DHAKA: Music icon Sir Elton John will release ‘The Diving Board’, his first album since 2006’s ‘The Captain and the Kid’, on Monday and he revealed the folk pioneer’s record ‘Modern Times’ persuaded him to push on with his own career.

He said, ‘It floored me, that someone of Dylan’s great output could come across and make an album like that at his age, which was for me so timeless and sounded so brilliant’.

‘I thought, ‘Well, if I’m going to make a record again, I’ve got to make it sort of sounding like that, because that’s how I like my records to sound.’

The album, which was recorded in a minimalist fashion, introduced Elton to a new way of working, even at this stage in his career.

He told The Independent newspaper’s Independent Radar magazine, ‘A lot of the takes were first takes, and the first track on the album is a solo piano track, which I’ve never down before’, reports contactmusic.com.

‘So I’m breaking new ground, and yet I’ve been playing the bloody piano for so long I didn’t think about it, you know?’

BDST: 1435 HRS, SEPT 16, 2013
RoR/BSK