[gentle music]
Downloaded from YTS.MX
[upbeat rock music]
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* I'm still standing
"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?
* I'm still standing
[upbeat rock music]
* It's getting late have you seen my mates *
* Ma, tell me when the boys get here *
Lovely to see you.
Sir Elton John's in the house, ladies and gentlemen!
[crew applauding]
He's in his house. [chuckles]
Born in 1947, young Reg Dwight probably never imagined
that, turning 72, he'd be part way through
an incredible 300-date farewell world tour.
* Saturday
[Graham] Have received France's highest award,
the Legion 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.
[Graham] Growing up in Pinner,
young Elton could play "The Skater's Waltz"
on the piano, aged just three.
[jaunty music]
[upbeat disco music]
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. [laughs]
[audience laughing]
No, no, no!
[Graham] Which later led to playing organ
in the band Bluesology.
* Come back, baby
[Graham] But it was meeting writing partner Bernie Taupin
that would change Elton's life forever.
[audience applauding]
He's probably more important than me
because he has to write the words before I write the music.
* Oh, oh, oh
[Graham] 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.
[Graham] 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.
* Love me again
[audience cheering]
I'd like to become a legend, but I don't think I will be
because they're 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. [laughs]
It strikes me, this must be a very strange time for you,
'cause you are 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, now'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'd suddenly realised 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 went, "God Almighty!
"I could've 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, the book, 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 did "Tantrums And Tiaras" many years ago
and that was fairly in your face.
I don't mind that.
The whole point of doing a book, and the autobiography,
is to be as honest as you possibly can.
I didn't wanna sugar-coat anything.
And, yet, reading about you as a boy,
it seemed so unlikely,
-that shy boy. -Oh, I wouldn't say
boo to a goose.
I was frightened of my own shadow.
I was frightened of treading on eggshells.
No.
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 20s.
Yeah.
My relationship with my mother hadn't been the best,
but at least we reconciled towards the endish.
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
because she didn't change.
But, for me, it was about telling her before she died.
If I hadn't had told her before she died that I loved her
and I was grateful for everything she'd done,
I would've felt really bad.
Yeah.
No, I must say, just as a person,
I was so happy that there'd been some sort of--
Yeah, there had to be.
I listened to someone talking about their relationship
with her father and I thought, "You know what?
"I have to reach out to my mom."
Things hadn't been good but I reached out
and the olive branch is necessary.
You have to forgive people.
Or 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.
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.
Why was that?
I don't know.
She didn't approve of the civil partnership.
She didn't approve of David.
She didn't approve anyone who was closer to me than she was.
[Graham] 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 mom 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 tour.
There's a story about her on the Starjet
she was only interested in watching one film.
Yes, "Deep Throat".
[Graham] [laughs] Why did she
-want to watch that? -Well, she'd heard about it,
and, I said, "I can show it to you if you want?"
"Yeah."
So, they were having lunch and she was sitting there going,
-"Bloody hell, look at that." -[Graham laughs]
My mom could be so much fun.
Yeah, I mean, my whole family was based on laughter.
My uncle, my aunt, my mom, my grandmother.
And, in fact, I wasn't that close to them
when my mom was still alive but
now I've had children, my kids are very close to my cousins
and their children because family is important.
A lot of laughter and a lot of music.
But you talk about watching that scene in "Rocketman"
where they sing to each other, which, you know,
I knew none of these people and I was sobbing.
Yeah, 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 carry 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 means something *
* That's a love I want
* I want love
[gentle music]
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 nothing in a junk shop.
And then she would play something like ragtime on the piano,
she was a very good ragtime piano player.
[upbeat piano music]
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.
[Graham laughs]
And it was wonderful to meet her
and tell her how much that she meant to me.
And she played classical music, semi-classical music,
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, when I played in the pub,
I was very grateful for that because I used to copy
all those kind of Al Jolson songs,
"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 have been,
I wouldn't have turned out to be who I was.
[gentle upbeat music]
[Graham] Young piano playing Reg Dwight changed his name
to Elton Hercules John in 1967,
choosing Hercules after the horse in "Steptoe And Son".
[upbeat rock music]
* Loving you, baby
[Graham] Despite his 1968 debut solo single,
"I've Been Loving You" failing to set the charts alight.
* Daniel you're a star
[Graham] The early '70s saw Elton's career
go stellar in just four years.
We now wanna declare this week Elton John Week!
[audience cheering]
[Graham] 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.
[gentle upbeat music]
* Hold me closer tiny dancer
* Count the headlights on the highway *
* I remember when rock was young *
* Me and Susie had so much fun
* I'm a bitch, I'm a bitch
* Oh, the bitch is back
* Stone-cold sober, as a matter of fact *
* I can bitch, I can bitch 'cause I'm better than you *
* It's the way that I move the things that I do, oh *
[Graham] His showmanship, and unique sense of style
fast became legendary at huge, sell-out concerts
cementing his place in rock and roll history.
And all by the age of 25.
* Woo
* And I think it's gonna be a long *
[Graham] In private, Elton began a turbulent relationship
with his manager John Reid, seen here playing guitar,
in this previously lost "Top of the Pops" performance,
unseen for 47 years.
* I'm a rocket man
* Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone *
* And I think it's gonna be a long, long time *
The rocket man had landed.
All thanks to an ad placed in 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 Taupin,
like you bumped into him, even,
it was even more random than that.
It was kismet.
I answered an advert in NME which said Liberty Records,
who were an American record company starting up in England,
it was on Albemarle 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 those days,
it was all reel-to-reel tapes in piles of envelopes.
And he could've given me any envelope.
Of all the envelopes, I get Bernie.
It could have been some terrible tosser
[Graham laughs]
from Portsmouth or some wherever.
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 life?
Every now and then, of course, the whole the
"Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy" album,
every song was about us,
and that's why it's one of my favourite albums.
But he does, yeah, he writes about me quite a lot.
It's brilliant because I never know what I'm gonna get.
And I don't want to know what I'm gonna get
until I get the lyric in front of me.
And then I put my hand on the keyboard, then away we go.
That has never changed in over the 50 years we've written,
and that's what keeps it so interesting to 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, "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
* How wonderful life is
* While you're in the world
It's extraordinary, that gave us the confidence,
and it was it was definitely a turning point.
We didn't know it was gonna be a hit,
but we knew that we were on to something.
And does it bother you, though?
'Cause 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 cover your songs, it's a compliment.
I can be in an elevator and hear "Daniel"
and think, "Oh, I wrote that!"
[Graham laughs]
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.
[Elton] Yes.
-Tell us some the unlikely-- -Oh, it was so funny.
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 Barron Knights 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 Pye Studios at Marble Arch,
and we used to have to do covers.
One of the first things I did was "Back Home",
the England World Cup.
* Back home
You'd 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 -[Graham giggling]
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 through *
It helped me so much, it gave me a turbo boost.
-You didn't wanna go. -I didn't wanna go.
No, I thought it was too early to go.
I've made many foolish decisions like that in my life
and I'd thought, "It's the wrong time to go,"
'cause we were just getting a reputation
and playing in England, but I was wrong.
But I love you getting out of the plane at LAX
and realising that the Americans were really going for 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 and we'd 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.
And 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 go with it.
And because you were very openly in love with John Reid
and in a relationship with John Reid,
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 Jahr
in Rolling Stone in 1976,
he said, "I'm gonna ask you a question, but, if you want,
"I'll turn the tape recorder off."
And I said, "I know what you're gonna ask me."
And he asked me the question, I said, "Yes."
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 Reid was a legendary gay guy in London.
When I first moved in with John, people in London said,
"God, you might as well 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, you're coming-out story,
and you had to make a choice.
The night you were gonna come out to your parents,
you had tickets--
To see Liberace, and I didn't go, John went.
Which would would've been like coming out,
-surely! [laughs] -I know, but I didn't.
I just wanted to get it over and done with,
and I called my mom and the conversation, had that.
And, then, of course, Liberace was. [chuckles]
It was the Palladium,
he was doing a concert at the Palladium, he was going,
"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, my," and John Reid came home and said,
"Oh, you left me in the shit tonight!"
[Graham laughs]
But it was something I just wanted to get out of my way.
And as much as I loved Liberace, and I did love Liberace,
I just thought, "I'm gonna 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.
We did the Royal Variety Show together.
And I had two fabulous Lurex tail coat 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.
[upbeat music]
[audience laughing]
Talk about blowing me out of the water.
And he was so brilliantly funny, and so sweet, and so nice.
And when he signed his autograph,
it was in the shape of a grand piano.
-That's classy. [laughs] -It's fantastic.
And he played with rings on,
I can never play with a ring on my finger.
And he and Fats Domino were two people that always played
with a lot of rings on.
I can't do that.
But he did and I'm just, "How did he do that?"
And was he a style influence?
Was he one of your style influences?
Not at the time but, obviously, people would always 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 Marc Bolan.
So, having had the freedom to do what I wanted,
as far as clothes went,
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
'cause the music was very serious, and it was great music
but 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 medal.
Tell us about your entrance at the Hollywood Bowl.
'Cause 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 gonna be five grand pianos,
mocked-up grand pianos,
and they would have E, L, T, O, N when they opened up.
There were doves inside.
And I thought it'd be great to have Linda Lovelace
introduce me.
-Your mother's friend. -My mother's friend, yes.
[laughs] "A great coach," as they say!
[Graham laughing]
And, so, my friend Tony King, he introduced Linda Lovelace.
And then I came in with this huge marabou feather outfit
down the stairs, it was very camp.
[fanfare music]
[audience cheering]
And, then, of course, the doves, by that time,
had all fallen asleep.
So, I remember John Reid going,
"Oh, my God, the doves aren't ready!"
[Graham laughing]
And these poor doves were shoved up into the air,
half asleep, they woke up mid-air.
But it was a big point in 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.
There was some that were too over the top.
But I remember an Australian tour,
when I did the orchestral tour,
and I came out for the second half of the orchestra,
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'd never tried it on?
No, I didn't, I didn't have a run through it.
So, I'm going off-stage
and I'm changing into Donald Duck for the encore.
And Bob Halley, who was very funny,
my personal assistant at the time,
great sense of humour.
I put my arm 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 strut 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 backstage.
Someone was going, "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 with laughter, and eventually I came out.
It was very, very funny.
I was panicking, but laughing as well.
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
that I'd be bald when I was 20.
Well, I wasn't quite bald by 20
but at more or less 30, it was going.
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! -[Graham laughs]
There was a tabloid story, wasn't there,
that you 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 them either.
And, so, I decided to wear the wig.
First wigs I had were so bad, I remember
the review when I came out for the Freddie Mercury Concert
at Wembley, said I came out with a dead squirrel on my head.
But, looking back on it,
it did look like a dead squirrel, actually.
More like a dead mole.
And 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.
-I think you were in Atlanta. -Oh, my God.
I was in my apartment in Atlanta.
And took my hair off and put it by my bed.
And I fall asleep, and suddenly I can hear noises.
And I went, "Oh, fuck, I'm gonna be burgled."
So, I put the light on and I rushed out into the corridor.
And as I was getting in the corridor,
"Ah, I haven't got my hair on!"
So, I went back and I put it on, and there was a water leak.
I mean, there's two maintenance guys from downstairs.
But, then, when I got back, and 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've thought
'cause I was just wearing underpants
and a back to front wig.
And I thought, "Oh, my God."
So, yes, it's what it is.
[Graham] It's the first thing you get in a fire.
-Yes. -Yes.
Dolly Parton does that don't she?
In every hotel, it's right by there with her.
I pray to it every night, yeah.
-[Graham laughs] -Oom, oom!
There are so many famous people
scattered through your story.
Are you nervous about any of them reading this book?
A bit.
There's not many nasty stories.
I put the records straight.
Tina Turner and I had a falling out at 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
on 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.
[laughs] So, it was her fault?
Billy Joel, who I love and toured with three times,
fell asleep at the piano,
at Madison Square Garden during "Piano Man".
[Graham] I learnt more about Rod Stewart
in this book than I--
Oh, 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 humour 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 touring 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. -I'll just stay in my--
Looks like Dusty Springfield in a nightmare!
-[audience laughing] -[audience applauding]
But it goes quite far.
The Earls Court blimp.
Well, he had a blimp because he was playing
Earls 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 Earls Court, can we get it down?"
And I didn't say anything else and he mysteriously got it,
I think, shot down.
[Graham laughing]
-Different times! -The next time I looked.
The next day, it wasn't there.
So, I rang Rod up and I said, "Oh, dear.
"Can you see your balloon, your blimp from where you are?"
"Oh, yes, dear, I can, isn't it fabulous?"
And he looked out the window and he said, "You bastard."
[Graham laughing]
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.
[Graham laughing]
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, now, some people who aren't still around.
I didn't realise you were very close to 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 the "Rock 'N' Roll" album,
which was a very hard album for him to do with Phil Spector.
And I think he had a lot of issues at that point.
He was with May Pang at the time,
he'd be 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 are the two people
I've probably laughed with the most.
And Freddie Mercury.
There's very New York story
about you and him holed up in a hotel room.
Oh, yeah, we were doing cocaine.
And it was like 1:30 in the morning
and there was a ring on the doorbell.
And I thought, "Oh, who's this?"
So, it took me about 10 minutes to creep over
to the eye hole ad look through the door.
It was at the Sherry-Netherland hotel
and I went to him, "Andy Warhol!"
And John said.
[Graham laughs]
And, so, we didn't answer the door.
And I said, "Why didn't you wanna let Andy in?" he said,
"He's always got a bloody camera with him."
He said, "Nothing's safe, nothing's private with Andy."
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 some of the duets you've done,
in the book.
Obviously, George Michael,
"Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me".
That song you genuinely did not like, you didn't rate.
When I wrote it for the "Caribou" album
I didn't like it.
In fact, I told my producer, Gus Dudgeon,
to send it to Engelbert Humperdinck.
And if he didn't like it,
then to tell him to send it to Lulu.
[Graham laughing]
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 takes a long time to get to the chorus.
He said, "Ballad, is it, dear?"
* Don't let the sun
* Go down on me
* Although I search myself
* It's always someone else that I see, yeah *
* I'd just allow a fragment of your life *
* To wander free, baby
* Oh
* Cause losing everything
* Is like the sun going down on me *
Mr. Elton John!
"Bennie And The Jets" was another one I didn't see,
and "Sacrifice".
Three songs that I would never have 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 one.
I did, I was in Barbados.
I was on holiday in Barbados.
And Bernie was in Toronto doing an album.
And I rang him up.
I said, "I've got this."
Played him 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 Dee?
I wrote it for Kiki, yeah.
[upbeat groovy music]
* Woo hoo
* Nobody knows it
* But when I was down
* I was your clown
* And right from the start
* I gave you my heart
* Whoa, oh
* I gave you my heart
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".
[Elton speaks in foreign language]
"I don't know where I'm going, don't know who I'm blowing.
"I'm always on the bonk."
And, of course, that was a big. [chuckles]
[laughs] It's not too late to include it in the new show!
I think it could've been the A-side, actually.
I think "Don't Go Breaking My Heart"
has 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"
in the end, but it's really "I'm Always On The Bonk".
[Graham] Elton's already extensive song book
expanded even further in the 1980s.
* Blue eyes
* Baby's got blue eyes
* Oh, Nikita is the other side
* Of any given light in time
* And I guess that's why they call it the blues *
* Time on my hands could be time spent with you *
* And I guess that's why they call it the blues *
[Graham] He also added a further 11 studio albums
to his back catalogue,
including "Too Low for Zero", "Ice on Fire",
and the multi-platinum "Sleeping with the Past".
* Another passenger
[Graham] But it wasn't just hits he was scoring.
* Wanna to get on
[Graham] 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.
* Wanna get on
There's only ever been one club in my heart
and I would never get so involved with anything
unless it was Watford.
[upbeat music]
[Graham] But the highs of the '80s
weren't without the lows.
* Turn on those sad songs
[Graham] Elton's career came under threat
from cysts on his vocal cords.
My whole life was in such a crisis.
I had no voice, and I was physically tired and emotional.
* Sad songs say so much
* Ooh, la, la
[Graham] A surprise wedding hit the headlines
* I wanna kiss the bride, yeah
[Graham] And the divorce courts.
And his drug and drink addictions
were spiralling 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 stuff. -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 if you would call them good stories,
good drug-use stories, it's a story that's been told to you.
The night with Duran Duran in Nice.
Oh, I was doing the "I'm Still Standing" 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 Negresco
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."
Said, "I have a martini."
So, I had one, then another one, then another one.
Then, I had a line of coke,
and then I don't remember anything else.
I woke up the next morning.
I went into Bob Halley's room,
and it was just sticks of furniture left.
And je had this fabulous cowboy hat
which was flat as a pizza.
[Graham chuckles]
And, apparently, I just lost it and had John Reid,
who was wearing a clown outfit and make-up,
and I had a big fight with John.
He left, took my car, and drove to Calais
in the clown's outfit with the make-up on.
Got on the ferry, he got to Dover, and then it broke down.
So, he's standing by the whatever it is, phoning me up,
"I fucking can't." [mumbling]
[Graham laughing]
And, yes, that was from the start of my martini,
and that became one of my favourite drinks, unfortunately.
It was like rocket fuel for rocket man.
And I used to have six very quickly.
Six in half an hour.
I mean, I'm a drinker.
That's insane!
It is insane, yes.
Are 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 not remember
"what you said to John Reid's mom?"
I said, "No."
I was like, "Oh, there she is
"with the same old bloody hairdo!"
And it was like, it was not good.
It was bad behaviour, terrible behaviour.
-But it didn't stop me. -No.
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 gone.
I wasn't gonna say anything, but, yeah. [laughs]
You know, as a kid,
because my parents argued all the time,
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 sounds crazy, but I found solace
in inanimate objects.
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 Nouveau, and Art Deco,
and I learnt about art through collecting.
I'm just inquisitive by nature.
I'm a legitimate kleptomaniac.
I'm looking around.
Do you ever go to a shop and go, "I'll have 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 not.
"I like that and I'll have one in each colour."
[Graham] The range.
No, I'm not very good at that.
So, I multiple buy.
So, you were going through this time in your life
where the drugs are out of control,
and then The Sun decided to have this vendetta against you.
Yeah.
Do you still to this day know why that started?
[puffing] The story was 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 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 rang me up and said,
"Listen, you're not saying anything.
"It looks as if you're guilty.
"You have to come, I've got a talk show."
He was my friend and he said, "Come and talk about it."
Oh, this summer, it's like a horror story,
hasn't it been, the last five months?
Unbelievable.
I can't really figure it out.
It has been the worst five months
I've ever had to endure but it can only get better.
It 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.
That I'd taken the voice box from my German Shepherd dogs
so that no-one can hear them coming when they were attacked.
And I wouldn't give in.
I was lucky enough to be affluent enough to fight them.
And I will fight, if I had nothing,
I would sell my last thing
because of the injustice of it all.
And, eventually, they buckled down.
I got the front-page apology, "Sorry, Elton, we were wrong."
I got a huge sum of money,
which was a lot of money in those days,
but, if I'd have sued them, I would'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 feel safe now
or do you feel like the press could turn on you at any time?
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 rap around the knuckles
'cause I won't stand for it.
Just going back, briefly.
The 16 years of excess, why did they end?
-Was there a point? -Yeah.
I mean, not only was I was 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.
So, I'd go to sleep for three days.
I hadn't eaten, then I'd get up and gorge myself
and then throw it all up.
It was a very lonely existence.
And I just suddenly thought,
"Am I gonna die or am I gonna live?
"What do you wanna 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.
And I 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 being an addict.
And group therapy.
I mean, just the idea of Elton John
walking into group therapy
in some treatment centre in Chicago.
I mean, you must have caused a sensation?
Nobody treated me as Elton John, star.
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 you think, "Oh, my God, I'm not the only one."
'Cause you sit there sometimes and you blame yourself,
thinking, "I am really the worst person in the world
"because I'm doing this."
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
and shutting the day out.
My whole life just changed round completely.
It's interesting,
whenever I've ever 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.
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 'cause I had to.
And it was just the most brilliant thing that
they made me do, because it was cathartic.
I 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 it's printed 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 moving letter. -It's very moving.
And I treated the drug in the third person.
I treated it as a person.
And I said, "We can't ever meet again.
"I love you very much, but it's the end of a love affair."
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,
it 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 anything like that.
I didn't believe in a higher power.
I was, spiritually, completely bankrupt.
As I got sober, 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 doughnut
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,
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.
* Are You Ready
[Graham] Elton's commitment
to raising money for AIDS research
was rewarded in 1998 with a knighthood for services
to charity and to music.
* For love
* Yes, I am
[Graham] 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 it's no sacrifice
* No sacrifice
* It's no sacrifice at all
[Graham] 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.
* Your candle burned out long before your legend ever did *
[Graham] The song, "Candle in the Wind",
became the biggest-selling single of the decade.
Elton also hit the headlines with a very public bankruptcy.
[News Reporter] In 20 months, he managed to blow
40 million pounds, including 300,000 pounds on flowers.
[Graham] It would take a residency
at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas to help pay off his debts.
* She's got electric boots
* A mohair suit
* I read it in a magazine
* Oh, Bennie And The Jets
-[audience applauding] -[audience cheering]
[Graham] Undeterred, Elton found movies
and musicals beckoning.
* In the circle of life
[Graham] Writing the scores for the stage
and screen versions of "The Lion King".
The original film has since taken
over $960 million worldwide.
* And can you feel the love tonight *
[Graham] And the musical has been running on Broadway
for 22 years.
* To rest
* It's enough to make kings and vagabonds *
* Believe the very best
[Graham] This success later led to further musicals
with "Aida" and "Billy Elliot".
-[audience applauding] -[audience cheering]
* And I can't explain
[Graham] Elton also finally found success in love.
* Something about the way
[Graham] His life further changed
thanks to an introduction
to Canadian film-maker, David Furnish.
* Oh, takes my breath away
Let's talk about your life now.
-Happily married to David. -Yeah.
And, yet, there are bits,
at the beginning of your relationship,
where I'm thinking, "That guy should run!"
Like [laughs] the night you were going to introduce him
-to your family. -Right.
And you invited someone else to dinner.
Well, it was a lunch
and my mother was gonna meet David for the first time.
And it was at Woodside
and 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.
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 I though, "Ah!"
So, David was like, "Oh, my God,
"I've got to meet your mother
"and Michael Jackson on the same day?
"I don't know if I can cope with that."
And we had our 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."
[both laughing]
"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 looking at him as a physical specimen then
as to was, he was this beautiful, little boy.
But poor David.
Yeah, it was traumatic for him.
It was traumatic for me,
having David meet my mom and Michael Jackson.
But, yeah,
well, in for a penny, in for a pound, as they say.
Yeah, it was a distraction.
-Yeah, yeah, distraction. -[Graham Laughs]
Yeah.
[Graham] And now the family.
You're now a dad, two, adorable, little boys.
[Elton] Yeah.
You, for a long time, didn't see children in your future.
Never 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.
Didn't want them to get in the way of me
cavorting around the world and doing something.
But, when you meet someone like David, 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, and this little boy called Lev
gravitated towards me.
I held him in my arms for an hour and a half
and he had a brother called Artemis.
And we did a press conference at the end.
And one of the questions was,
"You seem very fond of this kid, he seems 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 the Ukraine were very archaic.
Gay people were not allowed to adopt kids.
I was too old.
And, also, the press, in their lovely, nice way.
You know, his mother was in prison, his dad was in prison.
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.
When you get to a year, you're up for adoption.
So, the clock went back to zero,
thanks to the English press.
[Graham] But there is a nice follow-up,
-you've seen them since. -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 both doing beautifully.
They remind me of our children.
But when we got them out the orphanage, David said,
"Well, what do you wanna 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."
So, we went the surrogacy route,
everything fell in place for us.
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 I ever made,
apart from meeting David and getting sober,
was to have kids,
because, now, I've never felt so much love for anything.
And they give us so much love back.
And then, it's the reason, hopefully,
that I can spend the latter part of my life
being around them and not gallivanting on the road.
Originally, I was gonna die on stage.
Now I don't want to, I wanna be with 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. -Yeah.
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 build-up 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 gonna 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, you're wearing nappies
because it was very shortly after the operation.
And I'm waving to the crowd and they're cheering
and they're waving back, and I thought
"If only they knew, at this very particular minute
"that I am pissing myself,
"they wouldn't be so enthusiastic."
[Graham laughs]
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
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 annus horribilis, as they say,
at the beginning of that year for half the year.
I literally had to learn how to walk again.
I was extremely sick.
And all I wanted to do as I was lying in my hospital bed,
"Please, don't let me die.
"I wanna see my children grow up."
And, luckily, I survived it.
I still did 90 shows that year, by the way.
And now I'm fine, I'm really good.
But there's very few bits of me left.
There's no hair, there's 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. [laughs] -I know.
I'm like Lindsay Wagner or Steve Austin,
whichever one you wanna 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.
You're in the middle of the tour, sort of 2/3 of the way
-through the big farewell. -I'm 1/3 of the way through.
-Only 1/3? -Yeah.
I've got two years to do.
-Wow. -Yeah.
Yeah, 'cause I went to book in London
-and I realised it was 2020. -2020, yeah.
-It's not this Christmas. -No, not this year.
-No, no. -Whoa, back off!
-Back off. -[Graham laughs]
So, when that finishes,
what is life going to look like for you?
Oh, I don't know.
I don't wanna 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 you've got so much adrenaline going.
I have 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.
All done?
No, well, 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 Elliot",
two of the best songs in the musical didn't make it
'cause the plot changes,
and it's too long, and you have to make sacrifices.
And I don't mind that.
I'm very, very happy with it.
It's some of the best things I've done.
And David is in pretty much control of that,
but that's very exciting.
Hopefully, it will go to Broadway
maybe next year or the year after.
But I'm very excited about it.
And what's gonna happen to you, the performer?
I don't know, Graham.
'Cause that doesn't go away.
No, I would like to do, eventually, as I said,
I would like to do a residency,
like Kate Bush did 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 onstage before,
or enough, that I want to do.
I will have had enough of playing "Crocodile Rock",
and enough of doing "Bennie And The Jets",
and stuff like that.
I would like to give my other repertoire a go,
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 nearer home.
-You're there. -Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, long may you continue.
Sir Elton John, thank you so much for sharing your time
-and your life. -Thank you.
* I'm still standing better than I ever did *
* Looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid *
* I'm still standing after all this time *
* Picking up the pieces of my life without you on my mind *
* I'm still standing, yeah, yeah, yeah *