DAVEY JOHNSTONE & JOHN JORGENSON
1999 By James Jensen
What do the guitarists in Elton John's band do between gigs when they are traveling the
world playing to sold out stadiums of screaming fans? In the case of longtime bandleader
and sometimes songwriter (I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues) Davey Johnstone, and
more recent additional axe master extraordinaire (three time winner of CMA's guitarist of
the year with The Desert Rose Band, and accolades too many to mention with The
Hellecasters) John Jorgenson, you borrow a minidisc recorder from Sony Electronics and
write and record an all acoustic instrumental guitar duo CD called "Groovemasters Vol. 2...Crop Circles."
Aside from his well noted work with Elton John, Johnstone has made anexceptional name
for himself as a player who can add that special something to a song, and he has been
called on to do that by artists as diverse as Stevie Nicks, Bob Seger, Alice Cooper, Meat
Loaf and Jimmy Webb. Jorgenson's talent for creating something a little fresh and
different in the studio can be found on records from folks as diverse as Willie Nelson,
Emmylou Harris, John Prine, and Bonnie Raitt.
Written on world tour with Elton John, produced and recorded by Elton's keyboard ace
Guy Babylon, "Crop Circles" finds these two artists known for adding that
special color to others work attacking their own blank canvas with everything from
delicate brush strokes to paint bombs. We caught up with them between American and
European tours at a photo shoot, and chatted with them individually and then together.
AM: Was your first guitar an acoustic?
Davey Johnstone: Definitely , my sister got me one when I was eleven years old. I had
been playing viola at school since I was seven and I had begun playing it like it was a
guitar so my sister thought she might as well get me one. It wasn't very good, and year
later I got a brilliant little electric guitar with one pickup called a Broadway, and I
loved it. Like all the guitar loving kids I had been drooling over the powder pink strat
in the window at the music shop but that wasn't in the budget. I had a band at school
called The Trolls and we played Beatles and Stones stuff. When I was about 14 or 15, I
decided the acoustic guitar was where it was at and got deeper into it.
AM: What were you playing at that point?
Davey: I got a Harmony acoustic and very shortly after was into really traditional
music and players like Bert Jansch and Davey Graham. I was also really hooked by Irish
Music like The Dubliners and Chieftans, and got a tenor banjo and mandolin. One of my
mentors was an Scottish singer-songwriter named Archie Fisher who had a big influence on
most of the players from my era. Archie also played sitar, so I had to order one from
Bombay and it arrived a year later in a Dracula sized coffin at the docks. It seemed
like every couple of months I was adding some other stringed instrument to my collection.
I didn't really get back into the electric guitar until I was asked to join a group called
Magna Carta when I was about eighteen. They were being produced by Gus Dudgeon , who was
also producing a guy named Elton John. Even though I was very much into folk , I was
always a frustrated Rocker. Gus asked me to play on a poetry album which Bernie Taupin was
doing, an all acoustic production that Bernie would speak his lyrics over. It seems that
Bernie had mentioned me to Elton and I was asked to play on one of their sessions on a
song called "Madman Across The Water".
AM: That song was the start of your relationship with Elton and you ended up playing
acoustic on that track didn't you?
Davey: Yes, they had tried the track with Michael Chapman, and Mick Ronson, and it
never came off for some reason. Elton was telling Gus what he was going for and I was
mentioned. I instantly got on very well with Elton and came up with a different part for
the song which Elton loved, and they had me work on "Tiny Dancer" ,
"Levon" as well as playing mandolin and sitar on "Holiday Inn".
AM: Your acoustic playing on "Hercules" from the "Honkey Chateau"
album was very cool, and I could never quite figure it out...
Davey: (Laughing) That's because it is in open G tuning, and I have just been teaching
it to John as Elton wants to add it to the next tour. It has been about fifteen years
since we have done it live so it will be great fun.
AM: Did your use of open tunings come from your experience in the folk days?
Davey: Definitely, and players like John Martyn who was a friend of mine as well as The
Incredible String Band. John actually taught me that tuning as it was used on the song
"The First Girl I Loved" by the Incredible String band. It isn't the standard
open G (DGDGBD) or like Keith Richards does (removing the sixth string altogether) I also
lower the 6th string to G. With both strings tuned to G you get this really modal, droning
thing happening which is really cool. On "Rocket Man" I used an open Bb Tuning
which is really effective. Lenny Kravitz was picking my brain last week about it and
wondering how I got it so ringing in that strange key, and I told him I cheated by using
an open tuning. I should say it isn't quite cheating because you have to come up with all
the new chord shapes that can be a bit bizarre and different.
AM: Did you always flatpick? because many of the players mentioned were fabulous
fingerpickers.
Davey: Absolutely, I was fingerpicking "Angie" and Bert Jansch's "Needle
Of Death". There was a fabulous Ep by Bert Jansch with those tunes and a brilliant
little piece called "Running From Home" and I was really into it. Now I
mainly use my pick and second and third finger to get more of a bottom end happening. For
a while I was using fingerpicks but you would get one caught in the strings and it was
extremely embarrassing.
AM: Around the time of "Captain Fantastic" you got to play more acoustic
instruments.
Davey: Yeah, that's true.
AM: Was it Elton , the producer, or you, who would choose the type of direction for
your parts and whether it would be acoustic or electric?
Davey: 99% of the time it would be myself, because being the only guitar player in the
group I would be listening to Elton writing the songs and thinking about what to play that
would be good for it. It would usually be left up to me, sometimes if I played electric
Gus might suggest a couple of distant acoustic bits in the background or something.
AM: So Elton writes most of his songs in the studio?
Davey: Absolutely..... all of it. He comes in with the lyrics, and if he doesn't have
it in twenty minutes he throws it out and tries another one. I have seen him
literally sit down and run through a lyric one time and write the song! He did that with a
song we wrote together called "Cajun Songbird" from the Blue Moves album. I
played him this little fingerpicking acoustic piece and he went "that's beautiful
...wait a minute" and he pulled out a sheet of lyrics and said "play it
again" which I did, he sang the lyrics,
and literary that was it! It is a wonderful little song about Edith Piaf. That is
very much the way he writes...very quickly.
AM: What makes you pick up an acoustic or electric guitar, or mandolin when he is
writing?
Davey: I tend to go with my first instincts, and sometimes your wrong, but usually your
first instincts are the best ones. That is also why I prefer when we record in the studio
as a band, which we usually get in a couple of takes, instead of playing the take twenty
times by myself in a booth and losing the feel.
AM: So many players write riffs disguised as songs which are totally forgettable, and
you have made a career augmenting the songs of Elton John, and in the process come up with
some unforgettably classic riffs.
Davey: It's funny, the nice thing was being the only guitar player in that situation,
Elton would sometimes say to me "I really hear this as being a guitar song..can you
come up with something?". For "The Bitch Is Back" he said play something
like "diga diga diga diga diga diga diga diga bam bam bam bam" ... which is what
I did!
AM: So in many cases your expressing, or translating what he hears in his head?
Davey: Oh yeah, he is a big guitar fan, he just has no clue. I have tried teaching him
a few chords and it is really funny because he is such a brilliant piano player and
actually played acoustic guitar on stage one tour about ten years ago and it was really
hilarious. The giant Mohawk wig, sparkly jacket, and Ovation guitar just didn't make it.
AM: Have their been many times when you felt the best thing you could do for a track
was to lay out?
Davey: Yes, definitely. I don't believe that because you have a certain band formation
that everyone has to play on every track. Sometime I just don't hear anything , and
especially with Elton it is nice to hear simply piano and voice..maybe a bit of strings,
on at least one song.
{ Davey's turn in front of the camera came and we were joined by John Jorgenson }
AM: You have a reputation for ..as Elton John says "Playing everything but the
Kitchen sink" I would imagine the guitar wasn't your first instrument.
John Jorgenson: I started on the piano when I was five. My mom was a piano teacher and
kids came over to the house everyday to learn piano so I figured that everyone does it. My
sister was a couple years older and I listened to her practice and I started copying her
lessons by ear, so my mom started me out of a different book so I would learn to read
music. When my sister joined band later, I felt like if she got to play two instruments I
should get to play two instruments , and I chose the clarinet because I liked the sound of
it in Peter And The Wolf. When I was about ten or eleven I got interested in The Beatles
and Pop music and that kind of got me interested in the guitar. I also remember a kid in
school who just sang "This Land Is Your
Land " accompanying himself on the Ukelele, and I thought it was cool that he didn't
need the whole band or a conductor like I was used to. I fooled around with a Ukelele we
had around the house and began begging for a guitarfor a couple of years.
AM: Did you maintain your piano lessons?
John: Yes, that was the deal if I wanted a guitar. I also started on other instruments
like the saxophone and string bass because I would get bored and wanted to do other stuff.
Whatever I hear that I like, I want to play.
AM: Did you play guitar at Disneyland?
John: The first job I had there was playing electric guitar in a show band with twelve
singers and an eight piece band, as kind of a work experience thing when I was in high
school. I also played keyboards and electric guitar in a rock band at Tomorrowland. After
that I played in a childrens education show five times a day. I also played bluegrass
mandolin and Dixieland clarinet ,or at least I told them I did to get the job because I
wanted to learn the mandolin, so it was kind of earn as you learn situation. We were a
four piece band that played Bluegrass in Frontierland and Dixieland music on Main St., and
we became very popular learning to play on the job. We started a third incarnation
playing thirties swing music like Daveyango Reinhardt Hot Club style as well. So these
same four guys changed clothes, instruments, and locations three times a day! It was great
because we didn't get bored and we got extra break time to change clothes.
AM: Is that what got you into Daveyango or was that your excuse to practice it more?
John: When I was first working there and learning Dixieland and Bluegrass I was
learning about twenties banjo playing and the banjo players in Dixieland were reverent
about Daveyango and that caused me to want to check him out. It was definitely earn as you
learn, and I also learned how to keep people interested when they would rather be riding
the Matterhorn. You have to be a pretty strong entertainer to hold peoples attention in a
place like that.
AM: I remember you on the cover of Frets Magazine years ago in a special edition on
session players, were you going on dates then?
John: Not really, I was kind of just a cover-boy, I knew the people at Frets and they
were very supportive and they used a photo of me playing my forties Selmer guitar and as I
was working at Disneyland I had very short hair.
AM: When did the session work evolve?
John: In 1985 I started the Desert Rose Band with Chris Hillman. My desire was to
combine all the elements of music which I had been working in from rock to Rockabilly and
harmonic pop into a country rock band kind of thing. I started a band called the Cheatin
Hearts which was very similar to The Desert Rose Band except we had a girl singer. I met
Chris Hillman at a NAMM show while I was jamming with David Grisman, and we also worked
together backing Dan Fogelberg on his "High Country Snows" tour. I heard the
songs Chris was working on and really had the idea to combine the sound of Bluegrass with
that of The Pretenders, and nobody was really doing country-rock in the country field at
that time. You had things like the new traditionalists led by Ricky Skaggs and Dwight
Yoakum starting to happen then. I was using a lot of vintage British equipment like Vox
amps, Danelectro and Rickenbacker guitars which were very unusual in country music and
fresh and caught the ears of producers like Paul Worthy and Ed Seay so I started being
called to play on other records. That was really how the session work started , and I
played some live things with Don Was so he ended up using me on Bonnie Raitt's "Nick
Of Time" album. For sessions I would usually be called to play electric and sometimes
mandolin.
AM: So you were the player brought in to bring a little different flavor or spice to a
record?
John: Exactly, because I wasn't part of the Nashville scene at all. I was from LA and I
had a completely different outlook and I knew Country Music well, but I had a different
slant on it. I ended up playing with Pam Tillis, Willie Nelson, Hank Williams jr, Travis
Tritt, Emmylou Harris, Marty Stuart, a lot of great artists.
AM: The Desert Rose Band had quite a run of hits didn't they?
John: We were embraced by radio and other musicians, so we had five number one singles
on country radio, in a row. Personality wise we didn't have the thing to compete with
George Strait and Alabama and the other straight down the middle things happening at the
time. Eventually the format changed to the more traditional and songs had to talk about
pickup trucks to get played, and we were moving farther away from that. I started working
freelance and was the musical director for a Delta Burke sitcom and was also working with
The Hellecasters (an instrumental group led by three well known axe-masters Jerry Donohue,
Will Ray, and John).
AM: How did you get invited to join the Elton John band?
John: Back in 1988 The Desert Rose band was playing The Roxy , debuting our second lp
"Running" with Lyle Lovett as an opener. In the audience was David Crosby, Bruce
Hornsby, Stephen Stills, Dave Edmunds, Bernie Taupin and Elton John. It was fun to be
playing there because I had been their so many times as a kid watching shows. After the
gig Elton came up to the dressing room shook my hand and said "brilliant guitar,
brilliant!" . After that when I would see him backstage after his shows he would
always remember my name and ask me what I was doing musically. I kind of had the thought I
would do a session with him one day. I also had met Davey and we became friends, but we
lost touch and I forgot about it. Six or seven years later the phone rang and it was
"hello John this is Elton" and I was pretty shocked to hear him say that he and
Davey wanted to add a second guitarist to the band because the album that they were going
to tour behind had a lot of guitar parts, and they also wanted a player who could add
harmony vocals and I was the first person he thought of and Davey liked the idea. I was
pleased but I had Hellecasters projects and a solo effort in the works and didn't really
want to drop everything, but when I heard the" Made In England" album I thought
again because I really liked the music. After a week of thought I found myself excited
about telling my friends about it, and realizing that if I couldn't do something I liked
then why was I in the business? It was just a tough question of giving up some other
things I was working on.
{ Davey joins us..... }
Davey: And he calls me up two weeks before the first gig and says he's got some bad
news, and I figure oh no he's changed his mind , but he says he has broke his shoulder!
But he still wants to do the gig! So he plays a tele with the end sawn off and wearing a
cast.
AM: John was brought in because "Made In England " was a return to the rock
band kind of sound..but there is a healthy amount of acoustic work in the current show.
John: It has kind of developed ..
Davey: We have the banjo on "Honky Cat " and the Mandolins on "Mona
Lisas and Mad Hatters". Elton is also talking about playing some very different gigs
in smaller venues and rumors are around about three piece acoustic formats, so you never
know.
John: Elton likes to mix it up so he doesn't get bored
AM: Lets talk about Groovemasters Vol. 2 "Crop Circles", these are all duets
with acoustic guitars..
Davey: except I play a Mandola on "Reel It In".
AM: How did these songs evolve?
Davey: We would literally go into each others rooms and write until we felt like
stopping
John: Some things would be pretty fully executed ideas that we would show each other,
and some would be half way done , and others would be
Davey: Nothing!
John: and we would come up with something on the spot! So all the songs were written
together in every different kind of way really.
Davey: and either of us would embellish the others parts...it came together very
easily, in the first week we had five or six things we felt were very strong.
AM: It sounds like everything went pretty smooth?
John: (laughing) there was a problem with the gear being sent to the wrong place on a
boat! We did a lot of the recording at the Ritz Carlton in Atlanta as we were there for
several days, but it was written and recorded in Tokyo, Europe..and all over America!
Davey: We tried rehearsing on the Bullet Train and we got told to shut up!
John: We also made tapes backstage so we wouldn't forget stuff...we have a killer
sounding tape of almost all the songs that became the final album.
AM: What is the story behind "She's Gonna Cry Soon"
Davey: Exactly what you would imagine (laughing)!
John: Well we were in Atlanta and we were visiting with Jim Moret from CNN in a bar
with one of our friends who always gets teary when she mentions an artist she used to work
with. You can kind of tell when it is going that way in a conversation and Davey wrote on
a napkin "She's Gonna Cry Soon" and slid the napkin over to me. When she left to
go to the bathroom I told Davey that it would make a great title for a song. The next
morning when we got together to write, Davey said he woke up with the melody for the song,
and that's how it came about.
AM: "Fat Slag Rag" sounds like an example of one of you perhaps bringing in
half a tune and the other one embellishing it later?
John: Yeah , pretty much it was kind of Davey's melody and structure and when he showed
it to me I thought lets try this!
Davey: The whole Gypsy / Daveyango part that John comes in with takes it off into another
direction! It is still a ragtime kind of thing but a great showcase for John's playing as
well, and that is what we enjoyed about this record. We got to do a lot of different stuff
and not all of it was planned. "Reel It In" came about by screwing around with a
riff which eventually became the start and finish of it.
John: The fun thing for me was that there weren't any limits as to what you could do.
If either person had an idea we would support it to the limit.
Davey: We didn't mind the extra buzzes or extra weird stuff which could inadvertently
happen here or there when a finger hit a string and made a zing..we kept all them in..
John: We were almost searching for buzz!
AM: There is a good title.
John: Searching for buzz (laughing)
AM: It sounds like you also used some unusual tunings?
John: "LaVoya" has a Gm Modal tuning...DGDGBbC which is kind of odd, on the
long neck twelve string I would drop the 6th string to C. I used capos quite a bit.
Davey: I used DADGAD on one and another really bizarre one I call awestruckminor on
"3rd Neck From Now". I play the double neck (six and twelve string
Ovation/Adamas acoustic) and go back and forth from the two on "3rd Neck From
Now", "Sacred Path", and "Bernadettes Rose", so your brain has to
be split up in several parts.
John: He's playing a double neck with different tunings on the same guitar!
Davey: Why bother with a double neck if you can't do something like
that on it? That is the fun part about it...actually finishing
the line on a differentneck.
John: Initially I thought we were going to play different instruments like Mandocello
and Mandolins ..but the guitars themselves ended up being so colorful and varied that it
didn't feel necessary to bring in other instruments.
Davey: Certainly a lot of people wanted to perform on this album..."sure you don't
want some drum pads on this, some lyrics, a background vocal"...and it was all no, no
, no..piss off it's our own little album and that's it.
John: No overdubs.
AM: "Scarabride" seems to feel like Led Zeppelin unplugged
John: That one came about with us just sitting around playing really.
Davey: And that is another phenomenal thing that happens when you work with somebody
and you have ideas at the same time, and before you know it you have played the same
thing, and that kind of thing happens a lot with John and I. Even during Elton's gigs we
will go for something different and find that we have played the same thing.
John: And that was one of the reasons for doing this record
Davey: Getting back to "Scarabride" we didn't have an A , B and C section ,
we'd have an A, B and Z section because we both love Zep and their acoustic stuff.
John: We could be a little "Beatly" or "folky" are whatever.
AM: "Exercise In Fertility" sounds like it took a long time to work out?
Davey: Actually it came together very quickly, I just sat down and wrote it. Now
John's counterpart is very complicated because he is doing the exact opposite.
John: That was a mind damaging thing to do. Davey is doing mostly hammer-ons that go in
an up direction and I am doing pull-offs in a down direction , so it is odd.
AM: Is that a difficult one to perform live?
Davey: Only the fast part.
John: Not particularly if you get the groove of it and the flow.
Davey: If you forget to concentrate you lose...If you snooze you lose with our stuff,
it is quite demanding and if your mind wanders your gone.
John: The first time we performed the album live we had been off for a few weeks and
had a really great audience that was primed for it, and it was a magical gig. We played
great and the vibe was good. The hardest thing is to recreate our mind set vibe, and it is
hard to turn it on.
Davey: You just have to have the time to get back into it again, we just did an in
store gig back in New York which was fantastic but we had to sit down and really shed in a
room for a half hour before the show to get into it.
John: It would be really fun to just go out and play for a couple of weeks, because we
would get really wild, as we both stretch it live pretty radically.
Davey: It is not in our makeup to play it safe.
John: To be honest we vary it to entertain ourselves, because if we're entertained the
audience will be entertained. If we get bored with ourselves or the music it will be
horrible for the audience.
Davey: I think that is the thing that is missing from many live bands who don't look
like they are having a blast. A lot of people tell John and I that we look like we are
having fun on stage with Elton, and we are!
