Ghosts of Christmas Passed 2018 - #EltonJohnLewis ��

I LOVE THIS. LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS! This is my frickin' life too - including playing this "Your Song." 



I saw him at 17 in Chicago, blew the roof off the Auditorium opening for Eric Clapton (singing this song with a flashing dildo twixt his legs and playing upside down). I went a year later when he solo'd after the album came out - sang this song to teeny boppers - met Abbie Adams (Mrs. Fred Yaffe) who sang it in our band, played this song in nightclubs across the planet (lesbian bar in Ptown, MA where the bartender slammed the top on my fingers "You're kind isn't allowed in here" - and a week later she had to share a ride in my car back to Boston and apologized profusely, karmically). 



Edna Gundersen took me to see him with Leon Russell and I met Elton at the after party. He looked at me as if I was an old friend (flipside?) and I held his rough calloused piano hand. "Elton. We've never met, but I just want to thank you for all the amazing times I've had playing your songs for people." 



It's true. From Cannes to Paris, from honky tonks in Chicago to Les Deux Cafe in Hollywood. Yesterday I asked Nick Milo (pianoman Tower of Power, Joe Cocker) what his first conscious thought as an artist was, and he said "I was just tall enough to see above the keys to play a song I taught myself." I asked Deron Johnson (Miles Davis) "Where does music come from?" and he said "It's under the surface, like water in a pool, just below the air." 



The choice to become an artist starts BEFORE WE ARRIVE HERE, and the first time we dance, write, pick up a guitar, sing a song, act on stage - we RECOGNIZE THAT'S WHY WE'RE ON THE PLANET. 



It's in every interview I do with people under deep hypnosis or with Jennifer Medlyn Shaffer and artists on the flipside "I knew what I was on the planet for... And I'm still making music on the flipside." Thank you Reginald Dwight Elton John. Wow. My breath is gone.