ELTON JOHN: NEVER TOO LATE

At the risk of sounding like a fan, I can honestly say that despite following Elton John from his first album to his last documentary, it wasn’t until I watched ELTON JOHN: NEVER TOO LATE, now streaming on Disney +, that I fully understood the artist and the man. Toward the end of the film we hear Elton John perform I’m Still Standing. Though Bernie Taupin said it was never written for that purpose, it is an elegant and moving summing up of all that had come before in John’s life and career. Directors R.J. Cutler (The War Room) and Elton’s husband, David Furnish interweave videos and interviews newly unearthed from Elton John’s massive archive with the final leg of his Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour; which finishes at Dodger Stadium the site of his greatest early success.

A cornerstone to John’s career and the movie, is the famous little brown envelope where Elton John first glimpsed Bernie Taupin’s lyrics. Serendipity saw a young Reginald Dwight (Elton John’s given name) and Bernie Taupin both answering an ad in the British paper New Musical Express. Ray Williams, the A&R manager for Liberty Records who’d placed the ad, paired the duo as a singer/songwriter team, providing Elton the envelope containing Taupin’s lyrics.“When I first got Bernie’s lyrics from Liberty Records, I read them on a train, and as soon as I got home, I started writing songs to his lyrics,” John explained. “He wrote brilliantly, and I responded to his songs. Bernie was a storyteller — his songs told stories, and they conjured up visions in my mind. It’s ridiculous how good his songs were for someone so young. I’ve thought about it so many times: Why was that given to me? And I believe totally that it was just meant to be.” In the movie Elton John then goes on to illustrate how he transformed Taupin’s lyrics of Tiny Dancer into an eventual hit song with a facility that, as a songwriter, is hard for me to comprehend.

We then see the present day Elton John in a studio still filled with the joy of creation and discovery combining elements of Tiny Dancer into Hold Me Closer, a hip hop ballad with Britney Spears, where he masters the piano part in one take. 

It is in these moments in the movie we see how the childhood prodigy grew to the artist we now know, shaped by both talent and trauma. Abuse at home followed him as he grew, sometimes guiding him down dark pathways and occasionally into destructive relationships. Certainly one of deepest wounds was his father’s refusal to attend any of  Elton’s performances, denying Elton the chance to share his joy with him. This may be, in part, the motivation for Elton John’s podcast Rocket Hour, which reflects John’s commitment to supporting  emerging musicians. In the film, we see an excerpt from the show providing the attention, emotional support and acclaim to young artists as they struggle to carve out a career in the music world.

And in the film Elton John holds nothing back recounting a suicide attempt which had him overdosing on Valium and and jumping into a pool at his home in L.A.’s Benedict Canyon. The public was unaware as they saw him perform at Dodger Stadium two days later. The next year he “came out” in the 1976 Rolling Stone interview with Cliff Jahr, in which we hear reporter Cliff Jahr in the film asking, ‘Should I turn the recorder off?’ And Elton says, ‘Leave it running.’ “Elton knew what he was doing,” Cutler explains.

“People may not realize the extraordinary risk to his career that that interview was in 1976. It’s clear that Elton felt then, as he feels now, that there was no choice. To not be his truest self would have meant not living at all.” Cutler went on to point out that “Elton’s self-reflection, his honesty, his willingness to see the impact that his childhood had on who he was — that was all new back then.” And that that emotional honesty was instrumental in John finding his path to healing “through love with David and their family,” Cutler added.

Among the most moving musical moments was the 1974 Madison Square Garden concert that saw John Lennon joining Elton John on stage for “Whatever Gets You Through the Night,” “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” and finishing the set with “I Saw Her Standing There. As we learn in the film, it transformed John and Yoko’s life.  

It was quite extraordinary,” says John. “It was just joyous, and that’s the way music should be. We didn’t have time to think about much that night, to be honest — we rehearsed in the afternoon, and then we went and did it that night.” Having never attended any of Elton John’s earlier performances one can’t help but be struck by unabashed enthusiasm and boundless energy which elevated those shows into a special realm of a theatrical artistry.

The final scenes are taken from Elton John’s final concert at Dodger Stadium. In it we see a celebration of camaraderie and longevity thanking those gray haired artists who have journeyed with him for years. Among those are guitarist Davey Johnstone, drummer Nigel Olsson and Ray Cooper, who have been playing together for decades, joining the band in the early 1970s. And of course we see an older but agile Bernie Taupin. 

And finally we see Elton John calling to the stage the core players in his life, his family. “On my gravestone, I want it to say, ‘He was a great husband and a great father,’ not ‘He was the best musician or best songwriter,’” says John. “The most important thing to me isn’t the music, it isn’t the touring, or anything — it’s my sons and David.”

To me Never Too Late shows the value of the streaming platform as there is just too much to take in in one viewing. Especially those music moments past and present I may want to return to over and over again.