Elton John and Brandi Carlile on Joint Album ‘Who Believes in Angels?’

The album title “Who Believes in Angels?” may or may not be a rhetorical question, but it’s OK to stick with that lofty circumlocution long enough to consider the idea that Elton John and Brandi Carlile may actually be a match made in heaven, figuratively or otherwise. These longtime friends share that sense of being touched by virtuosity and endless melodic capability on a level few of their pop-rock peers ever could be. And it’s just sort of the gay cherry on top that both of them can be said to be the queer icons of their respective generations with the most naturally broad mass appeal across vastly different demographics, respected, if not beloved, by nearly every rocker, queen or grandma who falls within the sound of their voices.

Those voices are conjoined at length for the first time on “Who Believes in Angels?,” a 10-song collection that comes out today. Of course, the public has had a chance to see or hear them together before. (He sang backup on one of her earliest albums, in his boost-the-youngsters mode; she came in for a duet on his last record; and they sang “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” during his televised last touring stand at Dodger Stadium.) But they took a big chance and tested that mutual chemistry with an Andrew Watt-produced album that defies a lot of the rules of these kinds of collabs — never settling into any single routine about what genre the songs should be in, or how the vocals should be shared. If it doesn’t redefine the collaborative album (and it might), it sure at least gives it a kick in the pants, highlighting both their strengths on the way toward taking some alchemic risks.

So, who believes in angels? Maybe any fan of either artist who didn’t imagine that we’d ever get to hear a single album with first-hand echoes of both “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” and “The Joke.” After talking with John and Carlile together last fall about their soon-to-be-Oscar-nominated song “Never Too Late,” Variety spoke with them again on the verge of their doing a joint show at London’s Palladium, which was filmed for a CBS special this Sunday night. As part of their media blitz, you can also catch them this weekend on “Saturday Night Live.”

The album cover and the first video for this project had very colorful, lively imagery —  very un-sedate and not sepia-toned in any way. There are reflective, serious songs on this album, but it looked like you wanted to send a message out, even visually, about what this album would be. What was that message you wanted to get across?

Elton John: When I sat down and planned this album, or booked the dates for it, I knew what kind of album I wanted to make., I wanted to make a fresh, really exciting, vibrant record. You can’t always plan that; that’s not always gonna happen. But I had a whole new lineup: I had Bernie (Taupin, his longtime lyricist), I had Brandi (who also wrote lyrics), I had Andrew Watt, and I thought, “There’s a real powder keg here. Let’s hope that it kicks in and we can make the record that we really want.” With what you said about the sepia thing, yeah, we could have easily had Brandi and I with a sepia cover, like the Leon Russell one [“The Union,” from 2010], and that wasn’t the way this album was.

It starts off with “The Rose of Laura Nyro,” “Little Richard’s Bible” and “Swing for the Fences,” and you think, “Oh, this is not what I was thinking it was gonna be.” And right from the word go, that’s how we felt. The energy in the studio from all four people was incredible. My mood was really miserable the first few days. I was tired — exhausted. I didn’t know whether I wanted to put an album out at this time because of what was happening in the world. But Brandi, as she always does, talks me around and wrote some lyrics, and Bernie gave me “Laura Nyro” and “Little Richard’s Bible,” and boy, we were off to the races. And I’ll tell you, I’ve worked with the most brilliant producers ever, and I’ve never worked with someone as enthusiastic as Andrew Watt, who pushes and pushes and pushes and is so musical. Bless his heart.

Brandi Carlile: Andrew’s so musical. He couldn’t push as hard as he does if he wasn’t as musically talented as he is. He really rises to the occasion and sets a few bars himself.

There’s nothing pro forma about the way the album plays out from song to song. Each one is a little bit different, just stylistically, or in having lyrics by Brandi on one number and Bernie on another. But most of all, it’s inventive or ever-changing in who’s doing the singing, whether it’s true duet singing or harmony singing, or a lead vocal with background, or even just unadorned solo vocals over an entire song. You don’t quite know what it’s going be from one song to the next. How did you solve those basic questions of who is going to sing what, and when and how?

Carlile: Well, that’s a very Elton John formula, which is no formula at all. If you look at the track listing on some of the great, great Elton John albums from 1969 all the way through into recent days, they sound like a place and a time, but they’re not genre-cohesive. You’ve got an album with “Funeral for a Friend on It,” and then also “Sweet Painted Lady” and then also “Jamaica Jerk-Off.” So there’s always these really erratic twists and turns. And I had that in mind, and Andrew had in that in mind, with this album. But it’s holding on for dear life and following Elton, because the chords and the rhythm that he decides to play each song in sort of dictates genre and tone.

John: Also, if we’re gonna do a proper duet album, I didn’t want to do one line here, then the next line there. I wanted to do a harmony album. And that was what I found the most difficult: singing to Brandi’s phrasing. The harmony was fine, but singing to her phrasing was really, really difficult. Every artist sings in a different phrasing way. John Lennon (an Elton vocal collaborator in the mid-’70s) did, and Brandi’s phrasing was, to me, really complicated. It frustrated me, and you can see it on film. We’ve got it all on film. [A 30-minute documentary, “Stories From the Edge of Creation,” premieres on YouTube Saturday.] But the thing is, if we’re gonna make an album together, don’t do Steve and Eydie — do Brandi and Elton together, right on top of each other. You know, just go in hell-for-leather.

Carlile: There were moments in the phrasing where I thought I was being really Elton. So many moments come to mind, but like in “Never Too Late” when I’m like [she sings], “Don’t let it cross your mind” — to me, that was just pure Elton. And I sang the vocal first and then he had to match up to it, and he was like, “What is this?” And I’m like, “I’m doing you!”

John: [Laughs.] I’ll tell you what it was … [He sings.] “If I had an easy life, would I still choose you? Would I still fall on the same knife?” And I’m going, “same knife,” and she’s going “same knife”… And I think that’s when I ripped the lyrics off the piano and said, “I can’t fucking do this.”

Carlile: Yeah, yeah. Joni (Mitchell and her phrasing] crept in and did some of that, I think, a little bit.

John: We were challenging each other. She’s musically so challenging and brilliant, and I was pushing her, she was pushing me, Andrew was pushing me, Bernie was pushing her to write… It was just four people in the studio just going hell-for-leather and not knowing what was gonna come out. And after three weeks, we had this album finished, and another four tracks done [that didn’t make the final album cut], when we went in with nothing.

The “Stories From the Edge of Creation” documentary is said to include some candid, tense moments from when things weren’t gelling at first in the studio. There’s always that thing where people who are friends are considering the jump into becoming lovers, and it’s like, oh, will this ruin the friendship? You guys have been friends for so long, but you haven’t worked together in concentrated form. And it sounds like it was volatile at first. Did you worry at all that maybe you shouldn’t do such an intensive project because it could ruin a beautiful friendship if things got tense?

Carlile: Good question.

John: It never occurred to me that it would ruin our friendship. I love her so much. It brought us closer together, if anything, because we found our sensitive spots. We found out when we needed help. We found out when we needed each other. And so the difficult things brought us closer together. It’s a bit like the Rolling Stones and the Who, those kind of bands. They always argue and then the dynamism between them and the acrimony sometimes helps you produce a much fresher record.

Carlile: I wasn’t worried it would ruin our friendship, either, because I was under no illusions about who Elton is and just how he lives his life, which is, I think, really beautiful. As much as we talk about it in kind of a tongue-in-cheek way, I actually think it was really beautiful, the way Elton acted on impulse and behaved the way he was feeling. In fact, I can’t think of anything more musical.

But I think if I was worried about anything — and I was worried — it was that if he didn’t like my lyrics or we couldn’t write together, it would say something about my artistry that I was going to have a hard time with. Because I really wanted him to be able to write to my words and I wanted us to connect musically. We knew we were friends, but that was a big test for me. And maybe it shouldn’t have been, but it had me feeling very insecure.

Let’s talk about the themes. The average person is probably not going to give this a first listen and say, “Wow, this is full of queer content,” at all. But from some talking you’ve already done, it’s clear that in some ways it is. You start off with songs with Laura Nyro and Little Richard in the title, both gay icons, followed by “Swing for the Fences” —  again, not a song somebody will listen to at first and say, “Oh, this is an LGBTQ+ anthem,” but I know you were thinking of that in some ways, Brandi, writing the lyrics. Do you think that content is important right now for people to hear from you two? Even if it wasn’t necessarily deliberate that you’re gonna have the “Laura Nyro” song and combine that with “Swing for the Fences” somehow and have this theme running through it.

Carlile: No, but it started to kind of create a roadmap. You started to see those things falling into place, especially as a lyricist, that started to become thematic to me. And I couldn’t help really but project some of my own childhood onto this, because of how important Elton — and, honestly, Elton and David — were to me as a young person, and thinking, “Wow, I wonder if we could make this a multi-generational salve for some of these young gay kids and some of these young queer kids that just wanna have a great rock record.” And I don’t know how it’s gonna land on those people. But I know that if I had had “Swing for the Fences” — song or video — when I was 13, 14, 15 years old, I think I would’ve found it really nice, because it paints a roadmap for the future in a really good way, that you’re gonna be all right and we’re gonna be all right.

John: Yeah, I just think the first three songs were sort of an accidental start to the album, with “Laura Nyro” and then “Little Richard” and then “Swing for the Fences,” and yes, that song certainly gives the LGLBT+ community a hope.

But there are other songs on the album that give everybody hope, like “A Little Light,” which says you can change the world if you just… You know, Brandi wrote that song when I was in a terrible mood and I was depressed about Israel, Gaza, all that stuff, and we recorded it the same day. And I think with “You Without Me” and “When This Old World Is Done With Me,” it’s things that touch people about death, about children moving away, and things that everybody goes through. And I think we touch on so many subjects. It’s not just LGBTQ. And I love that stuff. But Brandi is that kind of lyricist where she gives hope to everyone, and Bernie does too. So I feel, if I’m singing the love song to David (Furnish), “Someone to Belong To,” it’s a song that everyone can feel; with their partner, they can sing it. But I do think the first three tracks are phenomenal in the way that they just steamroll over everything.

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The two of you have this London Palladium gig together. And, Elton, we see you’re playing a benefit coming up in May at Petco Park in San Diego. So how are you feeling about playing right now, and doing these occasional things after your retirement from touring? We have to guess that your eye condition is such that it’s not getting in the way of live performance.

John: Well, live performing — I’ve already done one show with the band, last year in Costa Mesa, and it was a real test, because I wanted to see whether I could see the piano and see the microphone. And I could. It was fantastic, and the show was wonderful because my band is wonderful. I couldn’t see the band [laughs], but I could see the piano and the microphone. And the thing at the Palladium, it’s a television special as well. It’s gonna air on CBS in America. Yeah, I look forward to playing. I can see the piano and I can sing, so I love playing. I probably won’t be playing publicly, but I’ll be playing privately, and might do a few shows in the future with Brandi just to celebrate the album, if it does well. Who knows? But as far as playing goes, I can do it.

We saw both of you on Oscars night, first at the show itself, where you were nominated, of course, and afterward at Elton’s AIDS Foundation Oscar-viewing party. Being at the Oscars is old hat for Elton, but still a new experience for you, Brandi. How was it sharing being on different levels of the Oscar experience?

Carlile: Oh, for me it was unbelievable. I’d never gotten to go to the Oscars; it’s something that you sit at home and watch. And I got to wear a Valentino suit, and [at the AIDS Foundation benefit] I got to watch Chappell Roan honor Elton in the most beautiful way. And it was just an amazing night. I had a blast. I had a cheeseburger. [There were signs of In-n-Out wrappers left behind, presumably accumulated at a stop between the Oscars and the party, on the tables amid the finery.] It was wild.

John: I mean, yeah I’ve been to the Oscars; this is the third time I’ve been there. And it’s good to know that you’re not gonna win, because you’re not so disappointed. And as soon as the “El Mal” song [from “Emilia Perez”] won and they were so excited and they were so thrilled — bless them — we shuffled off to Buffalo to the AIDS Foundation party, and we had a blast.

I cannot tell you how exciting the evening was because we raised a lot more money more than I thought we would in these times, with the fires and people being careful about what they spend. [The annual event raised $6.8 million overall.] And Chappell was otherworldly. [Roan’s performance at the benefit included duets with Elton on “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” and “Pink Pony Club.”] It was just one of the most life-affirming things. I left that party exhausted and so did David. We didn’t go out to anything else; we were just plum exhausted because it was so much fun. I was jumping up and down when she was playing, and I’ve seen her before, but she really pulled out all the stops for us.

Carlile: Yeah, you were great [joining in on vocals] on “Pink Pony Club,” too. It was perfect, with her putting the cowboy hat on you. Even I didn’t even win an Oscar, I saw you in a cowboy hat.

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