Elton John and Brandi Carlile recently teamed up to write and record the duet “Never Too Late,” which has been released as the title song of the new documentary, Elton John: Never Too Late. The film will get its TV premiere this Friday, November 29, on Disney+.
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The John and Carlile have had a long collaborative history, but in a new radio interview with BBC presenter Jo Whiley, two singer/songwriters’ relationship goes deeper than just making music together.
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Elton told Whiley that Carlile is “one of my best, best friends in the whole wide world.” He also noted that he considers Carlile; her wife, Catherine; and their two daughters to be “family.” In fact, John reveals that during the last couple of years, Carlile and her family have frequently visited and stayed with Elton and his family at his residence in the south of France.
He said about the get-togethers, “We’ve just had a great time. And Brandi always brings a guitar, and [producer] Andrew Watt comes down, and we just play music, we sing music, and we have a great laugh.”
John also revealed that his two young sons and Carlile’s daughters “get on like a house on fire.”
Meanwhile, Carlile noted regarding her visits with Elton, “We hang out in our pajamas together and drink coffee all day.”
More About “Never Too Late”
Also during the interview, Carlile also explained about how the song “Never Too Late” came together.
Brandi said that she wrote the lyrics after watching an early rough cut of the documentary.
Carlile, who’s been a huge fan of Elton’s music since she was 11 years old, noted, “[S]eeing a lot of that archival footage, and … seeing this broad overview of Elton’s life and what it’s come to, with his beautiful family and all of his accomplishments, really inspired me to make that song about the incredible life of Elton John.”
Brandi then handed over the lyrics to Elton, who proceeded to quickly compose the song’s music.
As for how she felt about presenting original words to a new tune to her musical hero, Carlile said, “Well, there’s that nervous moment when you set a lyric in front of Elton John, and you don’t know what will happen. It’s the first time that I’ve ever done that, so it was incredible. He just sat down at the piano and he started singing it, and within minutes he had written the melody and the music.”
John then shared his opinion about the lyrics.
“I thought they were incredible, because it summed up the whole of the documentary,” he maintained. “And I thought it was incredibly touching, because I do look forward, I don’t look back. And she got everything in there that was in the documentary. So I was thrilled.”
He added, “For me, she’s probably the finest female artist in the world today. So, it was just fantastic.”
Asked how she felt about Elton’s praise for her, Brandi replied, “I’m just sort of still stunned by it. It’s just incredibly surreal to me.”
Elton on the Song Inspiring the Film’s Title
In addition to just loving the new song, John said he was thankful for the tune, because it led to changing the name of the documentary to one he actually liked.
“[T]he documentary [initially] was called Farewell Yellow Brick Road, which is absolutely incredibly boring,” Elton pointed out. “I thought, ‘Oh no.’ And then, so Never Too Late was the perfect title for the documentary. So, it all resonated with me in a great way, and it changed the title of the documentary into a really good title rather than a really boring one.”
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