October release expected for Elton John’s new album

Elton John will be back for the second time at the Granaries on Sunday together with percussionist Ray Cooper in what is expected to be a massive event. In the meantime, the singer has revealed that his new studio album is now in the mixing stage and is provisionally set for release next month, some weeks after his visit to Malta.

Just a year ago songwriter Bernie Taupin teased visitors to his website with the statement that he and Sir Elton were planning to go into the studio early this year and that “this collaboration of old and new friends promises to represent a direction that has been fermenting for years in the heads of its perpetrators”.

At the end of last year, word had already leaked out that the artistes would be working with one of their avowed heroes for over 40 years, on the new album. In the late 1960s Leon Russell was their musical idol, and in 1970 he was seated in the audience when Elton John first played at the Troubadour Club in Los Angeles, kick-starting his own extraordinary four-decade American dream.

“I can’t stress enough how significant an influence Leon Russell was on my music and that of Bernie Taupin. In 1970, when we first went to America and I played the Troubadour, we were obsessed by Leon’s music, and looked up to him as some kind of musical god. On the second night of the Troubadour concerts he was there in the front row, but luckily I didn’t spot him until near the end of the show, otherwise I would have been a nervous wreck,“ stated Sir Elton.

Last January the singer began recording in Los Angeles, working with Mr Taupin, Mr Russell and hugely successful and highly respected producer T. Borne ­Burnett.

Sir Elton, Mr Taupin and Mr Russell had already written many songs together at a writing session the previous year where, according to Mr Taupin, the trio had written “a vast wealth of material that ranges far and wide and covers many musical genres”.

The sessions continued throughout January and February and Mr Taupin then informed fans that “the trio has cut 15 songs ranging from Stones-like rockers, ­country tinged ballads, Gospel and even a Sinatra-like weepy similar to something torn from the grooves of In the Wee Small Hours”. Sixteen tracks are currently being mixed, including Never Too Old (to Hold Somebody), which Sir Elton has already performed at recent concerts and which Maltese fans are hoping they might get a preview of during his concert on the Granaries.