RAY AND ELTON LIVE FROM MOSCOW
Ray Cooper joined Elton John’s band as a percussionist in 1972. “It was a ticket to ride,” he says today, looking back at his decades of experience working with John, both onstage and in the studio. “It was like joining the navy. I saw the world, and it was extraordinary.”
But until recently, one of his most historic performances with Elton John was largely unavailable, at least officially. In May 1979, John became one of the first major Western rock acts to play behind the Iron Curtain, taking his music to the heart of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Forty years later, Live From Moscow, a recording of the tour’s final concert in its entirety, was released for Record Store Day in 2019. Now comes a wider release, in LP, CD and digital formats. It’s an exciting document of what Cooper calls “an extraordinary experience, one that’s stayed with me all my life, and will to the end of it, I’m sure.”
Cooper first met John when both were working in the
