|
 It
had to happen.
After years and years of hearing this old continuously circulating
riddle, thanks to Caesars Palace there is finally a bonefide
answer to “What is black and white and red all over?
It is Elton John’s red lacquer piano (with black and
white keys, of course), the one that his exclusive Vegas show,
“The Red Piano,” in the Colosseum venue at the
hotel is named for. And lest one thinks that John has been
seeking to strike a new chord with audiences over the past
four years, you’ll find the man sitting AT the piano
– as opposed to jumping on top of it or lying underneath
it, as he was wont to do in the past.
John, who will return to Caesars October 16-November 5 (check
for dark days), admits that he had been visually trying to
scale back his shows since his “wild and wacky”
days of the 1970’s and no longer is a sitting duck where
his costumes are concerned. Gone is the fowl garb along with
the ostrich feathers, beanie hats, and oversized sunglasses,
never to return. Okay, so there are a few sequins, but then
that just goes hand-in-hand with working in Las Vegas. And
any way you slice it, John’s show is one that’s
guaranteed to knock everyone’s socks off (but then,
who cares about what the audience is or isn’t wearing?).
One thing’s for certain -- “The Red Piano”
is not a greatest hits package because from its inception,
John wouldn’t take the easy route. He does do some of
his well-known songs but they are packaged with others that
aren’t as recognizable.
“I didn’t want to come here and just take the
money and run,” says John, often referred to as Sir
Elton; having been knighted by the Queen of England some years
back..”I wanted to come here and produce something that
was refreshing to me at 56, years old (his age when the show
debuted)/ I was 34 years into a career and I didn’t
want to come here and just go through the motions. I wanted
to do something spectacular. I had to choose the musical set
very carefully and there are things I do very poignantly during
the show, like ‘Empty Garden,’ which I don’t
do very much because it’s very upsetting. But with David
LaChappelle’s visuals, I’ve turned it into a positive
statement rather than a depressing one”
“I wanted to make this show, which is a production but
more a concert with great visuals, into a positive thing,”
he adds. “It wasn’t going to be all bang, bang,
bang in your face – shows are not successful if you
do that, I don’t think. You have to start and build
a show and that’s how I’ve performed for so many
years. We start and build a show and we have an hour and forty-five
minutes at the most to do that. We made sure that we had enough
catalog to cover that and that the show was going to be a
mixture of great music and fun, both visually and orally.”
When John, who notes he hadn’t done a production show
since the 1970’s, was ready to put the show together,
he immediately thought of LaChappelle as production and set
designer. LaChappelle had done two or three of the artist’s
videos and John had always been an avid collector of LaChappelle’s
photography. In addition, the two are good friends.
LaChappelle admits that he had to give himself parameters
in designing the show even though John gave him the green
light to do whatever he wanted. He makes the point that John
can just roll his piano out and do a concert on a bare stage
and have the audience on its feet. As a result, he was looking
to mix that magic with the Vegas experience. He says that
the hardest thing about creating the show was going back and
forth deciding which songs to cut out.
“The range of Elton’s songs, from ‘Daniel’
to ‘Yellowbrick Road’ is so incredible and it
spans decades,” LaChappelle acknowledges. “I had
to kind of rein myself in because if you have too many ideas,
it can just be an overload. I did not want the show to be
a series of vignettes, I wanted it to be a ride. I wanted
to take the audience on a trip. No one sings a ballad like
Elton, or the blues, so it’s just not about being all
over the top and crazy, but there are definitely references
to that part of his life as well. The big challenge was, how
do you keep his show coherent and consistent so that when
the audience leaves, they leave with a feeling?”
That sentiment is exactly the reason that LaChappelle didn’t
want the show to be a series of one vignette for each song,
which he likens to being a string of music videos. He says
that ultimately he took his inspiration from John as an artist
and combined it with his own appreciation of pop art.
“We drew our inspiration visually from pop art and Elton
gave us so much from his old costumes,” LaChappelle
relates. “Here he is dressed like a duck and here he
is with a diamond-studded carrot for no reason at all, just
a carrot on stage. It was just this incredible surrealism
involved and there was so much freedom in that.”
Speaking of costumes, John had an entire new stage wardrobe
designed by Yamamoto just for this production. He changes
his costumes three times during the show.
“It’s back to costume changes and velcro, which
I haven’t done since the Bob Mackie days,” John
reveals. “The costumes are a really important part of
the show, as they are in Vegas history. I wanted them to be
special -- they are kind of vampire meets Samurai. There are
extravagant clothes but there are no ostrich feathers. But
there are a few sequins. You know, if you’re going to
have one last stab at it, you might as well have a stab at
it in Vegas.”
According to John, “The Red Piano” will not be
seen anywhere else in the world. He notes that, at this particular
stage in his life, it’s another string in his bow and
another challenge.
“When I did ‘The Lion King,’ I never envisioned,
for example, that it would lead to so many things in my career,
which at that point was just about making music and touring,”
says John. “I enjoyed that. But, you know, there are
other things to do and so that opened a lot of doors for me”.
“I think that this show is a Vegas experience and I
think that people will say across America and hopefully in
Europe that they have to go see Elton John’s thing in
Vegas,” John continues. “Just like people come
here to see ‘O’ or they come to see Celine, that’s
what I wanted to make it. Caesars offered me an incredible
opportunity in this venue. On this stage, you just can’t
come here and go through 75 minutes of hits. I can do that
anywhere else in the world. I can’t do this show anywhere
else in the world but here. And that’s why I did it
in the first place.”
Surprisingly, despite the huge size of the Colosseum stage,
John only works with his five-piece band; there are no dancers
and no cast. His band includes Davey Johnstone on guitar,
Guy Babylon on keyboards, Bob Birch on bass guitar, John Mahon
on percussion, and Nigel Olsson on drums. The visuals, which
will also make use of the large LED screen (the largest in
North America), is John’s only other companion on stage.
“At my age, we need the screen,” John quips.
As for the stage of his career he’s in now, John jokingly
calls it his “Louis XIV” period. He says that
there’s not much left for him to do so he might as well
have fun; emphasizing that he truly is at the fun stage of
his life. It is certainly been a long time coming. The career
of the legendary international singer/songwriter/performer
has spanned more than three decades. By all measures, he is
one of the world’s most successful touring artists and
one of the top-selling solo artists of all time.
On a first name basis with the world, John has sold more than
200 million records worldwide, with 29 consecutive Top 40
Hits, earning 35 gold and 25 platinum albums. He has won multiple
Grammy Awards, including the Grammy Legend Award. He collaborated
with lyricist Tim Rice to create the soundtrack to the Walt
Disney blockbuster “The Lion King,” for which
his music won an Academy Award. After John’s second
musical, “Aida,” opened on Broadway, he and Tim
Rice won a Tony for Best Score and John was honored with another
Grammy for Best Musical Show Album.
John says that, for him, performing in Las Vegas is as it
has always been -- as imagined from a boy in England. Having
played a lot of venues in this city, he says that it is always
fantastic to play here, that Vegas is legendary. John remembers
seeing Elvis Presley play here in the 70’s and says
that Vegas has always been synonymous with great entertainment
throughout the years but never more so than now. He wanted
to come here and do this show because Vegas is once again
the entertainment capital of the world. As opposed to the
one-nighters he does when he is on tour, he enjoys having
an extended stay and the opportunity to see some of the other
shows while he is in town.
“I’m having fun with my career and “The
Red Piano” is probably the icing on the cake for me,”
John sums up. “I’m not jumping on the piano and
I’m not lying underneath it. I think those days are
behind me but certainly there are some fabulous moments. Pop
music is all about fun anyway and I’m very happy. I’ve
written so many different things and this gives me another
strength; it gives me another thing to think about.”
“I started out being an entertainer and I’ve always
been an entertainer and over the last few years I’ve
cut back on the costumes a bit,” he adds. “I couldn’t
go any further than I did. I took it to the most extreme point
and stupid point that anyone’s ever done but it was
done tongue-in-cheek and I cut it back because I had to. But
now we’ve gone on. I wanted this show to be like an
hour-and-a-half ride at Magic Mountain.”
They say that, in life, it’s the ride that’s the
fun. It is in Caesars Palace too – at least if Elton
John has anything to say about it.
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ADDITIONAL
ARTICLES
BY
BOBBIE KATZ
HERE |
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