To the casual observer, the piano and organ are pretty similar. The keys are laid out the same, so the skills required to play each instrument are transferable, right? Not so, and if you don’t believe us, just ask Elton John.
In a new self-penned piece for The Guardian, in which he namechecks some of the great British keyboard players who he believes are worthy of greater recognition, John begins by recalling his days on the club circuit in the ‘60s, explaining that if you were in the support band - as, when part of Bluesology, he was frequently - you had to make do with the keyboard that the headline act would be using later, because there was no room to set up your own gear.
“My nightmare, which regularly came true, was arriving at the venue to find a Hammond organ on stage,” says John. “The Hammond was an enormous, intimidating thing, like a chest of drawers with a keyboard attached. It had foot pedals and drawbars that changed its tone, and a huge speaker with a fan in front of it called a Leslie cabinet, which gave you a vibrato effect. I didn’t know how to work any of it. It felt like being at the controls of a spacecraft: a spacecraft that I had absolutely no idea how to fly.”
Elton would go on to become one of the most successful singer-songwriters of all time, but admits that the mystery of the organ is one that he’s never really solved.
“I bought a Vox Continental but I couldn’t get the sounds out of it that Alan Price did, and my phobia of the Hammond never subsided,” he says. “I was a piano player trying to play the organ like a piano, and it just doesn’t work that way - it’s a completely different technique, one I couldn’t master. So I decided to concentrate on the piano and writing songs. It was the right thing to do.”
As Elton’s career progressed, of course, he acquired the cachet and contacts that meant he didn’t have to worry about playing the organ himself.
“A few years later, when we needed a Hammond organ sound on my album Madman Across the Water, I thought about it, then called Rick Wakeman,” he recalls. “That was the right thing to do, too.”
While John is dismissive of his organ-playing skills, we do recall at least one occasion when he played the instrument. Runaway Train featured on his 1992 album, The One, and has Elton on the Hammond (or possibly an emulation of one) as he trades solos with a certain Eric Clapton.
Not bad for someone with an organ phobia - not bad at all.
