I feel sorry for the monitor engineer. I think there's another video where he apologises after the song, not sure who to.

 

I once threw a Les Paul at a tech who handed it me out-of-tune.

Guess who looked like the idiot.

 

I prefer to remember Elton as he was when I bought my first album of his. These two guys had no idea how their lives would change in a few years time.

 

Indeed.

You ever watched the Classic Albums doc on Yellow Brick Road? Absolutely brilliant.What a sensational blend.

 

Many times. Those sessions in France with Gus Dudgeon producing and David Hentschel engineering. The flow of ideas was phenomenal. Write new songs before breakfast and then record 3 or 4 songs in a day. Usually 2 or 3 takes and few overdubs. Elton's vocal pitch perfect in one take. And the way he could slip into falsetto and it was barely noticeable. Davy, Dee and Nigel's backing vocals were so special. Just a joy to behold. Truly a time in music that will never be repeated.

 

I once set my backing singers on fire when they sang in the wrong key.

I deeply regretted it because one of them was very cute.

 

Sissies. This is how you treat annoying people, in this case a 'fan'.

4:09

 

You beat me to it
I mean, how else do you give love to a fan when your idea of a show is setting yourself on fire?
Don't answer guys, just a rhetorical question

 

I've had a few petty outbursts on stage, it happens, you get that tunnelvision sometimes. But of course it behooves one to apologize and make nice after because hey, if they want revenge they will get it and it'll be bad

 

What a fool, his piano would have never sounded so bad if he'd have used the right plugins from sister site. Who is this clown?

 

I love a good barbecue.

 

Oh these Krauts!

 

i don't have too many funny show stories, but here are a couple. I was playing a show at a place i'd only played once before, and i mean it was like an underground hiphop show years ago so basically the audience was the performers and vice versa. anyway, i was chatting to the sound engineer and was like, "yeah i'm happy to see you here- last time i played here the guy behind the boards never got the monitors dialed in and i couldn't hear shit." .... "I was the sound engineer last time you played." .... he'd gotten like a haircut and shaved... and it's a dark venue... a little bit embarrassing. plus looking back i was even more of a little shit than i am now, so god knows how shitty my mixes were, poor guy was already probably trying to work a miracle.

another time, during a nice long period of my life where i'd do a drug if it was in reach, specifically opiates... i was doing a solo 15 minute long set (side note, haven't touched opiates for like 7-8 years. Good on that from now on.) It was at a more popular venue in the city (for this type of music, not in general) so the little front room i was in was actually full, i'm bad with guessing crowd size (especially through the distorted lens of time and drugs) but like 50-60 people? More probably i think? Obviously i'm not playing a stadium hahaha but in a way it's almost worse when the crowd is smaller, cause they're RIGHT there.

A key part of the story besides the drugs and small but completely full room is that I was/am a snobby douche bag and i wanted to play my beats in as live of a way as i could. So, i had a mpd32 and on the right 8 pads i had one shot drums, on the left samples chopped up, generally each pad being a 1/4 note but it varied. no longer than like a bar long... the whole thing was like a poor mans version of araabmuzik.

i was notorious for bailing on shows, mostly because i because i became paranoid at my house they'd sound like shit cause i can't mix, and it really sucks to acoustically assault a room because you're dumb. "YOU GUYS LIKE REVERB FREEZES! HERE WE GOOOOO!" so i'd never finish my sets then just come up with a lame excuse to cancel, not sure how many times my "computer crashed" before a show. near the end i started going up a bit on any poster i was on- NOT because of my skill or popularity but because i was such a flake the hope was that would be enough pressure for me to actually show up.

this show when they asked me a month beforehand if i wanted to do it i was super high when i got the text, so i said, "SURE!" and then the night of the show I had a bunch of strong vicodin "the good ones"- so the stars aligned and i ended up at the venue to do my little beat maker set.

about half way through the set, in the middle of playing a beat my mind completely completely shut down. like- you know the 1000 yard stare you can get after staring at a tv too long, where you're looking THROUGH the tv not at it? i can't explain it very well, but yeah i just froze and because of the one shot situation the second i stopped playing the music just halted. there was dead silence for what seemed like a million years but it must have only been 5-10 seconds. and i kinda blinked a few times and looked up to see this wall of people right in front of me (i wasn't on a stage so yeah it was me with my stuff on a table then them), just all staring at me of course.

my jaw kinda dropped, i almost gave myself whiplash looking back down to the pads so fast, and i went back to playing the beat. Apparently though the crowd interpreted this not as the drug induced fuck up was, but as a dramatic pause in the music and they all cheered. Probably the largest round of applause i've gotten from any show, or at least is felt like it given how panicked i was.

anyway kids, thats why you shouldn't do drugs. OR do enough drugs you don't care about anything. Either/or

 

isnt it the case that elton john is super deaf right now. I've heard his monitors are screaming loud from some folks. I guess I've run into this a couple times now where the person making judgments on monitors is incredibly deaf to begin with. Usually drummers but you know sooner or later all these folks go deaf if their in ears or monitors are too loud for too long. Its upsetting to see this level of assholishness, but if it were me doing monitors, it would have sounded great, so idk maybe elton was in the right to call out a shitty mix. Still really upsetting to see production crew be called out in such a shitty way.

 

whhhaaat the f, you knew that would happen when he got up on stage, but, the last part where the guy stands up and charges towards the guitarist and his bothered look.. that suddenly made you wonder for a second darn..

bah, i bet he will be proudly telling that story holding a pint to the end of days

 

I have two stories as a live sound engineer 40 years ago.
The first was when the sax player did a solo. No sound. The audience called for my head.
I asked the sax player at break and he said he'd turned his preamp down and was "faking it."
The second was when the guitarist couldn't get any sound out of his acoustic and berated me in front of the audience.
Then he said "oops" as he found the end of his instrument cord he'd forgotten to plug in.
I fired the band and played everything myself instead.

 

Now I know Kenny G's secret- it was never circular breathing, he was faking it the entire time! LOL oh my god i'm fucking shaking my head- faking a solo is the height of woody allen type neuroticism, only woody allen is a pretty accomplished clarinet player iirc so he'd actually play something i'm guessing.

like- i'm not sure what's crazier, that he thought he'd get away with just NOT PLAYING a solo or the fact that he DID get away with it lol.

i feel like i've hijacked this thread from elton john being an asshole to dumb stories related to shows. i'm gonna start a new thread so this one can go back to complaining about old cranky entitled musicians. rightfully so imo... then again i'm not elton john and it could very well be the monitor guy was busy flirting and totally blowing the mix. regardless its best to not punch down.

 

Bro didn't have endless smile

 

I didn't watch because I don't really need to, to formulate my opinion. I side with the Artist 100%. What is he, like 90 or something?
So if they have to prop this guy up like a scarecrow and pump 20 grand worth of coke into him, just to get him standing on stage; the least you could do is get the mix right by doing your job.

Maybe he knows that every show has got to count now. It's all being archived/recorded.

 

Last edited: Jun 28, 2022

Toured playing keys & due to their dynamics it can be a challenge to get a mix right in monitors. But there’s no doubt that whoever was in charge of monitor land for drama Queen John was a pro. Tour managers don’t let their little princesses get served by interns. John has always been known as a whiny bitch. So I would t expect anything less from a toupee wearing has been.