Elton John

[Richard Moody]

Reminds me of the time I was tuning a piano for a RnR concert and I smelled
burning paint,  as in white laquer, oops the piano was in white laquer and a
spot light was placed 2 feet away from the curved side and the laquer was
bubbling and blistering.   Didn'd seem to affect the tuning...yet.  They
re-adjusted the spot and it hit me full in the face.  I was standing to
tune.  They liked that as they said the spot was to be on the player when he
was standing and playing.  So I started playing.  The drum roadie and guitar
roadie were on stage, so we had a pretty good roadie jam. That got sound
check done, and the piano had cooled down so I finished tuning.
    Another time a grand piano arrived after being stranded 3 days in the
Serra Nevadas in a blizzard.   When I opened the lid, the cold hit me in the
face almost as much as a spot light.   Needless to say pitch way off.   So I
made comments to the effect it would have to warm up first, but hung around
to look busy.  When the guitar roadie came out and wanted to set his Conn
Strobotuner to the piano's E I had him set it to the E of my Korg, mumbling
something about a pitch change that would end up as this.   Three hours
later it was at pitch and got the usual touch up.
    Once they left a piano on stage at a Greek type theater and the sun beat
on it for 3 hours.   It was a CP 80 and when the top was opened, the plate
was too hot to hold on to.   Upon hearing, "this piano needs to be cooled
down"  a roadie approached with a fog machine.   "This tube gives out cool
air from the dry ice at the other end. "   We stuck it in the piano, and in
30 minutes pulled it out when it was back  to 440.

    Once for the second day of a concert series by Elton John I was met by
the stage manager who hovered over me as I began to tune the piano.  Again a
CP 80. "so it tunes OK? "  "Does it play OK?"   "is there anything wrong
with it?". he asked.   I replied I had tuned it the night before, everything
was the same, what could possiblly be wrong?   "Well he got excited and
flipped the piano off the riser, and it landed upside down on the monitors,
and bounced off stage into the pit of the stage monitor sound crew, narrowly
missing  one of the crew."   "nothing wrong with the piano" I replied as I
went through the touch ups.   In those days (1980's)
he used local rents.      The production supplied the tuner.
>
>
> >do you know whether Elton John has a tech with him?
>
> Greetings,
>      He will probably not carry a tech with him.  When he played the Opry
> house here in the early eighties,  the piano was unloaded 90 minutes
before
> the show, and was approx.  30 degrees.  It was so sharp, I had trouble
> hearing the beats with the fork.
>     I advised his stage manager that it oughta be left alone, but they
> lowered some big lights near it to "warm up the strings".  Then told me
that
> I had to tune it, it was in the contract and if it wasn't tuned, there was
no
> show.  I began, and as I went, I realized that nothing was staying where I
> put it. By show time, the thing sounded worse than any piano I had ever
been
> connected with but nobody said a word.
> go figure,
> Ed Foote
>