1942 -2002
Gus Dudgeon, who died on Sunday July 21st 2002 aged 59, was an outstandingly talented record producer best known for his phenomenally successful collaboration with the singer Elton John.
During an early stint with Decca, Dudgeon had engineered The Zombies' ethereal beat ballad She's Not There (1964) and John Mayall's classic LP Bluesbreakers - John Mayall with Eric Clapton (1966).
After going freelance, he produced David Bowie's first hit Space Oddity (1969) and was then hired by DJM to produce the second album by a struggling pianist and songwriter who was then doing sessions with The Hollies to make ends meet.
"I was primarily commissioned to do the Elton John album as a sort of glamorous demo," Dudgeon recalled. "We cut the album in a week and I never stopped grinning from beginning to end because it all fell into place so brilliantly."
With tracks such as Your Song and Border Song, the album was an outstanding success. Dudgeon went on to produce all of Elton John's records from 1969 until 1976 and then again after 1986. He thus had a hand in such memorable hits as Rocket Man, Crocodile Rock, Daniel, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting, Don't Go Breaking My Heart and Nikita.
Elton John had tremendous respect for the talent of his producer, and once he had done what he felt he had to do, which was to play the piano and sing, he tended to leave, giving Dudgeon complete freedom to craft the finished tracks.
Whatever appeared on the record over and above the essential construction of the song was therefore down to Dudgeon and whoever else happened to be working in the studio.
Gus Dudgeon was born on September 30 1942 and educated at Haileybury. He started his career in the early 1960s as a teaboy at the original Olympic Studios, off Baker Street in London, before moving to Decca Records' studios at West Hampstead.
"I was terrified of ever getting on the console," he later recalled. "The thing I loved about it was just the volume and actually hearing the real low end! It was like, 'Bloody Hell! That's bloody marvellous!' I just loved the power of the big speaker system. I'd never heard anything like it."
He got his break during a recording session with The Zombies when the first engineer had to leave midway through; Dudgeon ended up engineering She's Not There, which went to No 2 in America, and all of The Zombies' work for Decca thereafter.
After John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Dudgeon helped audition the likes of Tom Jones, Lulu and The Rolling Stones for Decca, before becoming an independent producer in 1968. His first producing job was an album for EMI by Zoot Money's Big Roll Band, a group that featured future members of The Animals and the Police guitarist Andy Summers.
Dudgeon went on to work with such acts as Ralph McTell, The Strawbs and The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, the musical comedy troupe which included Neil Innes and Vivian Stanshall, and for which Dudgeon retained great enthusiasm.
Elton John (1970) was followed by Tumbleweed Connection (1970) and Madman Across the Water (1971), albums which again demonstrated Dudgeon's ability to bring out the drama in Elton John's music. Over the next few years, thanks in no small part to Dudgeon, Elton John became a superstar; at one stage between 1972 and 1975 he had seven consecutive number one albums.
By 1972, the singer was making so much money that he began to work offshore for tax purposes, so Dudgeon moved recording to a chateau at Herouville in France; in this grand setting they recorded Honky Chateau (1972), Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player (1973), and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1973).
Elton John typically needed just five days to write the music for an album, and he would therefore arrive five days before anyone else and write all the songs. Dudgeon later recalled how Goodbye Yellow Brick Road only became a double album because recording had been started in Jamaica but moved to France when the studio there was deemed inadequate. In the meantime, Elton John had written enough material for another album.
After Dudgeon and Elton John parted company in 1976, Dudgeon at first found himself pigeonholed as someone who worked with piano players. In 1978, however, he was back in the charts with Fool If You Think It's Over by Chris Rea and Run For Home by Lindisfarne.
He also produced such artists as Joan Armatrading, Elkie Brooks, Jennifer Rush, XTC, Fairport Convention and The Beach Boys. In the 1980s he built the Sol Studios, now owned by Chris Rea, and in 1986 began working with Elton John again.
More recently, Dudgeon had worked on Somewhere Someone's Falling In Love by the Danish country singer Henning Staerk, featuring the master guitarist Jerry Donahue, and a tribute album to The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, with performances by George Harrison and Ringo Starr.
An exceptionally charming and funny man, Dudgeon was a flamboyant dresser, favouring wide-striped suits, winkle-pickers, tight Levis, brooches and coloured sunglasses.
His work earned him a considerable fortune - although much was mishandled by a reckless accountant - but Dudgeon never rested on his laurels, forever visiting clubs in search of new bands for him to produce.
He married, in 1959, Sheila Bailey, who died with him in the same car crash. There were no children.
Gus Dudgeon once said.......
"I naively assumed that all the musicians, friends, and contemporaries that I grew up with would just go sailing on well into comfortable old age, and then we could all sit around and have a bloody good laugh at the whole thing…”
As John Lennon once sang....
"Life is what happens to you when you're busy making
other plans"
We sometimes never know what's around the corner, or when our time is up.
Still, as Elton John sings, "Life isn't everything"
~ and that's true. There IS life after death! They now have verifiable evidence! This is not the end of Gus Dudgeon or his wife. They live on and it's possible we shall all see them one day.
"Greater is the day of one's death than of ones birth"
Many people have experienced death momentarily and many studies have been done, in recent years, on what happens when we die. I have just put together a website about it, in hopes it will encourage some people and unite us in the one thing we all have in common. Hope it makes some people feel better.
Click here to look "beyond the veil"
or here for Gus & Sheila's Funeral. Aug 1st 2002"
or **here** for one of Elton's favourite Hymns "Abide with me"
*~*~*
God is Love and all who live in love are thine.
The Light at the end of the Tunnel
