Elton John on Liberace: “He was a huge influence on me. He was being who he was”

There have been many criticisms of Sunday night’s Emmy Awards telecast and, among them, were folks who felt that Elton John’s performance was more of about promoting his latest album than paying tribute to the late Liberace.

But in an interview with NPR, Elton talks about the influence Liberace had on him – a fellow gay performer who played the piano and had a penchant for outrageous costumes:

“He was so charming and so lovely and very, very funny and very, very intelligent. And he was a huge influence on me. He was being who he was — he wasn’t publicly out — but he didn’t give a flying monkey about what he was wearing; he just went for it. And that was who he was. That, of course, influenced me, when I started wearing the clothes and I subconsciously must’ve [thought], ‘If you’re stuck at a piano and you’re not a lead guitarist or a lead vocalist, you’re kind of at a nine-foot plank and you’ve got to do something about it.’ So my thing was to leap on piano, do handstands and wear clothes that would draw attention to me because that’s the focus for two and half hours. I’m not walking around the stage; I’m not moving. So [Liberace] gave me that idea, probably subconsciously, because before then I had never seen anyone dress like that.

“All my stuff was firmly tongue-in-cheek. I wasn’t a heartthrob [like] David Bowie or Mick Jagger or Rod Stewart in those days. I was Elton at the piano. I had to turn the attention to something comedic or even more outrageous than it was.”