Credit: Raph Pour-Hashemi
Fri 29 May 2026 10:00, UK
In the traditional story of rock and roll, someone like Elton John was never meant to be famous.
He was always looking at himself as a songwriter before anything else, but there’s no chance that anyone could have made the same impact if they tried to do justice to ‘Your Song’ or ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ every time they went into the studio. John had the perfect voice to deliver his tunes every time he played, but before he even got famous, he was dangerously close to quitting his day job altogether and moving on to another group.
Then again, joining a band wasn’t the worst idea in the world for John. He had been getting nowhere for years trying to make his own tunes, and while Bernie Taupin was the kind of partner that he felt matched him perfectly, it was still hard to drum up any kind of buzz on his first records. Even when giving some of those songs away, Three Dog Night singing ‘Lady Samantha’ was going to pale in comparison to what John could whenever he got behind the keyboard.
He was looking to be a proper musician in every sense of the word, but the number-one rule of any musician is to surround yourself with artists who are better than you. No one wanted to be the one who knew everything in the rehearsal room, and even on some of John’s finest albums, having someone like Paul Buckmaster work out those masterful arrangements was one of the greatest gifts he could have received.
But for a split second, the idea of working with Jeff Beck would have been enough for any other musician to throw their career away. Beck was the consummate rock guitarist in many respects, and even if he wasn’t the most popular musician in terms of getting hits, there wasn’t a single soul on the planet that didn’t bend their knee in respect to what he was doing on so many of his albums.
Beck Ola and Truth were masterpieces for any guitar player, and the idea of John joining in on keyboards would have been a welcome change of pace. He wanted the chance to stretch himself out, but even if he was getting nowhere with his solo career, John was pissed when he heard from his higher-ups that he needed to keep his solo career going if he wanted to truly get anywhere.
John didn’t want to hear it at the time, but he felt that it would have been better to learn a thing or two from Beck, saying, “Jeff effectively wanted to use me, Dee and Nigel and his backing band for an American tour. These would be big audiences, and I’d be playing my songs in front of them–not as a completely unknown artist, but as a part of Jeff Beck’s band. I was ready to ask them where to sign when [publisher] Dick [James] told Beck’s agent to stuff their 10 per cent. ‘I promise you now, Elton John will be earning twice what Jeff Beck does. It sounded like [it] would follow me around the rest of my career. I could see myself in five years’ time, still slogging around the clubs, The Guy Who Was Going to Earn Twice What Jeff Beck Does.”
Further reading: From The Vault
But it’s not like James didn’t have good instincts. John was quickly about to start taking off when ‘Your Song’ became a hit, and even if learning from Beck would have been interesting to see for someone of John’s calibre, it was about time for Beck to start doing away with singers and start letting his guitar do the talking for him when he started making tunes like ‘Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers’.
It took a lot of guts for someone with as small a profile as John had to tell Beck no, but he would happily trade the whole thing in in a heartbeat. He would have been completely satisfied playing with one of the biggest names in music, but sometimes the rejections in life tend to happen for a reason. And, really, would anyone have been able to stomach a tune like ‘Crocodile Rock’ if it also had a Beck-style solo over it?
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