That was the whole of that day wiped out.” Nevertheless, work continued on an album whose title referenced John’s birth name, Reginald Dwight. I think Chris Thomas gave chase in another cab. He just shuffled out of the piano booth, walked straight out of the studio and on to Oxford Street, hailed a cab and went home. He burst into tears because he couldn’t get it. “We were recording ‘Town of Plenty,’” drummer Charlie Morgan recalled, and they “played the backing track to that and then we started another song, but Elton was having problems. The song was written and recorded on the same day.” Watch Elton John’s ‘I Don’t Wanna Go On With You Like That’ Video Other days weren’t easy. “Bernie dictated another verse for the song to him over the phone, off the top of his head – and that was it. “So he got on the phone to Bernie and the next minute he shouted out, ‘Pen, pen, pen!’” Paton remembered. “He called me over and he said, ‘What do you think of this?’ and he played me this fantastic song, ‘Heavy Traffic.’” The only problem, Elton added, was that he needed another verse. He could knock a song off in minutes,” bassist David Paton told David Buckley in 2007’s Elton: The Biography.
“One day, he put one of Bernie’s lyrics up on the piano. As Reg Strikes Back developed, John demonstrated his speed and dexterity in songwriting, and the strength of his partnership with lyricist Bernie Taupin. In an attempt to restart his life, he auctioned his entire art collection – and that’s where the jigsaw began to come together, albeit slowly. “Leather Jackets had four legs, a tail, and barked if a postman came to the door.” In the same period, John’s disastrous marriage to Renate Blauel ended before it had begun, and he regretted putting her in a miserable position rather than being honest about who he was. “It was about as close to an unmitigated disaster than anything I’ve ever released,” John wrote in his 2019 memoir Me. Its predecessor, Leather Jackets, was by John’s own admission one of his worst records – if not the worst. His star had faded in the years running up to the release of Reg Strikes Back on June 24, 1988. 35 Years Ago: Elton John Reboots Himself With ‘Reg Strikes Back’ Elton John’s 21st studio album perhaps wasn’t his best ever, but it was a remarkable achievement compared with what came before.
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