Who is elton john percussionist

A lot of people in Russia, strangely enough, were speaking English because of listening to pop records. Because of listening to The Beatles, to Elton John, to the stuff that they could listen to from across the borders, where the American and Allied Forces radio managed to get through.

They would make illegal recordings of it, and they would learn the language and learn it well. John also enjoyed giving a little tweak to the authorities.

And so he did it! And the audience loved it, too. And then it was accepted. He did it at every concert. Cooper enjoyed the experience of getting out and exploring the city when he could. And I went everywhere in Moscow, markets and things. I found the Russian people extraordinary.

I fell in love with everyone I met and everything I saw, and the conversation. People wanted to talk there; they wanted to talk, they wanted to drink with you, to laugh with you, to cry with you. But trips further afield ran into official roadblocks. Because everything was guarded, very much so. It was very difficult to get out of the region where you lived; you had to have permission to travel.

He did manage an outing one evening, with a local poet and his friends. But we got there and we had the most incredible evening of storytelling, of poetry. It was magical, magical. The final night of the tour was broadcast by the BBC, the source of numerous subsequent bootlegs of the show. Footage also appeared in the documentary To Russia…With Elton.

With the complete show now widely available, Live From Moscow is the perfect souvenir of a moment that still has resonance for those who were lucky enough to witness it in person.

We live in a world where everything is put in front of us and we take things for granted. And what a beautiful job to do. Elton asked [bassist] Dee [Murray] and myself if we were interested in helping out with that show, doing a few songs off the new record. At the time, I was in a band called Uriah Heep. Within the first eight bars of the first song that we played together, I knew that this was the music that I wanted to be playing. It had so much feeling and was so original. In fact, I think we supported the Who.

The setup back then was just Elton on piano and vocals, Dee on bass and you on drums. There was no guitarist or anything. Whose idea was that? It made for a very unique sound. It just kind of happened that way. Before we came to America we did a few gigs in England, just colleges and stuff. But when we came here, to get the sound of that particular album, which was so orchestral with the Paul Buckmaster string arrangements, Dee had this knack of making his bass sound like cellos and stuff like that.

In those days, there was no effects or anything like that we could use on a stage besides maybe a wah-wah pedal. But Dee had this knack for filling out that kind of sound. It was amazing. That was improvised. That was a jam, basically. That particular radio show was live, so it went out as we were doing it. The Troubadour show where Elton first played to a U. Was it as magical in the room that night as the lore suggests? Oh, yeah. It was just insane. We were these lads from England that came over and it was kind of a one-off.

If you pull it off, great. And, well, we obviously never got the job at the shoe shop, so I guess we did good. That is where I first met Dee. It was great taking Elton around the Sunset Strip and all the places you heard about in the early days of the movement, so to speak. Then it was fun doing that first gig at the Troubadour here in L. It was magical, but it also frightened us to death. I think Stephen Stills was there, as was Leon Russell.

I even think Diana Ross was sitting there for some reason. But once we cranked it up it was amazing, just amazing. Why were you only on a single song each on the early albums? Well, because I was doing other stuff. I was with Uriah Heep. I also went away to rehearse with this new band.

But I was a road dog. I wanted to be on the road. So I went back to London, and that group I was rehearsing with actually turned out to be Supertramp [ laughs ].

Go figure. I was probably doing that when Elton was putting together that whole thing together with Gus [Dudgeon] and Paul Buckmaster. Yes, we did that at Olympic Studios I think. That was one of the first songs Dee and I did for the Elton records.

It was so different. This band opened doors to songwriting and recording sessions as a singer, programmer and player.

John was introduced to the jazz scene recording and touring with Windows and then smooth jazz star, Peter White.

He also toured with Helen Reddy and Rita Coolidge playing drums. In , while songwriting with John's late-great friend Bob Birch, he introduced Mahon to Elton John's musical director Davey Johnstone who hired him for session work and consequently, asked Mahon to audition for Elton's band on percussion, electronic drums and vocals.

Playing and recording with Sir Elton John has given John the opportunity to play amazing music every night, all over the world for millions of fans. Elton even brought back world-renowned percussionist Ray Cooper to record on this album. The lyrics were written once again by the incredible and long-standing partner of Elton, Bernie Taupin. Elton mentioned a few times that he wanted to keep this record up tempo and fun and we set out to do that.

Elton likes to write songs quickly and pretty much wrote and recorded a song almost every day that we were in the studio together.

The tape was always running, and I do mean tape, as we recorded to twenty-four track and Pro Tools simultaneously. He sometimes wanted to bounce ideas off of us, so we were always nearby listening as he wrote and made notes. Davey helped him with chord structure and Matt charted the song as Elton wrote. Matt could refresh his memory without having to roll the tape back. Every song was constructed differently.