If you attend the Elton John concert tonight at Blossom Music Center and the pop icon starts telling tales about the fellow behind the drum set, don’t believe a word of it.John loves to torment his musicians when they play in their hometowns, and his longtime percussionist, John Mahon, hails from North Canton.“He makes up stories that aren’t true,” Mahon says with a laugh. “I almost dread it.“Elton pretty much puts you through the ringer. He abuses the town to begin with, then he’ll start on your family.“It’s all in good fun, but you’ve got to be ready. He’s always fooling around.”Unlike some megastars who barely talk to the folks in their bands, John frequently hangs out with his troops, Mahon says. He loves to banter about baseball and the latest show-biz gossip.“He’s just one of the guys,” says Mahon, who also contributes backup vocals. “It’s kind of refreshing.”Perhaps tonight, John will manage to pronounce Mahon’s name correctly.Schoolmates at St. Thomas Aquinas High in Louisville (class of 1973) knew him as “MAY-hon.” But for the first couple of years after Mahon joined the band in 1997, Sir Elton introduced him onstage as “ma-HON.”The man in question attributes the difference mainly to a clash of cultures.“ ‘ma-HON’ is more of the British pronunciation,” he says.Eventually, John picked up on the fact that everyone else was pronouncing it differently. “He doesn’t want to admit it,” Mahon says with a chuckle. “He says, ‘Why can’t you say your name the right way?’ ”Plenty of folks in tonight’s crowd will know precisely how to say the name, because Mahon still has plenty of friends and family in the area, as does his wife, Canton native Pam Tortola.Both of his parents are deceased, but Mahon owns the family home, which his dad built about 1958, and he returns a few times every year.Little drummer boyHis passion for music ignited at the age of 12, when his father, a Canton cop, took him and his brothers to the Canton Police Boys Club and signed them up for the Drum and Bugle Corps.Mahon also was an Eagle Scout. As one of six kids, he says, he didn’t have much choice: Two older brothers were Eagle Scouts, and his younger brother followed suit.At age 17, he got his hands on a live, double album by the band Chicago and was enthralled. That’s when he decided he wanted to be a professional musician.He performed everywhere — in school, with the marching band, jazz band, orchestra and choir; at home, playing along with records; in cover bands; and with a wide variety of speciality acts, including a Romanian band.When he made the Big Move West in 1983, his dad already had died and his mom didn’t think he was serious until the last minute, when he sold his furniture.Moving across the country with his new wife took some nerve, because the only person he knew in Los Angeles was Bill Severance, a drum teacher who had tutored him here. After years of playing local nightclubs, though, Mahon knew he had to relocate to a musical hot spot if he was ever going to hit the big time.“When I got there, it was a serious wake-up call. I had played with a lot of guys who were really good, but when I went to Los Angeles, every guy I played with was a higher caliber of player than me.”That dawned on him right away, when he worked a wedding reception with a pickup band. “I didn’t even know anybody. Some guy said, ‘Be here at 7 o’clock.’ I’m sitting there playing, and I’m thinking, ‘These guys are some of the best players I’ve ever heard! And we’re playing Hava Nagila!”He realized he had to kick his game up a notch, so he enrolled in a music school, took private voice and percussion lessons and networked like crazy.He struck gold in 1997, when John was preparing for a world tour and needed a percussionist and backup singer.Famous performersThe list of folks Mahon has performed or recorded with since then reads like a Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame induction list: Billy Joel, Sting, Ray Charles, Bonnie Raitt, Phil Collins, Stevie Wonder, Natalie Cole, Melissa Etheridge, Tina Turner, Cher and dozens of others.With John, Mahon has played roughly 800 gigs. The mileage he has traveled to do so is virtually incalculable.This summer, during a seven-day period, Mahon played two shows in Turkey, then flew to Munich, then flew to Montreal, then drove three hours to the city of Quebec, then drove back to Montreal, then flew to Italy, where he played three shows in a row in three different cities.During one tour, Mahon ate breakfast in France, lunch in London and dinner in Hong Kong.Although he sometimes rides along on John’s private jet, mostly he flies commercial.But the travel isn’t the worst of it. To borrow a line from Tom Petty, the waiting is the hardest part.“We’re either waiting to go onstage or waiting to get on an airplane or waiting for a car to pick us up or we’re sitting in a car on the way to the airport.”Not that he’s complaining.“It’s all good,” he says. “It is a dream job. When you’re a musician, you meet people who have jobs like this and you’re like, ‘Wow!’“It always seems unattainable. And sometimes it is. I just was in the right place at the right time.”What he doesn’t say is that he also worked his butt off, practicing four hours a day as a kid and taking every gig he could get.As a young man, Mahon paid to watch shows at Blossom, including multiple performances by Chicago. But he hasn’t been there — on either side of the spotlight — for three decades.After Elton John finishes abusing him, he might not return for another 30 years.Bob Dyer can be reached at 330-996-3580 or bdyer@thebeaconjournal.com.