Original subtitles

Have a chat, said Sir Elton, in the south of France.

Who was I to say no?

Especially since it's the only major interview he's giving this year. The

only problem is, when it comes to talking about a 50-year career, where do

you start?

Let me just see.

Svelte John's in the house, ladies and gentlemen.

He's in his house.

Born in 1947, young Reg Dwight probably never imagined that turning 72, he'd be

partway through an incredible 300-date farewell world tour.

I've received France's highest award, the Légion d'honneur, be celebrating The

Lion King being a box office smash hit, and have released a biopic of his life

along with his autobiography.

It's been wonderful.

Growing up in Pinner, young Elton could play the skater's waltz on the piano

aged just three.

Encouraged by his nan, he went on to win a scholarship at the Royal Academy of

Music.

His first taste of performing involved playing piano in pubs. A couple of

nights, the fight would start, so I had to go out the window. I'm not stupid,

folks.

No, no, no.

Which later led to playing organ in the band Bluesology.

But it was meeting writing partner Bernie Taupin that would change Elton's

life forever.

He's probably more important than me because he has to write the words before

I write the music.

Selling over 300 million albums, he's won countless awards, including five

Grammys, five Brit Awards, oh, and an Oscar.

I never thought in my life I would be holding one of these.

Leading a life even more colourful and outrageous than his many costumes, Sir

Elton is a music legend that's written the manual on being famous and has

survived to tell the tale.

I'd like to become a legend, but I don't think I will be because they're so very,

very special.

Well, first of all, Sir Elton John, thank you very much for inviting us to

your home.

Thank you for coming. I know. Imagine living here.

It strikes me this must be a very strange time for you, because you're a

very much what's next kind of guy. And here you are, you're doing all this kind

of looking back.

How odd is it to be doing all this looking back? Yeah, you're right.

There's the farewell tour, there's the film, and then there's the book.

It's been fine. I mean, I very rarely look back.

But I've had to. Obviously, with a book, you have to go right back to the

beginning. And it's been quite...

cathartic I suddenly realized I've led an amazing life because I live my life

at such a high speed that sometimes you just go from one thing to the next and

then when I read the book in its entirety after it was done I think God

Almighty I could have filled another 300 pages with stuff but it's been very

gratifying to know that at 72 I can do the book and the film and then move

forward again And I have to say, you know, the book, it really, it's funny

and an extraordinary amount of candour in it. Are you, now that it's all

happening, how do you feel about strangers in the street knowing all

these things about you? I don't mind. I mean, I did Tantrums and Tiaras many

years ago and that was fairly in your face.

I don't mind that. It's the whole point of doing a book and an autobiography is

to be as honest as you possibly can. I didn't want to sugarcoat anything.

And yet reading about you as a boy.

It seems so unlikely.

Oh, I wouldn't say boo to a goose. I was, you know, I was frightened of my

own shadow. I was frightened of treading on eggshells. No.

And it all happened when I left home for the first time and I could wear exactly

what I wanted to wear. It was suddenly like unleashing the beast, as it were.

And I lived my teenage years in my twenties.

Yeah. I mean, my relationship with my mother hadn't been the best, but at

least we reconciled towards the end-ish.

And I wanted the opportunity to say to her,

that i did love her and that i was appreciative for everything she'd done

and it was a difficult the two or three times we saw each other weren't easy not

for me um because she didn't change but you know um for me it was about telling

her and before she died if i hadn't told her before she died that i loved her and

i was grateful for everything she did i would have felt really bad yeah no i

must say just as a person i was so happy that there'd been some sort of yeah they

had to be I listened to someone talking about their relationship with their

father, and I thought, you know what?

I have to reach out to my mum.

Things hadn't been good, but I reached out. And the olive branch is necessary.

You have to forgive people.

You have to try and reconcile with someone who was very much there for me

at the beginning and who gave me a lot. And also, she was clearly a very...

difficult woman but a woman of kind of contradictions you know she could be so

funny and sweet and then really vile yeah it's who she was i mean i think

more so towards the end of her life she got more difficult um why

was that i don't know i don't think she didn't approve of um the civil

partnership she didn't approve of david she didn't approve of anyone who was

closer to me than she was

Was she jealous? I don't know.

I don't know.

The thing I was grateful for both my parents was that they separated after a

horrendous marriage and they both found people they love.

And that makes me happy because my mum deserved to find someone she loved and

so did my dad.

And you did have a very good time with her. You took her on tours. Don't worry

about her on the Star Trek. She was only interested in watching one film.

Yes. Deep Throat.

Well, she'd heard about it and I said, well, I can show it to you. Yeah.

So they were having lunch and she was sitting there going, bloody hell, look

at that.

My mum could be so much fun. Yeah. I mean, my whole family was based on

laughter. My uncle, my aunt, my mum, my grandmother.

And in fact, I wasn't that close to them when my mum was still alive.

But when I've had, now I've had children, my kids are very close to my

cousins.

their children because family is important a lot of laughter and a lot of

music but you do talk about watching that scene in rocket man where they sing

to each other which as you know i knew none of these people and i was sobbing

yeah well i saw that in a very early stage of the film and i wasn't prepared

each one of those family members my grandmother my dad my mom and myself

wanted a bit more love in their lives and wanted a bit more peace and harmony

me i can

Too much baggage.

Oh God, I've seen so much traffic, but I

want love.

Just a different kind.

I want love. Won't break me down.

Won't break me up. Won't fence me in. I want a love that'll mean something.

That's the love I want.

There's some obvious people who have influenced your performing style, like

Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis.

Talk to us about Winifred Atwell. Winifred Atwell was incredible.

She was my first idol. And she was this beautiful, beautiful, I think she was

Bajan, I'm not sure. She was a West Indian lady.

She bought this real upright honky-tonk piano for her.

nothing in a junk shop.

And then she would play something like ragtime on the piano. She was a very

good ragtime piano player.

And she'd had this wonderful face and she would smile at you.

And I loved her to death. And I got to meet her in Australia.

Oh, wow.

And we met at an airport.

And she gave me a koala bear. Not a real one, of course.

and um it was just it was wonderful to meet her and tell her how much that she

meant to me and and she she played like classical music semi-classical but then

she played pub songs and she used to have all these records like let's have a

party volume one two three four and of course I in when I played in the pub I

was very grateful for that because I used to copy all those kind of Al Jolson

songs and down at the old Bull and Bush.

Why was there a piano in the house? You weren't rich people and a piano seems

like a very kind of high status thing.

No, it was an upright piano.

My auntie played the piano and there was always music in the house so at a very

early age I tried to copy what I heard on the radio.

I don't know why it was there and I'm glad it was there because if it hadn't

been I wouldn't have turned out to be who I was.

Young piano playing Reg Dwight changed his name to Elton Hercules John in 1967.

choosing Hercules after the horse in Steptoe and Son.

Despite his 1968 debut solo single, I've Been Loving You, failing to set the

charts alight, the early 70s saw Elton's career go

stellar in just four years.

I now want to declare this week, Elton John Week!

He released 12 studio albums that decade, including Madman Across the

Water, Honky Chateau, and Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy,

along with a string of classic hits.

His showmanship and unique sense of style fast became legendary at huge

sellout concerts, cementing his place in rock and roll history.

And all by the age of 25.

In private, Elton began a turbulent relationship with his manager John Reed,

seen here playing guitar in this previously lost Top of the Pops

performance, on scene for 47 years.

The Rocket Man had landed.

All thanks to an ad placed in the NME by Liberty Records.

There's a lot of things in the book where you talk about the randomness of

life. The what-ifs.

Because... It's not like you met Bernie Taubes. It's not like you bumped into

him even. It was even more random than that. It was kismet. I answered an

advert in the NME, which said Liberty Records, who were an American record

company starting up in England.

It was an album, R Street. They want singers and songwriters.

Now, I was in a band, Bluesology, and I was fed up. I thought, I didn't become a

musician to play to people eating fish and chips. I was fed up with it.

But I went along to this meeting with Ray Williams, who was the guy I met.

And I said, I can sing and I can write songs, but I can't write lyrics. And of

course, there were no cassettes in that. It was all reel-to-reel tapes and piles

of envelopes.

And it could have given me any envelope. Of all the envelopes I get Bernie, it

could have been some terrible toss-up from Portsmouth or somewhere else. I got

this brilliant guy from Lincolnshire.

And there's been so many moments in my life where that...

kind of thing has clicked in meeting david getting sober having children it's

quite astonishing how many times that's happened in my life where it's just if i

hadn't have made that decision my life wouldn't have turned out the way it had

and i always assumed talking to you about the music writing process because

he does write all the lyrics that somehow you were singing about things he

was feeling or he experienced but in fact he has written

For you, I mean someone saved my life tonight all the nasties white lady white

powder How often does he do that focus on your every now and then I'm across

the whole captain fantastic and the brown dog cowboy I was but every song

was about us and that's why it's one of my favorite albums But he does he's you

know, he writes about me quite a lot. It's brilliant because I'd never know

what I'm gonna get And I don't want to know what I'm going to get until I get

the lyric in front of me. And then I put my hands on the keyboard and away we go.

That has never changed in over the 50 years we've written. And that's what

keeps it so interesting for me.

Let's talk about your song, which was a song that changed both your lives.

Did you know the minute you'd written it, this is something else?

Yeah, I thought we'd, you know, we'd written Skyline Pigeon, which was a

really lovely song from Empty Sky.

But this one.

And in the film, it was a pretty accurate description of how it was done.

And I called him in and went, ooh, listen to this.

And you can tell everybody this is your song.

It may be quite simple, but now that it's done,

I hope you don't mind.

I hope you don't mind that I put down in words.

It's extraordinary.

That gave us the confidence and it was definitely a turning point.

We didn't know it was going to be a hit, but we knew that we were onto something.

And does it bother you? Because so many people cover that song. Do you like

people covering that song? I love anybody covering our songs. We started

off as pretty awful songwriters for other people.

And so when people do cover your songs, it's a compliment. I can be in an

elevator and hear Daniel and think, oh, I wrote that.

Or who is the asshole that wrote this? Me.

But it's always a compliment. If you write a song and someone records it, no

matter how good or bad it is, I get a thrill out of it.

You did your own share of covers, Marble Arch records. Yes.

Tell us some of the unlikely songs you sang. I used to earn a lot of money

playing on sessions. I played on the Hollies, He Ain't Heavy, He's My

Brother. I played on Baron Knight's records, Scaffold records, Tom Jones

records I sang on.

And then I used to do this thing on Marble Arch records, which used to do

cheap versions of all the pop hits.

And we used to do it at Pi Studios at Marble Arch. And we used to have to do

covers of... One of the first things we did was Back Home, the England World

Cup. Back home and you start singing and fall on the floor laughing I did Saved

by the Bell by the Bee Gees where I couldn't get the voice right so I went

Saved by the Bell and by the end of this take my neck was about five inches wider

and they were some of the nicest memories that I treasure actually

Something I didn't understand I know it's in the film but your big success

came in America I went to the Troubadour Club in L.A.

and I played there. I got an incredible review in the L.A. Times from Robert

Hilburn, which kind of spread around the country.

Senorita play guitar, plays it just for you.

My rosary has broken, my beads have all slipped.

It helped me so much. It gave me a turbo boost.

you didn't want to go i didn't want to go no i thought it was too early to go i

mean i've made many foolish decisions like that in my life and i thought it's

the wrong time to go because we were just getting a reputation of playing in

england but i was wrong but i love you getting out of the plane at lax and

realizing that the americans were really going through this yeah but we were met

by london transport bus an old one a double-decker which took about four

hours to get to sunset strip i mean been flying for 14 hours and i thought i'm

gonna get in a lovely cadillac or something no it was a great idea and it

got us a lot of publicity but as soon as we got to sunset strip it was magical

because it looked just like it did on the beverly hillbillies thank god i went

yeah And it seems like this huge rush in your life where suddenly you're

successful, you're famous, and then you're in love.

Nothing in my life seems to have taken a long time.

Once I started to be successful, it was like a nuclear bomb going off. We did so

much work. We did tours. We did so many albums a year. We did radio shows, TV

shows. It was a lot of work, but we loved it.

the work was not a problem for me momentum and adrenaline gives you so

much and when you're on the crest of a wave you just you know you go with it

and because you were very openly in love with john reed and in relationship with

john reed what was the industry reaction to that like were they kind of like uh

-oh or did they think well if you keep quiet about it it'll be fine nobody ever

wrote about it in fact when i was interviewed by cliff jar in rolling

stone in 1976

he said i'm going to ask you a question but if you want i'll turn the tape

recorder off and i said i know what you're going to ask me and he asked me

the question i said yes um i think i chickened out a bit and said i was

bisexual but I think everybody in the industry knew I was gay. I went to gay

clubs.

I was friends with Divine.

John Reed was a legendary gay guy in London.

When I first moved in with John, people in London said, God, you might as well,

you know, put a neon sign on the top of Buckingham Palace.

We were a very famous gay couple at that time. And it was a miracle. Nobody wrote

about it before.

And yet you were open with your family. I really like your... Well...

your coming out story, and you had to make a choice. The night you were going

to come out to your parents, you had tickets to... See Liberace, and I didn't

go. John went. Which would have been like coming out, surely.

Yeah, I know, but I didn't. I just wanted to get it over and done with, and

I called my mum and the conversation had that.

Um, and then of course Liberace was, it was the Palladium. He was doing a

concert, playing with the guy.

Elton John, I know you're here.

Stand up, put the lights on. Let's see where he is.

And it's like, I'm not there.

I was like, oh man, John Reed came home and said, ah, you left me in the shit

tonight. Um, but it was, uh, it was something I just wanted to get out of my

way. And as much as I love Liberace and I did love Liberace, I just thought I'm

going to stay home tonight and get this over and done with.

But you did meet Liberace later, didn't you? Oh, I loved Liberace. He was

fantastic. And we did the Royal Variety Show together.

And I had two fabulous lurex tailcoats, suits made.

I thought, I'll show him. I'll show him.

And so I'm sitting there and he comes in. And before he comes in, there was

trunk after trunk after trunk of clothes.

Talking about blowing me out of the water.

And he was so...

brilliantly funny and so sweet and so nice when he signed his autograph he was

in the shape of a grand piano that's classy it's fantastic and he played with

rings on i can never play with a ring on my finger and here in fat's domino were

two people that always played with a lot of rings yeah i can't do that um but he

did and i just had to do that and was he uh was he a style influence was he one

of your style influences um Not at the time, but obviously people will say,

God, look, he's very Liberace.

Listen, I was stuck at a piano. I wasn't Mick Jagger. I wasn't Rod Stewart.

I wasn't David Bowie.

I wasn't Mark Bolan.

So having had the freedom to do what I wanted as far as clothes ran, I had to

be a little bit more spectacular in my costumes. And I wanted to be.

Not that Bernie wanted me to be, and a lot of people thought it took away from

the music because the music was very serious and it was great music.

I was just having a ball. And so I suppose there can be a similarity drawn

between his flamboyance and my flamboyance.

And of course, the costumes got more and more outrageous as time went on. I

graduated to Bob Mackie in the end.

And then it was full pedal to the metal.

Tell us about your entrance at the Hollywood Bowl.

Because you really pushed the boat out. Well, playing the Hollywood Bowl was a

huge moment in my career.

And we planned this before there was going to be five.

grand pianos mocked up grand pianos and they would have elton when they opened

up and there were doves inside um and i thought it'd be great to have linda

lovelace introduce me your mother's friend my mother's friend yes um a great

coach as they say um and so she my friend tony king he introduced linda

lovelace and then i came in this huge marabou feather outfit down the stairs

it was very camp

And then, of course, the doves, by that time, had all fallen asleep.

So I remember John Reed going, oh, my God, the doves are... And these poor

doves were shoved up into the air, half asleep, they woke up midair.

But it was a big point of my career and it was the real start of the flamboyant

shows that I did.

Looking back, are there any outfits you regret or any outfits you particularly

love? I don't regret any of them, actually. I mean... There was some that

was too over the top, but I remember an Australian tour when I did the

orchestral tour and I came out the second half of the orchestra as dressed

as Mozart and the first half with a punk wig. And no, it was all part of the

process of me finding out who I was, basically.

Things make no sense. I think it was in Central Park, the Donald Duck outfit.

You've never tried it on. No, I didn't. I didn't have a run through. So I'm

going off stage and I'm changing into the Donald Duck for the encore.

And Bob Halley was very funny, my personal assistant at the time. Great

sense of humour.

I put my arms through the leg hole.

by which time we were crying with laughter.

And then I finally got the flippers on and I sat down at the piano and the bum

was so big that I couldn't really sit at the piano properly.

And then I got up from the piano to walk across the stage and tread on my

flippers. It was a complete, you know, it's one of those things you have to

have a trial run. I didn't, but it makes the story even better because we were

crying back. So now we go, hurry up, hurry up, they'll all go away. There was

500,000 people there. They'll go away, they'll go away. And the more we tried

to get it on the...

more i couldn't get it on and we were crying we laughed and eventually i came

out it was very very funny um i was panicking but laughing as well and now

in terms of your look one of the things that is addressed in the film in a very

funny way is your hair was that a decision to kind of go right i'm going

to talk about this in the film my mother says i'd be bored when i was 20. well i

wasn't quite bored by 20 but more or less 30 it was going um

And I don't like being bald. I look like Shrek, and I don't like it. So I had

hair transplants, which didn't work. That was in the early Louis Pasteur

version of hair transplants.

There was a tabloid story, wasn't there, that they put it upside down or

something? Yes, yes. Oh, my God. And then that didn't really work.

But I'm sure the drugs didn't help neither.

And so I decided to wear, you know, the wig. First wig I had was so bad, I

remember the review when I came out for the...

uh freddie mercury concert uh wembley said i came out with a dead squirrel on

my head and looking back on it it did look like a dead squirrel actually more

like a dead mole um um and it's got it's gotten better over the years and i

got teased a lot mercilessly in the paper about it i'm very happy with it

now it looks good i'm very happy with it on yes i am bald but i don't like being

bald and so i wear a toupee you tell a story about you thought there was a

break-in think you were in atlanta oh my god i was in my apartment atlanta um and

my took my hair off and put it by my bed um and i fall asleep and suddenly i can

hear noises and i went oh i'm gonna be burgled um so i put the light on

and rushed out into the corridor and i as i was eating the car i haven't got my

hair on so i went back and i put it on and there was a water leak i mean it's

two maintenance guys from downstairs but then when i got back and uh i went to

the bathroom and i looked at myself i put it on upside down or not upside down

but back to front and i looked like frankie howard on a really really bad

day so god knows what they must have thought because i was just wearing

underpants and uh and a back to front wig and i thought oh my god um so

yes it's um it's what it is It's the first thing you get in a fire. Yes.

Dolly Parton does that, doesn't she? She sleeps in every hotel. I pray to her

every night.

There are so many famous people

scattered through your story. Are you nervous about any of them reading this

book?

a bit um there's not many nasty stories um i put the record straight tina turner

and i had a falling out of the vh1 divas thing she went and did the oprah show

and kind of bad mouthed me and said i was a spoiled child and in fact i wanted

to put the record straight and what really happened i think at the end of

the day we were both culpable of you know i shouldn't have done what i did

but she drove me to it um

Billy Joel, who I love, and toured with three times, fell asleep at the piano at

Madison Square Garden during Piano Man. I learned more about Rod Stewart in this

book than I... Rod Stewart and I were always so much fun together. We were

rivals in the sense that we were both happening at the same time, he a little

bit before me.

And we've always had a great sense of humor with each other. We've always

played practical jokes on each other And we've always had such a laugh.

I mean, I've had more laughs with Rod than anybody else, probably. I'm not

going with you dressed like that, I can assure you. Why not? With that on? I'm

not going with that hat on. Why not? Look at you.

It's like Dusty Springfield in a nightmare.

But it goes quite far, the Earls Court blimp.

Well, he had a blimp because he was playing Earl's Court for about five

nights, which I wasn't happy about the fact that he was playing for five

nights. And I was staying at the Inn on the Park, which is now the Four Seasons

in London. I could see it hanging in the sky.

So I rang up John Reid and said, Rod's got a blimp above Earl's Court. Can we

get it down?

And I didn't say anything else. And he mysteriously got it, I think, shot down.

Different times. The next day it wasn't there. So I rang Rod up and said,

Oh dear, can you see your balloon, your blimp from where you are? Yes, dear, I

can. Isn't it fabulous?

And he looked out the window and said, you bastard.

And then the next year I played Olympia and I had a big banner right across the

road where Olympia is. And I swear to God, it was up for about 30 seconds and

his road crew had it down. It went up at two o'clock in the morning. It was down

by two o'clock and 30 seconds.

Wonderful memories.

He and I have laughed so much over the years.

He has a great sense of humour. We've both got the same sense of humour.

And though some people obviously aren't stood around, I didn't realise you were

very close with John Lennon.

Yes, I met him when he was just finishing his crazy phase and going into

his laughing phase.

I mean, he'd just done a rock and roll album, which was a very hard album for

him to do with Full Spectre.

And I think he had a lot of issues at that point. He was with May Pang at the

time.

We'd broken off with Yoko.

And we more or less hung out together for a year and a half, two years.

And he sang on my records. I played on his. We did a lot of drugs together.

But we had so many laughs.

Him and Rod Stewart were the two people I probably laughed with the most.

And Freddie Mercury.

There's a very New York story about you and him holed up in a hotel room. Oh,

yes. It was like we were doing cocaine.

And it was like 1.30 in the morning.

was a ring on the doorbell i thought who's this um so i took me about 10

minutes to creep over to the the eye hole it was at the sherry netherlands

hotel and i went to him andy warhol and john said and so we didn't answer the

door and i said why didn't you want to let andy and he said he's always got a

bloody camera with him he said nothing safe you know nothing's private with

andy so uh yeah so i thought god he wouldn't let andy warhol in but that's

because we were high as a kite now you talk about uh some of the duets you've

done uh in the book obviously uh george michael don't let the sun go down i mean

that song you genuinely did not like you didn't rate when i wrote it for the

caribou album um i didn't like it in fact i told my producer gus dutton to

send it to england company and if he didn't like it then tell him to send it

to lulu um

and i remember playing it to rod in the car i was driving rod into london we

were going to london together and i played it to him and it was you know it

takes a long time to get across he said ballad is it dear

Benny and the Jets was another one I didn't see and sacrificed three songs

that I would never put out if I'd have had the choice.

And Don't Go Breaking My Heart, obviously, you wrote. You came up with

the title for that on YouTube. I did. I was in Barbados. I was in holiday in

Barbados. And Bernie was in Toronto doing an album. And I rang him up.

I said, I've got this.

Played in the melody over the phone.

And then I said, I've got this line, Don't Go Breaking My Heart. And that was

it. And then he wrote it. And then he came down to join us in Barbados on

holiday. And I wrote the song there.

And you wrote it for Kiki D.

I wrote it for Kiki, yeah.

And then there was an

alternative, which I think was called I'm Always on the Bonk. The B-side was

I'm Always on the Bonk. Je ne suis pas noir, mais je suis blanc.

Don't know where I'm going, don't know who I'm blowing, I'm always on the bonk.

And of course, there was a big... It's not too late to include it in the

show. I think it could have been the A-side, actually. I think, don't go

breaking my heart, I've fallen by the wayside, for I'm always on the bonk.

And so, of course, we got our knuckles slapped by the record label and we

called it the Snow Queen.

Elton's already extensive songbook expanded even further in the 1980s.

He also added a further 11 studio albums to his back catalog, including Too Low

for Zero, Ice on Fire, and the multi-platinum Sleeping with the Past.

But it wasn't just hits he was scoring.

Along with manager Graham Taylor, he took his football club, Watford FC, from

the fourth to the first division.

including a place in the 1984 FA Cup final.

There's only ever been one club in my heart and I would never get so involved

with anything unless it was Watford.

But the highs of the 80s weren't without the lows.

Elton's career came under threat from cysts on his vocal cords.

My whole life was in such a crisis.

I had no voice. I was physically tired and emotional.

A surprise wedding hit the headlines.

And the divorce courts.

And his drug and drink addictions were spiraling out of control.

Is it 29 years you've been sober now? It is, yeah. 29 years, congratulations.

And the bad stuff was about 16 years of you doing

a lot of coke and other things. Not all the time, but yeah, generally 16 years.

And it's funny, you know, here we are in Nice, and it's the scene of, I suppose,

like a lot of, I don't know what you call them, good stories, good talking

stories. It's a story that's been told to you the night with Duran Duran in

Nice. Oh, I was doing the Ansel's Downing video.

Yeah.

And I'd been up since about 4.30 in the morning. I shot a lot in Cannes, and

then we came back to Nice to film at the Nogresco for the last evening shots.

and the inside shots i'm totally knackered and i meet duran duran in the

bar and i haven't really met them before and they said have you ever had a

martini i said no i said i'm so tired what's going to have a martini so i had

one then another one another one then i had a line of coke and then i don't

remember anything else um i woke up the next morning i went into bob halley's

room and it was just sticks of furniture left all this he had this fabulous

cowboy hat which was flat as a pizza um and apparently i just lost it and had

john reed who was wearing a clown outfit and makeup and i had a big fight with

john um he left took my car and drove to calais in the clown's outfit with you

know the makeup on got on the ferry it got to dover and then it broke down so

he's standing by them whatever it is

And yes, that was the start of my martini, and that became one of my

favourite drinks, unfortunately.

It was like rocket fuel for Rocketman.

And I used to have six very quickly. Six in half an hour.

I mean, I am a drinker. That's insane.

It is insane, yes. You just built to withstand a lot of alcohol.

I suppose so. I don't know, but I enjoyed the feeling it gave me. But of

course... I couldn't then remember what I'd said the night before. And that led

to a lot of, it's called a blackout, I think. But Bernie would ring me up and

say, did you remember what you said to John Reed's mum?

I said, no.

I was like, oh, there she is with the same old bloody hairdo. I was like, it

was not good. It was bad behaviour, terrible behaviour.

But it didn't stop me.

No, that's the bad thing about it.

So there was that side of addiction, but also with money, your shopping

addiction. Well, that's never that's never gone. I wasn't going to say

anything but yeah You know as a kid Because my

parents argued all the time I felt I used to run to my room and play with my

toys and my records and I kept them in pristine Condition and because I know it

sound great, but I found solace in inanimate objects and I because they

couldn't hurt me So I've always loved collecting things. And as soon as I made

any money, I started collecting art on Art Deco. And I learned about art

through collecting.

I'm just inquisitive by nature. I'm a legitimate kleptomaniac.

Like, I'm looking around. Do you ever go in a shop and go, I love one of those?

Well, yeah, when it comes down to a painting, yes. Okay.

But when it comes down to buying a pair of socks, probably no. I like that. And

I'll have one in each color.

The range.

no i'm not very good at that um so yeah i like i'd multiple buy so you were

going through this time in your life where the the drugs are out of control

and then the sun decided to have this vendetta against you yeah um do you

still to this day know why that started the story was that i'd flown by

helicopter to billy gaff rod stewart's manager's house and given cocaine to

underage boys

rent boys, I think. And I've never been to Billy Gaff's house. I've never flown

in a helicopter to Billy Gaff's house.

But they pursued that. And as soon as I saw that story, I issued a writ.

And then it became a vendetta with writs going backwards and forwards.

And my auntie used to work in a newspaper shop, so she got the brunt of

it. And it was pretty distressing. And in the end, Michael Parkinson ran me up

and said, listen, you're not saying anything.

It looks as if you're guilty.

you have to come come i've got a talk show but he was my friend and he said

come and talk about it oh just somewhere it's like a horror story isn't it in the

past five months unbelievable um i just i can't really figure it out um it has

been the worst five months i've ever had to endure but um it can only get better

i can't get any worse and then it became a year and a half they followed me

around the world they had my

suite at the Century Plaza Hotel bugged, which was Ronald Reagan's suite. So we

had to have the CIA, the FBI.

Elton's Silent Assassins was one of the headlines.

I'd taken the voice box from my German shepherd dogs so that nobody could hear

them coming when they were attacked.

And I wouldn't give it... I was lucky enough to be affluent enough to fight

them. And I would fight... If I had nothing, I would sell my last thing

because of the injustice of it all. And eventually, they...

buckle down i got the front page apology elton sorry elton we were wrong i got a

huge sum of money uh which was a lot of money in those days but if i'd have sued

them i've got more but i didn't want the court process to go on i was just happy

enough to get the front page apology and do you

Do you feel safe now or do you feel like the press could turn on you? They always

turn on you, but you know, it is what it is.

Sometimes they love you, sometimes they don't like you. And we have an okay

relationship with the press, but they know that if they do write anything or

they do say something that's untoward, that they'll get a wrap around the

knuckles because I won't stand for it. Just going back briefly, the 16 years of

excess, the coverage, why did they end?

Was there a point? Yeah, I mean...

Not only was I a drug addict, I was an alcoholic. I used to sit and drink a

bottle of Johnny Walker Black every day.

I used to smoke reefers, joints, and I was bulimic. And so I'd go to sleep for

three days. I hadn't eaten. Then I'd go out and scourge myself and then throw it

all out. It was a very lonely existence.

And I just suddenly thought, am I going to die or am I going to live?

What do you want to do?

And at the end of the day, when you use drugs for that amount of time, they

don't have the same effect.

You just take them for the sake of it. They're not making you happier. They're

making you worse.

And I just sat there one night and said, this is ridiculous.

I couldn't ask for help. People had told me time and time again that I needed

help. All my closest friends.

I screamed and shouted at them, how dare you tell me.

I wouldn't talk to them for a year or so.

And at the end of the day, I'd had enough.

Asked for help and I got help and I went to a place in Chicago which treated all

three diseases alcoholism drug addiction and Bulimia all at the same time stayed

there for six weeks came home to England had great aftercare took a year off Did

all the things I was meant to do spent a long time Working as hard as I did

getting sober as I did to to being an addict and group therapy I mean that

Just the idea of Elton John walking into group therapy in some treatment center

in Chicago.

I mean you must have caused a sensation nobody treating me as Elton John star, I

was just once you start talking about your life, and you listen to other

people's stories. For example, I always thought that I was the only person in

the world that did what I did. And then when you hear other people say, Oh, I

did this, and I knew that, oh, my God, I'm not the only one. Because you sit

there sometimes and you blame yourself and thinking, I am really the worst

person in the world, because I'm doing it.

And so many other people are doing the same thing. So I wasn't intimidated.

Once I had the knowledge that I was gonna get well, I went for it.

I went for it because it was so much better than waking up at 6.30 in the

morning, getting a dog from the Battersea Dogs Home, taking it for a

walk, going to a meeting at 7.30.

I was so glad to be alive instead of shutting the curtains, you know, and

shutting the day out.

My whole life just changed around completely.

It's interesting. Whenever I've been at an AA meeting, people tell their stories

and it's as if they're talking about an ex or a toxic relationship.

And you actually do that in the book. You write a letter to cocaine. Well, I

was told to write a lot of things. And I thought, where do I start?

I can't. Where do I start?

How do I start writing about all the things I've done?

And then I started to write because I had to.

And it was just the most brilliant thing that they made me do because it was

cathartic. And it was like having an enema with a pen. And it all came out.

And then the Farewell Letter to the Cocaine was my idea. I treated it as a

love affair with someone.

And I just printed it in the book.

And it's one of the few things I've ever written.

Seriously, and I'm very proud of that letter because it's very moving. It's a

very it's a very movie And it's and I treated drug in the third person. I

dreamt, you know, I treated as a person and I said we can't ever meet again I

love you very much, but we it's the end of a love affair and now a post rehab

phrase I haven't heard before This was the hole in the doughnut people leave

and they have a gap in their life The hole in the doughnut means you have to

fill yourself spiritually.

I didn't believe in anything when I went into rehab.

I didn't believe in God. I didn't believe in anything like that. I didn't

believe in a higher power. I was spiritually completely bankrupt.

As I got sober, it took me a year or two to know what the hole in the doughnut

was. It was fulfilling and giving back.

Giving back, making yourself feel fulfilled.

I started the Elton John AIDS Foundation in 1992.

in Atlanta at my table in the kitchen. The first year was spent making sure I

didn't relapse and doing what I was told. The second year was like, what do

I do with my life now?

And then it all came to me. And that was my hole in the donut was to start the

Elton John AIDS Foundation.

And that's been an extraordinary success.

We've given over $450 million away.

from a very small operation.

And when we started the AIDS Foundation, there were lots of AIDS foundations all

over the world. Now, there's hardly any, and we've all worked together.

I thought I'd been so lucky to not get HIV.

I was so lucky, being a gay man, not to die of this disease, seeing so many of

my friends die, that I wanted to do something proper and not waste money.

I'd seen so many people...

form foundations put on galas and not make a penny because and i said i'm not

doing that everything will be underwritten all the money we raise at

the event will go to the people who need it and that's been my mantra and our

mantra ever since and we've stuck to it elton's commitment to raising money for

age research was rewarded in 1998 with a knighthood for services to charity and

to music

The fourth decade of his career, the 1990s, saw no sign of Elton slowing

down. The single Sacrifice saw him score his very first solo UK number one.

But the 90s were also marred by sadness.

Just six weeks after the murder of his friend Gianni Versace, his close friend

Diana, Princess of Wales, also died.

The song, Candle in the Wind,

became the biggest selling single of the decade.

Elton also hit the headlines with a very public bankruptcy.

In 20 months, he managed to blow £40 million, including £300,000 on flowers.

It would take a residency at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas to help pay off his

debts.

On to third, Elton found movies and musicals beckoning.

Writing the scores for the stage and screen versions of The Lion King, the

original film has since taken over $960 million worldwide.

And the

musical has

been running on Broadway for 22 years.

This success later led to further musicals with Aida and Billy Elliot.

Elton also finally found success in love.

His life further changed thanks to an introduction to Canadian filmmaker David

Furnish.

Let's talk about your life now, happily married to David. And yet there are bits

at the beginning of your relationship where I'm thinking, that guy should run.

Like the night you were going to introduce him to your family. Right.

And... You invited someone else to dinner. Well, it was lunch and my mother

was going to meet David for the first time.

And it was at Woodside and David, it was like 10 o'clock in the morning.

My mother was coming down for lunch and that's a daunting prospect for anyone,

especially the person you're living with and you're in love with.

And then there was a message on my answer machine from a counsellor who was

counselling me at the time saying, well, I'm coming over for lunch with Michael

Jackson.

So David's like, oh my God, I've got to meet your mother and Michael Jackson the

same day. I don't know if I can cope with that. And that we had a lunch with

Michael and my mother and the curtains were closed.

It was very bizarre.

My mom was saying, you need a bloody good meal. You do.

You need to bloody eat something.

And it was a very sad occasion in a way. He looked terrible.

I'd known Michael since he was 13.

And, you know, looking at him as a physical specimen then as to what he's

this beautiful little boy.

But it was poor David.

Yeah, it was traumatic for him. It was traumatic for me, having David meet my

mum and Michael Jackson. But, yeah, it's, well, infra penny, infra pound, as

I say. Yeah, it was a distraction. Yeah, yeah, distraction.

And now the family. You're now a dad to adorable little boys. Yeah.

You, for a long time, didn't see children in your future. There's a list

in the book. In a million years. There's a list in the book of all the reasons

why you didn't want children. I was too selfish.

you know i was i know i didn't want to get in the way of me you know cavorting

around the world and doing something but when you meet someone like david you

know my my attitudes changed but it wouldn't have happened if we hadn't gone

to the ukraine on an aids foundation visit to an orphanage and we went um and

this little boy called lev gravitated towards me i held him in my arms for an

hour hour and a half and he had a brother called artemis um

And we did a press conference at the end. And one of the questions was, you

seem very fond of this kid. He seemed very fond of you. Would you ever think

of adopting children?

And I went, you know what? This little boy is so great. I'd love to adopt him.

And of course, within two nanoseconds, it was on the front page of every

newspaper, on every website.

And we tried to adopt him and his brother.

But unfortunately, the rules in Ukraine were very archaic.

gay people aren't allowed to uh to adopt kids i was too old and also the press in

their lovely you know nice way when you know his mother they was in prison his

dad was in prison and they brought his mother to the orphanage to see him which

meant that the clock went back whenever a relative like your mother or father

comes back you get you know when you near when you get to a year you're up

for adoption so the clock went back to zero thanks to the english press but

there is a nice

But the thing is, we couldn't adopt him and we got him out and we got him to his

grandmother, both of them.

And it's a happy ending because I saw them last year.

I saw them in the Ukraine and it was wonderful and they're doing beautifully.

They remind me of our children.

But when we got them out of the orphanage, David said, well, what do you

want to do about children? I said, you know what?

I always said no to children. I said, but...

This is my higher power or God telling me something that this is nonsense This

boy gave me so much joy in an hour and a half. I said I Can be a dad. I'd like to

be a dad. Um, so We went the surrogacy route everything fell in place was you

know, we got the best people the dominoes fell straight away We had

Zachary and then we had Elijah and that was the greatest decision that you know

I ever made apart from meeting David and getting sober I was to have kids

because now i've never felt so much love for anything and they give me us so much

love back and then it's the reason hopefully that i can spend a lot of part

of my life being around them um and not gallivanting on the road originally i

was going to die on stage now i don't want to i want to be my kids and

actually how are you because you were iller than i think any of us knew

you had cancer, which I don't think we knew. Nobody knows that. I had prostate

cancer.

With horrible complications.

Yeah, and I got rid of the complications.

Actually, it was so funny because I was on stage in Vegas and about two weeks

after the operation, I was in a lot of pain because I had fluid buildup under

my colon. It was excruciatingly painful.

And so I was literally in tears backstage and I thought... If I go back

to the hotel suite, I'm going to just think about it. I might as well go on

and do the show.

So I did the show and I'm walking across the stage. And of course, wearing

nappies, it was very shortly after the operation.

And I'm waving to the crowd and they're cheering and they're waving back and

forth. If only they knew at this very particular minute that I am pissing

myself.

They wouldn't be so enthusiastic.

And then I got rid of that.

pain i had a procedure which got rid of it and then i went to south america and

i played in santiago and i came home my last show in south america and i got to

london and i was very ill and i was rushed into hospital into intensive care

i picked up an awful bug from somewhere um and i was about 24 hours from

snuffing it and we didn't tell people that was going on At the time so I had

an anus horribilis as they say at the beginning of that year for half the year

I literally had to learn how to walk again. I had to I was extremely sick And

all I wanted to do as I was lying my husband Ben, please don't let me die I

want to see my children grow up and luckily I survived it. I still did 90

shows though. Yeah, by the way Now I'm fine I'm really good, but there's very

few bits of me left. There's no hair a pacemaker.

There's no tonsils.

There's no

Prostate. There's no appendix.

I've had kidney stones. I'm like the bionic woman. It's so slimming. I know.

I'm like Lindsay Wagner or Steve Austin.

Whichever one you want to call it.

You know, we're so gender fluid now.

Why just settle on Steve Austin?

But now, things like that are life-changing. And having children is

life-changing. So you're changing your life.

Yeah.

You're in the middle of the tour. Sort of two-thirds of the way through the big

farewell. I'm a third of the way through.

Only one-third? Yeah. I've got two years to do.

Wow. Yeah.

Yeah, because I went to book in London and I realised it was 2020.

2020, yes. No,

not this year.

No, no. Whoa, back off.

Back off.

So when that finishes, what is life going to look like for you?

Oh, I don't know. I just, I don't want to go anywhere for a long time. I don't

know. Who can say?

You know, it takes an awful long time to chill out after you've done something.

You must know that. When you've finished your series, it's hard to wind down.

because it's you know you've got so much adrenaline going um i've had you know a

couple of musicals written i would like to make a record but i'd like to take a

whole year off and just spend it with my family and one of the things that's

coming is the devil wears prada is that really happening oh yeah it's written

and it's what no it's it's written and probably other things to write for it

because when you write for a musical some things don't make it when i wrote

for billy elliott two of the best songs in the musical didn't make it because

you know the plot changes and it's too long and you have to make sacrifice i

don't mind that i'm very very happy with it some of the best things i've done um

um and david is in pretty much control of that but that's very exciting

hopefully it will go to broadway's maybe next year or the year after but i'm very

excited about it and what's going to happen to you the performer i don't know

graham that doesn't go away no i would like to do eventually as i said i I

would like to do a residency like Kate Bush at Hammersmith Odeon, which was

wonderful. Amazing. When I do that kind of thing, I will not be doing all the

hits. And I will tell people beforehand, there is so much stuff that I haven't

done on stage before or enough that I want to do. I would have had enough of

playing Crocodile Rock and enough of doing Benny and the Jets and stuff like

that. I would like to give my other repertoire a go.

um and still do some of the well-known songs but the ones that i'm not so fed

up with a residency appeals to me i don't know if i can go back to vegas

because it means being away from the children yeah but if i'm in england or

in paris i'm i'm i'm near at home you're there yeah yeah well uh long may you

continue as well to john thank you so much for sharing your name and your life

thank you

Feeling like a little kid And I'm still standing after all this

time Making up the pieces of my life without you on my mind