it was… yeah, the thieves stole the whole fucking truck,” he says. “In those days it wasn’t like it is now. There was no security, really. Everything was loaded into the back of the truck, all of our gear together, and the thieves stole the whole truck and all my guitars were lost.
“A couple of killer guitars, too, and a beautiful old Gibson mandolin, and the third mandolin ever made by Fender. It was an electric mandolin, the serial number was 00003. That was the third one ever built, and I absolutely loved it. That was taken as well. Two of Dee’s basses were taken, some of Nigel’s drums. They couldn’t take the whole kit because they probably had a fucking Austin Princess or something.
“But they took what they could and left, and it was heartbreaking for us, obviously, and for me in particular, because suddenly I was driving back down to London and going to try and find some new guitars. I bought a couple of things and jumped into back into tour mode.”
This would be the first occasion when Johnstone would learn at first hand all about Elton John’s generosity. By the time he got back to the venue for the next show, Elton had a guitar waiting for him. In a way, Johnstone had already picked it out.
We got to the next gig, and I can’t remember where it was, but Elton brought the Black Beauty up, and he said, ‘Here, you better have this ‘cos I can’t f*****g play it anyway.’
“We got to the next gig, and I can’t remember where it was, but Elton brought the Black Beauty up, and he said, ‘Here, you better have this ‘cos I can’t fucking play it anyway.’ So that’s when I started using it, and it’s still in the rig to this day. It’s still in one of the rigs anyway.”
I’ve been able to have some wonderful instruments over the years, and quite a few of them, actually, have come by way of Elton’s kindness
Johnstone lost a couple of Les Pauls in the theft. There was a Les Paul Special and a ’58 Goldtop with P-90 pickups. But in a roundabout way, after the theft and Elton’s gift, he found the Les Paul that would become the Davey Johnstone Les Paul.
It is the guitar we hear on Funeral For A Friend, on Tower Of Babel from Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy.
“In fact, on those sessions, on the Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds track, I gave John [Lennon] my Les Paul to use,” says Johnstone. “That’s what he played when we played together on Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.
“I’ve been blessed. I’ve been able to have some wonderful instruments over the years, and quite a few of them, actually, have come by way of Elton’s kindness.”
Some of the coolest guitars in Johnstone’s collection were bought by Elton. It’s as though he is living vicariously through his guitarist and musical director. Elton might not be able to play the guitar, but he certainly knows what he likes. Johnstone says he sure can pick ‘em.
“He bought me my first Flying V, which I still have, the same one, and it’s still unbelievable. Sounds incredible,” he says. “It was 1972, it was brand new and we were in Chicago, and he just showed up with it at the gig in Chicago that night and I used it then, and then subsequently, all those years.”
Johnstone isn’t sure what year the Flying V was. None of that stuff really bothers him.
“I’m more interested in how the thing plays and how it sounds,” he says. “I’m not so up on, ‘Oh, there’s an EV speaker in here and there’s all this…’ As long as it sounds good, that’s what I care about!”
And the Flying V sounded good. It looked good too. If a guitar caught Elton’s eye, there was a chance that Johnstone might end up with it – like the Fender Stratocaster in ‘7UP’ green he uses for Sacrifice.
“That was an Eric Clapton signature, and I saw him holding it on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1988, and I happened to bring the magazine with me on the flight,” explains Johnstone. “When we got to Denmark, to Puk Studio where we did that album [Sleeping With The Past], I was sitting there reading it in the studio one day and Elton went, ‘Oh, that looks really nice. What’s that?’ I said, ‘Yeah, that’s this new Eric guitar.”
Johnstone might not sweat the spec of his gear but Clapton’s signature guitar was different. It was the hottest thing around, something kind of radical, with vintage elements such as the V-shaped neck profile and hardware, and the hand of modernism in its electrics.
This had the Gold Lace Sensor pickups, but more intriguingly, it had the TBX tone control and onboard mid boost. Johnstone was smitten.
“‘Check it out. It’s got active pickups and all the rest of it.’ And he’s went, ‘What’s that? I don’t need to know all that.’ I went, ‘Okay,’” says Johnstone. “And the fucking next week, of course, he gets me one of these guitars. Elton gets it and it arrives in the studio, and that’s the guitar I use on Sacrifice.”
Johnstone says he gets a kick out of how much the audience recognises the different guitars in the set. The 7UP Clapton Strat is still a regular in the live show.
“I’m always surprised they notice things like that, and they love to see the different guitars coming up,” he says. “We’ve just started putting that back in at the set. When we were doing the Captain Fantastic stuff, a few years ago, I would use that on Writing and the songs like that that would require a really clean, Strat sound. As I say, I have been blessed with so many great tools of my trade.”
- Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy 50th Anniversary is out now via UMR.
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