“I’d like someone cute to give me the cup of tea first.”Īs for his songs, they have rarely fitted the formula for standard chart music fare, with short verses and simple choruses. Hello?! I wasn’t living a secret life.” He notes that other gay artists often affected no interest in sex Boy George, for one, famously proclaimed he would “rather have a cup of tea”. “I was living in Wentworth in a bungalow with my manager John Reid and having gay parties and the National Youth Theatre coming down for the weekend. He came out to the press in 1976 but says he was never in the closet. “I’ve had some very good times that I can’t remember,” he told me once. Somehow Elton cultivated an image as a family-friendly entertainer while living dangerously and drinking himself into blackouts. He flew around in a converted Boeing 720 with private bedchambers set aside for sexual assignations and a bar with a piano where Stevie Wonder once played Happy Birthday to him at 40,000 ft. Yet, at the same time, he was dressing like an explosion in a fancy-dress shop and partying like a rock’n’roll viking. At a time when Bowie, Slade, Queen and Roxy Music were struggling to get a foothold beyond America’s coastal metropolises, Elton broke through by packaging the same musical influences into mass-market entertainment, underpinning songs with the kind of colourfully accessible arrangements pedalled by the Beatles. While Bowie was whinging, Elton was smuggling mind-expanding musical fantasias on to daytime radio and taking his transgressive rock’n’roll values to the American Midwest, where conservative local values had made it a “fly over zone” for many of Britain’s more outlandish artists. Bowie’s first – indeed, only – US number one didn’t arrive until Fame in 1975, and he could never quite forgive Elton for stealing his glam thunder, once dismissing him in Rolling Stone magazine as “the token queen of pop”. It is genuinely hard to imagine pop music without him.Īt the age of 76, Elton has for so long held a place in the mainstream that it’s easy to forget what a radically unlikely pop star he once was: a gay, portly, balding, bespectacled pianist from Pinner, who conquered the world by singing lyrically overloaded, melodically luxurious songs while dressed in glittery jumpsuits, feather boas and stacked heels.Įlton was the Brit who took glam rock to America, scoring massive hits with songs as eccentrically wild and conceptually ambitious as sci-fi epic Rocket Man (1972), violent stomper Saturday Night’s Alright (for Fighting) (1973) and the weird and wonderful Bennie and the Jets (1974) while David Bowie was still struggling to break into the US top 40. According to UK figures released only this week (by Phonographic Performance Limited), last year Elton was still one of the top 10 most played British artists, the sole veteran on a list of contemporary stars. He has duetted with almost every major star of the modern era – from John Lennon to Eminem, Luciano Pavarotti to Ed Sheeran – and weathered the fickleness of popular taste to remain relevant for over half a century. Since his first hit with Your Song in 1970, he has sold more than 300 million albums worldwide, had 57 top 40 singles in the US (second only to Elvis Presley) and still holds the record for the biggest-selling single of all time with his 1997 recording of Candle in the Wind, released as a tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales.
As Elton himself declared on BBC Radio 1 earlier this week, “it couldn’t be a more perfect ending”.īut it was also a bittersweet moment for British music: when Elton stepped off the stage last night, he left behind a gaping hole in our cultural landscape. Elton revamped his set for the occasion, reviving songs he says he “hasn’t played in 10 years”, and invited on stage a host of special guests. One of the greatest songwriters of all time, performing some of the biggest tunes in pop history, at the best festival on Earth: it was the most spectacular retirement party in rock history.Īlthough his five-year Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour will then roll on to Europe – concluding in Stockholm on July 8 – Glastonbury was the big one. On Sunday night, at Glastonbury Festival, Sir Elton John played his last ever show on British soil.
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