(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Sat 3 January 2026 13:00, UK
Elton John is undoubtedly one of the biggest stars the music industry has ever produced, but it is no secret that he has had his fair share of help along the way.
The English titan has reached a level of success over his career that only a handful of other artists can boast of, although he certainly didn’t do it all on his own taking full advantage of the talent he had access to from the very start, most notably, his career-long songwriting partnership with Bernie Taupin, which is a piece of trivia that still hasn’t reached all his fans and followers.
This is most likely because he is and has always been the face of the operation, which, combined with his larger-than-life personality and public presence, probably plays a massive role in obscuring the contributions of others to his product; plus, even though he is technically a solo act, and few would question his greatness, it is still important to recognise the role his collaborators played in cementing his status as such.
Decades into his career, John returned after a four-year break in 2001 and released a dozen fresh cuts packaged as his 26th studio album, Songs from the West Coast, which was well received, but more importantly, proved that he wasn’t even remotely close to losing steam at 54 years old; however, not everyone knows that this triumph wasn’t solely the result of his brilliant mind.
In addition to working with an army of talented instrumentalists and singers, he had even more people come by the studio to fine-tune his recordings, and the LP was engineered with the utmost precision, all thanks to veteran producer Patrick Leonard.
Regardless, despite how solid each cut turned out, the two never worked together again, and in hindsight, John sees the seasoned studio wizard as the one who got away, certain that they would’ve surely made more magic had they continued their alliance.
“I had the great fortune of doing Songs From the West Coast with producer Pat Leonard,” he told Cameron Crowe during a 2013 interview for Rolling Stone, “He got my idea and simplified the record, and made me work with other musicians. I have to say that one of the biggest regrets of my life is that I’ve not fallen out, but I’ve drifted away from Pat.”
The pair’s chemistry was evident from the first time they teamed up on ‘Someday Out of the Blue’, published in 2000 as part of the soundtrack for The Road to El Dorado, a song which Leonard co-wrote with John and even produced. This alone made it clear that the two needed to make an entire album together, but, despite its popularity, they never made it past that one project and ended up going their separate ways.
He added, “I feel very ungrateful to Pat that I didn’t make another record with him. We were so close on that record, he shifted me so much in the direction that I wanted to go. ‘Original Sin’ is one of the best songs I’ve ever written.”
Related Topics