John Lennon and Elton John solid a powerful friendship within the Seventies. The 2 collaborated on just a few songs, however their bond additionally fashioned exterior the recording studio. Whereas entering into some foul bother, the pair needed to keep away from Andy Warhol, who may have uncovered their actions.
John Lennon and Elton John hid from Andy Warhol
After The Beatles dominated the music trade within the Nineteen Sixties, Elton John emerged as one of many brightest stars of the Seventies. The “Rocket Man” singer had a number of hits early in his profession and caught the eye of Lennon, who was now a solo artist. The 2 labored on just a few songs collectively, together with Lennon’s “Whatever Gets You Through the Night” and John’s cowl of “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”.
They turned good buddies and typically received into “naughty” enterprise collectively. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Elton John recalled a night when he and John Lennon received excessive on cocaine at a lodge. They heard a knock on the door, and it was Andy Warhol. The 2 didn’t need him to doc something by chance, in order that they waited for him to depart.
“I can remember being stoned out of our mind on coke at the SherryNetherland hotel, and at 2:00 in the morning, there would be a knock on the door – of course, you know how paranoid you get on coke, you say, ‘Go to the door and look through the thing!’ And it took me about five minutes to get the door because I was so paranoid, but it was Andy f***ing Warhol! And I said, ‘It’s Andy Warhol,’ and he said, ‘Don’t f***ing let him in! He’ll have a camera and everything!’ So we just waited for him to go away. Little things like that, crazy things like that.”
Lennon had a life-changing efficiency with John
Elton John has fond recollections of John Lennon. He stated he solely noticed the “gentle, gorgeous” facet of the previous Beatle, not the heavy-drinking, wild facet a lot of the general public noticed throughout his “Lost Weekend” interval. Their friendship benefitted each of their careers, as “Whatever Gets You Through the Night” was Lennon’s first No. 1 hit within the U.S.
Sir Elton had made a wager with Lennon that if it reached No. 1, he must be a part of him at a live performance and carry out the track stay. Since Elton gained the wager, Lennon made good on the wager by showing at a 1974 live performance at Madison Sq. Backyard in New York Metropolis.
Elton instructed Rolling Stone that the “Imagine” singer was nervous since he had not carried out for a large viewers shortly, however the ovation he obtained was legendary. Lennon additionally claimed that it was the night time he reconnected with Yoko Ono after a quick separation, however that reality is usually disputed.
“I kind of brought him back, in a way, to performing, with the Madison Square Garden thing, because I did the bet with him about ‘Whatever Gets You Through the Night,’ and it got to Number One,” John defined. “He was petrified – he hadn’t performed in years – but he came. I’ve never forgotten, I’ve never heard an ovation for anybody that was so heartwarming, and it moved him. It was, like, an eight-minute standing ovation. He was physically sick before he came on, he re-met Yoko that night, it changed the course of his life again. And I had something to do with it.”