More Elton John music heard on Broadway

KATE TAYLOR; The Wall Street Journal
Last updated: November 23rd, 2008 12:56 AM (PST)

His first Broadway venture, “The Lion King” – a spinoff from the hit animated film for which he wrote the music – has been running for 11 years. “Aida” ran for four. The vampire musical “Lestat” was his only commercial flop, closing after five weeks.

Now “Billy Elliot” – based on the 2000 movie about a young boy from a mining community in northern England who auditions for the Royal School of Ballet – has arrived at the Imperial Theatre.

“Billy Elliot,” which has a book and lyrics by Lee Hall, faces some challenges in New York that it didn’t on the West End, where it has been running since 2005. After all, how many of the Broadway audience members will have heard of the British miners’ strike of 1984, which plays a major role in the plot?

But John hopes that the story, about a young boy achieving his artistic dream against the odds, will have universal resonance.

Why did you want to turn “Billy Elliot” into a musical?

I’d seen the film, and I had to be helped out of my seat crying at the end of it. David Furnish, my partner, said it would make a great stage musical, and I said, “Yeah, it would.”

What about the film made you cry?

At the end, when his father was in the box at Covent Garden, and Billy came out in Matthew Bourne’s “Swan Lake,” it meant that his father saw him at the height of his career – when he became everything he hoped he’d be and sacrificed for. My dad never saw me at my height when I became a star. I missed that from my father, and it really hit home.

So how did things proceed from there?

I said to Lee Hall, who wrote the screenplay, “You’ve got to write some lyrics.” He said, “I’ve never written songs before,” and I said, “Well, you’re just going to have to have a go.” He wrote some lyrics that were brilliant, and I went to Atlanta with my band and went in a studio and wrote the whole thing in two weeks.

You’re a successful rock star. Why do you keep coming back to Broadway?

I kind of fell into it by accident. The film of “The Lion King” really changed my musical life when it came out, because I’d never done anything like that before. Of course it became a juggernaut of a success, and Julie Taymor adapted it for the stage, and that’s how I got onto the stage. That got me bitten.

“Lestat” flopped. How did you deal with that?

It was a huge disappointment to me, because it was the first musical I had written with Bernie Taupin, and it’s some of the best things we’ve done, but it just didn’t work. One day the music will actually appear by itself with me doing it.

How is writing for the stage different from writing for film?

When you’re sitting at an opening night at the theater, even though you’ve been to rehearsal and you know what’s going on, you’re not in control of anything. It’s so frightening.

Originally published: November 23rd, 2008 12:56 AM (PST)