by Elton John
Midway through the first dates, I saw a rough version of the biopic, Rocketman, for the first time. David was visibly incredibly nervous about my reaction. I knew that Taron Egerton was the right man to play me when I heard him sing ‘Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me’ – he managed to get through it without threatening to murder anyone or screaming about Engelbert Humperdinck, which was certainly an improvement on the first time I sang it. I’d invited Taron to Woodside and chatted with him over a takeaway curry, and I let him read some of the old diaries I’d kept in the early seventies to give him a sense of what my life was like then. Those diaries are inadvertently hilarious. I wrote down everything in this incredibly matter-of-fact way, which just makes it seem even more preposterous. ‘Got up. Tidied the house. Watched football on TV. Wrote “Candle In The Wind”. Went to London. Bought Rolls-Royce. Ringo Starr came for dinner.’ I suppose I was trying to normalize what was happening to me, despite the fact that what was happening to me clearly wasn’t normal at all.
But I’d kept away from the set and tried to avoid looking at the rushes: the last thing you want is the person you’re playing gawping at you while you’re pretending to be him. But watching the film was like the first time I saw Billy Elliot all over again: I started sobbing during the scene set in my gran’s house in Pinner Hill Road, where my mum and dad and gran are singing ‘I Want Love’. That was a song Bernie had written about himself, a middle-aged man with a few failed marriages behind him, wondering if he’ll ever fall in love again. But it could have been written about the people who lived in that house. It felt right, and that was the really important thing to me. It’s the same as this book: I wanted something my kids could watch or read in forty years’ time, and find out what my life was like, or what it felt like to me.
When the farewell tour was announced, a number of journalists had written pieces suggesting that there was absolutely no way I would really retire. They supported this argument with extensive knowledge of my history and impressive psychological insights into my character: tried to retire before, addictive personality, born entertainer, music obsessive. They could have supported it even more strongly by repeating what I’d said at the press conference, which was that I had no intention whatsoever of actually retiring from music, or even live performances. All I said was that I wasn’t going to schlep around the world any more: one last huge tour – 300 gigs over three years, covering North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australasia, the kids getting a tutor and coming with us – and that’s that.
It isn’t the end. I was excited by the fact that stopping touring would give me more time to do different things. I want to write more musicals and more film scores. I want to spend time working with the AIDS Foundation, especially in Africa. I want to stand up for the LGBTQ community there, to try and talk to politicians in Uganda or Kenya or Nigeria and do something to change the way people are treated. I want to collaborate with different artists. I want to stage a huge exhibition, covering my whole career, maybe even think about opening a permanent museum, so people can see some of my art and photography collections. I want to spend more time making albums, and to make them in the way I used to at the start of my solo career: get Bernie to spend time writing a lot of lyrics and develop a stockpile of material. I haven’t gone into the studio with a big hoard of songs to choose from since Madman Across the Water, forty-eight years ago – I’ve just turned up and written on the spot, like the musical version of a painter with a blank canvas. I want to go back to writing without recording what I’m doing, the same way we made Captain Fantastic, memorizing what I come up with as I go along. I want to play live, but much smaller shows, where I can concentrate on playing different material. If there’s a problem with writing songs like ‘I’m Still Standing’, or ‘Rocket Man’, or ‘Your Song’ it’s that they become so huge; they develop a life of their own and overwhelm everything else you do. I love those songs to death, but I’ve written other songs I think are as good as them, that exist in their shadow, and I’d like to give those other songs a moment in the spotlight.
But most of all, I want to spend time being … well, normal, or as normal as I can ever hope to be. Less time on the road means more time doing the school run, more Saturday afternoons taking the kids to Pizza Express, or round Daniel’s, the department store in Windsor – things the boys enjoy, things I would once never have thought of doing. I spent my whole life trying to run away from Reg Dwight, because Reg Dwight really wasn’t a happy budgie. But what running away from Reg Dwight taught me is that when I got too far from him, too removed from the normal person I once was, things went horribly wrong; I was more miserable than ever. I need – everybody needs – some connection to reality.
I live and have lived an extraordinary life, and I honestly wouldn’t change it, even the parts I regret, because I’m incredibly happy with how it has turned out. I obviously wish I’d just kept walking when I saw John Reid chopping out coke in the studio, rather than sticking my nose in – in every sense of the phrase – but then, maybe I had to go through all that to end up where I am now. It’s not where I expected to be at all – married to a man, a father of two, both things that seemed impossible to me not that long ago. But that’s the other lesson my ridiculous life has taught me. From the moment I was ushered out of a failed audition and handed an envelope of Bernie’s lyrics as I got to the door, nothing has ever really turned out how I thought it would. My history is full of what ifs, weird little moments that changed everything. What if I’d been so upset by failing my audition that I’d dumped Bernie’s envelope in a bin on the way to the station? What if I’d stood firm and not gone to America when Dick James told me I should? What if Watford had beaten West Bromwich Albion that Saturday afternoon in the early nineties and lifted my spirits, so that I didn’t feel the need to call a friend and beg him to bring some gay men to dinner? What if I hadn’t noticed Lev at the orphanage in Ukraine? Where would I be now? Who would I be now?
You can send yourself crazy wondering. But it all happened, and here I am. There’s really no point in asking what if? The only question worth asking is: what’s next?
Aged one, in 1948.
With my mother, Sheila Dwight, in the back garden of my nan’s house at 55 Pinner Hill Road.
Outside Buckingham Palace with my mum and my grandad Fred Harris, June 1950.
Me and my dad, in a rare moment when he wasn’t complaining about the disastrous effects of Little Richard on my moral character;
Me, conspicuously ordinary, at Pinner County Grammar.
Bluesology in 1965. A photo used on the sheet music for our single ‘Come Back Baby’, printed in the demented belief that anyone other than Bluesology was going to sing it.
The brother I’d never had. Bernie with my cousin Paul and my mercifully short-lived moustache. Mum, Auntie Win and Auntie Mavis are on the back row;
Frome Court, where Bernie and I lived with Mum and Derf in the upstairs flat.
April 1969, in front of my new Hillman Husky estate.
The genius arranger Paul Buckmaster demonstrating his striking approach to style during the Elton John album sessions, 1970.
A promo shot of me and Bernie, taken in summer 1970, as a buzz started building around the new album.
The Troubadour, 1970. If I’d had my way, I’d have gone home in a huff without actually playing there.
The night everything changed. Onstage at the Troubadour in my yellow dungarees and star-spangled T-shirt.
My hero. Me with Leon Russell in New York, 1970. Imagine that face glaring at you throughout the most important gig of your life.
Sharon and Beryl. Me and John Reid, young and in love, 1972.
I learned a lot about art from Bryan Forbes. Here I am, visibly embarking on another voyage of discovery in his Virginia Water bookshop.
Backstage at the Shaw Theatre with Princess Margaret and her husband Lord Snowdon. Princess Margaret invited me and the band to a memorable dinner party.
> Dee, me, Davey and Nigel at the Château d’Hérouville in 1972. Note my idea of dressing down for a recording session.
Britain’s least likely pop star accepts his gold discs. Stephen James, Bernie, me and Dick James at the DJM offices.
With my lovely nan, Ivy Sewell;
Doing my best to upstage Rod Stewart, as usual.
Her Royal Highness Tony King, with loyal subject John Lennon emerging from her skirts.
Luggage tags from the SS France trip, where I wrote Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy by day, and took on all-comers at bingo by night.
Rehearsing with John at the Record Plant, NYC, the day before the Thanksgiving show at Madison Square Garden.
On the runway with the Starship, freshly repainted to my specifications.
‘I won’t be able to sing in it? You let me worry about that’: the master of shy understatement takes the stage, mid-70s.
Driving a gold-painted golf cart with illuminated glasses and a bow tie on the front to the unveiling of my star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. You can see how overjoyed I was by this turn of events.
With the wonderful Billie Jean King and Bernie, respectively the inspiration for, and the writer of, ‘Philadelphia Freedom’.
With Bernie at Tower Grove Drive, LA, in the 1970s. The ongoing effects of a disastrous hair-dye experiment on the John cranium are clearly visible.
Onstage with Stevie Wonder, Wembley, 1977. Unbeknown to everybody present, I’m about to announce my retirement from live performance, yet again.
At Studio 54, for Roberta Flack’s party. With me are Andy Warhol, Jerry Hall and Ahmet Ertegun. It’s clearly early in the evening because both my eyeballs are pointing in the same direction.
In Leningrad with Ray Cooper in 1979.
Wearing the Donald Duck costume, in which I couldn’t walk or sit down properly, playing Central Park in September 1980.
The other great partnership of my career: Watford manager Graham Taylor discusses tactics with the chairman, 1983.
Backstage at Live Aid with the magnificent Freddie Mercury, who had both just stolen the show and blithely informed me I looked like the Queen Mother onstage.
George Michael wanted to leave the frivolity of pop music behind — so naturally I turned up at Wham!’s farewell concert in June 1986 dressed as Ronald McDonald.
Bernie and me with Ryan White in 1988. I didn’t know it then, but meeting Ryan was going to save my life.
Clean and sober, but still intent on ruining things for Rod Stewart whenever possible. I’m about to wander onstage unannounced and sit on his lap.
Taken by Herb Ritts in 1992. I’d known Liz Taylor for years — she was hilarious, and had the guts to force Hollywood to pay attention to AIDS long before I did.
Backstage at Earls Court with Princess Diana in May 1993;
Working with Tim Rice on The Lion King. I thought the finished film was extraordinary.
With David Furnish, madly in love and fully Versace’d;
David, Gianni Versace, me and Gianni’s partner Antonio D’Amico at Gianni’s home on Lake Como.
The Oscar party fundraisers for my AIDS Foundation started in 1993 and have become a yearly event. This is from the tenth party, with Denzel Washington and Halle Berry, who won best actor and best actress that night.
David and me, shot by Mario Testino at the Ritz Paris, 1996.
Mum and Derf with me and David the day I received my knighthood in 1998.
Ingrid Sischy, who felt like my missing sister when I met her, demonstrating the transformative power of one of my wigs.
21 December 2005: the day David and I became civil partners. I was as happy as I had ever been;
I was genuinely worried we’d be facing crowds of protesters outside the Guildhall in Windsor but people turned up with cakes and presents.
With Auntie Win at the party after our civil partnership. Mum, being an appalling pain in the arse, is not pictured.
Our son Zachary taking his first steps in 2011 in Los Angeles.
Having breakfast with Zachary in Nice. Fatherhood was the most unexpected event of my life — and the best.
Passing on my expertise in shopping to the boys.
Lady Gaga, underdressed as usual, performing godmother duties.
Bring your kids to work day. Zachary and Elijah onstage with me at Caesars Palace in Vegas.
Backstage with Aretha Franklin before her final live performance at the Elton John AIDS Foundation twenty-fifth anniversary gala in New York, November 2017.
Backstage at the farewell tour with Bernie, 2018. Still a study in opposites fifty years on. Still best friends.
acknowledgements
Thank you to everyone who jogged my memory and who contributed to my amazing life.
index
The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
Abbey Road Studios
Academy Awards Viewing Party
Ackles, David
Adams, Bryan
Adams, Ryan
Advocate Lutheran General Hospital, Chicago
After Dark club, Los Angeles
Aida musical
AIDS/HIV
And the Band Played On docudrama
Elton’s work; see also Elton John AIDS Foundation
fear of
Princess Diana’s work
in Russia
Ryan White
in South Africa
in the Ukraine
AIR company
AIR Studios
albums
Bernie as sole lyricist
Big Picture, The
Captain and the Kid, The
Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy
Caribou
Diving Board, The
Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only the Piano Player
Elton John
Empty Sky
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Honky Château
Ice on Fire (‘Wrap Her Up’ as multiple writers)
Made in England
Madman Across the Water
One, The (‘Runaway Train’ by John/Taupin/Romo)
Peachtree Road
Reg Strikes Back
Rock of the Westies
Sleeping with the Past
Songs from the West Coast
Too Low for Zero
Tumbleweed Connection
Wonderful Crazy Night
Bernie plus other lyricists
21 at 33
Blue Moves
Fox, The
Jump Up!
Leather Jackets
collaborations
Duets (with various artists)
Good Morning to the Night (with Pnau)
Union, The (with Leon Russell)
compilation albums
To Be Continued …
Elton John’s Greatest Hits
disco album, Victim of Love
live albums
11-17-70
Here and There
Live in Australia
soundtracks and musicals
Aida
Billy Elliot
Friends
Lion King, The
Muse, The
Road to El Dorado
Vampire Lestat, The
Women Talking Dirty
Alexandra, Princess
Almost Famous film
American Foundation for AIDS Research
Anderson, Jon
Andrews, Bernie
Andrews, Julie
Andy Williams Show
Anne, Princess Royal
‘Are You Ready For Love’ (Bell/Bell/James)
Armani, Giorgio
Artem in the Ukraine
Ashe, Arthur
Ashen, John
Atwell, Winifred
Auger, Br
ian
Average White Band
Babylon, Guy
‘Back In The USSR’ (Lennon/McCartney)