![\"Elton](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/elton-john-derek-shulman-gentle-giant-simon-dupree-and-the-big-sound-60s-music-rock-history-music-hi.jpeg\")
Elton John performing in Hamburg, Germany, March 1972Photo by Heinrich Klaffs<\/a> via Wikimedia Commons<\/a> <\/p>\n“He loved that thought. He said, ‘I\u2019d love to discuss with you what you want to do. I’ve written some songs,'” Shulman said. “He played [future Elton John tracks] ‘Your Song’ and ‘Skyline Pigeon.’ And that was right when Bernie arrived in the living room of his house. We didn’t say it, but we thought, ‘This isn’t really where we want to go,’ and thank God for him! He said, ‘I\u2019m changing my name to Elton John,’ and we said, ‘Well, that won’t work.’ Of course, the year after, he became Elton John and became massive, and good for him. But we were there when he was doing his first album.”<\/p>\n
Elton John, Derek Shulman, Gentle Giant, Simon Dupree and the Big Sound, 60s music, rock history, music history, lost songs, demos, Bernie Taupin YouTube<\/a> <\/p>\n They remained friendly, despite their collaboration not moving forward. “Lucky for him,” Shulman added. “He was at the Troubadour becoming massive, and we were scrambling for gigs.” After losing touch over a couple decades, Shulman eventually reached out, and they had a “fantastic” time catching up, gift included. “We recorded a couple songs in my first group that Elton wrote, and I had the demo in my closet of Elton singing the song ‘I\u2019m Going Home,'” he said. “[John had] forgotten about it. I gave it to him, and he didn’t have it in his library\u2026It was great to give him back a song that he’d forgotten he’d written.”<\/p>\n Elton John, Derek Shulman, Gentle Giant, Simon Dupree and the Big Sound, 60s music, rock history, music history, lost songs, demos, Bernie Taupin YouTube<\/a> <\/p>\n “It was very funny that he’d forgotten he’d written that,” he added of “I’m Going Home,” which was included on the 2004 Simon Dupree compilation Part of My Past<\/a>. The “piano demo” version was released on the deluxe edition of 1970’s Elton John, the songwriter’s second LP. (Shulman added that John “also played on a couple other [Simon Dupree] tracks that never came out as singles.”)<\/p>\n Elton John, Derek Shulman, Gentle Giant, Simon Dupree and the Big Sound, 60s music, rock history, music history, lost songs, demos, Bernie Taupin YouTube<\/a> <\/p>\n Though it would have been incredible to hear Elton John playing with Gentle Giant, a genre-blurring band that combined elements of hard rock, chamber music, funk, and medieval music, their divergence probably worked out best for everyone. It\u2019s interesting, though, that John also had another “what if” prog-rock moment: nearly connecting with King Crimson for their second LP, during a time when they didn\u2019t have a permanent singer. In the liner notes<\/a> of their 1976 compilation A Young Person’s Guide to King Crimson, bandleader Robert Fripp wrote, “Elton had been booked to sing all the songs on [In the Wake of Poseidon] for \u00a3250 as a session singer and as I wasn’t familiar with his work, Mark Fenwick of E.G. [Records] gave me a copy of Elton’s first album. But his style didn’t seem right for Crimson, and the album was poor, so I canceled the sessions.”<\/p>\n