Elton John

• 1. Introduction

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  Elton John performed "Candle in the Wind 1997" live exactly once: on the 6th of September 1997, at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, in Westminster Abbey. He had written that version of the song only days before, at the request of a grieving nation. It went on to sell over 33 million copies worldwide, becoming the biggest-selling single since UK and US singles charts began in the 1950s. For a man born Reginald Kenneth Dwight in Pinner, Middlesex, on the 25th of March 1947, it was a moment that captured something essential about his entire career: the ability to transform personal loss into music that lands with the force of a collective memory.

  But who is Elton John, really? How does a boy who skipped classes at the Royal Academy of Music and rode the London Underground instead become one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with over 300 million records sold? How did a struggling session musician from a council house in Pinner build a seven-consecutive-number-one-album streak in the United States that no solo artist had achieved before? And what does it mean that the same person who headlined Glastonbury in 2023 before 7.6 million peak UK television viewers once played piano at a pub called the Northwood Hills Hotel, earning his keep on Thursday-to-Sunday nights at age 15?

• 2. Pinner to the Academy

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  Reginald Dwight grew up in a council house in Pinner where his maternal grandparents also lived. His father Stanley had served in the Royal Air Force and played trumpet with the Bob Millar Band, a semi-professional big band that performed at military dances. His mother Sheila was more outgoing, something of a free spirit. Both parents were keen record buyers, and the household was steeped in the sounds of popular singers and musicians of the day.

  At an age young enough that his grandmother's piano was the instrument nearest to hand, Reginald began to play by ear. Within a year his mother heard him picking out Emile Waldteufel's "The Skater's Waltz" without having been taught it. By age seven he had started formal lessons, and by age eleven he had won a junior scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music. One of his instructors there recalled how John promptly played back, like a "gramophone record", a four-page piece by George Frideric Handel after hearing it only once.

  For five years he took Saturday classes at the academy in Central London, enjoying Frederic Chopin, Johann Sebastian Bach, and choir singing, but he was, by his own admission, far from a model student. "I kind of resented going to the Academy," he later said. "I was one of those children who could just about get away without practising and still pass, scrape through the grades." He would sometimes skip classes and ride around on the London Underground. He left before sitting the final exams.

  At home, his parents' vehement arguments left their mark. When he was fourteen they divorced, and his mother then married Fred Farebrother, a local painter whom John called "Derf" -- Fred spelled backward. They moved into flat 3A at a building called Frome Court, and it was there, in that apartment, that John wrote the songs that would launch his career. He lived at Frome Court until he had four albums simultaneously in the American Top 40.

• 3. Bernie Taupin and the DJM Years

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  In 1967 John answered an advertisement in New Musical Express placed by Ray Williams, then the A&R manager for Liberty Records. At their first meeting, Williams handed John an unopened envelope of lyrics written by Bernie Taupin, who had answered the same ad. John wrote music for those lyrics and sent it back to Taupin. That exchange began one of the most durable songwriting partnerships in the history of popular music.

  Taupin's method was to write a batch of lyrics in under an hour and hand them to John, who would write music for each in about half an hour, discarding any lyric he could not set quickly. The pair joined Dick James's DJM Records as staff songwriters in 1968 and spent two years producing easy-listening material for other artists, including Roger Cook and Lulu. One early effort was a contender for the UK entry at the Eurovision Song Contest 1969, written for Lulu and titled "I Can't Go On (Living Without You)". It came sixth out of six songs.

  When John first went by the name Elton John, it was an homage to two members of his previous band Bluesology: saxophonist Elton Dean and vocalist Long John Baldry. He legally changed his name to Elton Hercules John on the 7th of January 1972. "Hercules" came from the name of a horse in the British sitcom Steptoe and Son, of which he was a devoted fan.

  On advice from music publisher Steve Brown, John and Taupin began writing more ambitious songs for John to record. The resulting debut album, Empty Sky, appeared in 1969. Their follow-up, titled simply Elton John and released in April 1970, established what would become the formula for subsequent albums: gospel-chorded rockers alongside poignant ballads. Its second single, "Your Song", reached number seven in the UK and number eight in the US, and became his first hit as a singer.

• 4. Seven in a Row

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  John's first American concert took place at the Troubadour in Los Angeles on the 25th of August 1970, backed by drummer Nigel Olsson and bassist Dee Murray from the former Spencer Davis Group rhythm section. The show was a success, and the album that bore his name was already climbing to number four on the US Billboard 200.

  What followed over the next five years was a run of commercial and critical dominance that has few parallels in popular music. Released in 1972, Honky Chateau became his first US number-one album and spent five weeks at the top of the Billboard 200, starting a streak of seven consecutive US number-one albums, a feat no artist had achieved before. Between 1972 and 1975 he also had six singles reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player topped the charts in the UK, the US, and Australia. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, a double album released in October 1973, topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic for two months. Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy in 1975 debuted at number one in the US -- the first album ever to do so -- and stayed there for seven weeks. Rock of the Westies matched that feat immediately afterward, the first time any artist had achieved back-to-back debut-at-number-one albums.

  The stage persona that accompanied this music was impossible to ignore. His wardrobe included ostrich feathers, $5,000 spectacles that spelled his name in lights, and full costumes modelled after the Statue of Liberty, Donald Duck, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. John has said his wild performances were his way of letting go after a restrictive childhood. Glam rock icon Marc Bolan, John later stated, "had a great effect on me." In 1975 he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

  All six of his albums to make Rolling Stone's 2003 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time are from this 1970-1976 period, with Goodbye Yellow Brick Road ranked highest at number 91. It was John and Taupin's peak together on both commercial and critical terms, and neither has ever fully replicated the density of that run.

• 5. Addiction and Recovery

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  From the late 1970s to the late 1980s John developed a severe addiction to drugs and alcohol. He did not get clean until 1990. That decade of struggle showed up in uneven output: the disco-influenced Victim of Love was poorly received, and of the albums released in the latter half of the 1980s, only Reg Strikes Back, which reached number 16 in the US in 1988, placed in the top 20.

  In November 1977 John had announced he was retiring from performing entirely. Taupin began working with other collaborators. John issued A Single Man in 1978 with a new lyricist, Gary Osborne. In 1979 he became one of the first Western artists to tour the Soviet Union, playing four dates in Leningrad and four in Moscow.

  The 1992 album The One was, by John's own account, his first album recorded entirely sober. He recalled in 2020: "I was used to making records under the haze of alcohol or drugs, and here I was, 100% sober, so it was tough. But I managed to come up with a good song, which was the title of the record." The album reached number eight in the US.

  John and Taupin simultaneously signed a music publishing deal with Warner/Chappell Music for an estimated $39 million over twelve years, said to include the largest cash advance in music publishing history. Sobriety had not only restored John's health; it had, apparently, also clarified the terms on which his career could continue. His first solo UK number-one single, "Sacrifice", arrived in 1990 and stayed at the top spot for five weeks.

• 6. The AIDS Foundation

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  John's involvement in the fight against AIDS began in the late 1980s. In 1992 he established the Elton John AIDS Foundation, which has since raised over £300 million. A year after founding it, he began hosting his annual AIDS Foundation Academy Awards Party, which became one of the most prominent Oscars events in Hollywood.

  The connection between John and AIDS research ran through some of his closest personal relationships. In early 1986 a collaboration with Dionne Warwick, Gladys Knight and Stevie Wonder, released under the name Dionne and Friends and titled "That's What Friends Are For", reached number one in the US and raised funds specifically for HIV/AIDS research. His friend Gianni Versace was murdered on the 15th of July 1997. Freddie Mercury, whose Tribute Concert at Wembley Stadium in April 1992 John attended and performed at, had died of AIDS.

  The proceeds from "Candle in the Wind 1997" -- approximately £55 million -- were donated to Diana's charities via the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund. John did not keep the money. That choice was consistent with a pattern: in 2000 he admitted to having spent £30 million in under two years on his own lifestyle, but the charitable giving ran parallel and was not a performance of generosity. His friend and tennis partner Billie Jean King is a chairperson of the Elton John AIDS Foundation, and he and King co-host an annual pro-am event to benefit AIDS charities.

  In 2020 John also helped pay the medical fees of Linda Woodrow, his former fiancee from the late 1960s, upon her request, despite having had no contact with her for fifty years. His former manager John Reid remained in that role until 1998, long after their personal relationship ended in the mid-1970s. These are not the gestures of a man who severs connections easily.

• 7. The Lion King and Musical Theatre

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  Along with lyricist Tim Rice, John wrote the songs for the 1994 Disney animated film The Lion King. At the 67th Academy Awards, three of the five nominees for Best Original Song came from that single soundtrack. John won the award for "Can You Feel the Love Tonight". The Lion King soundtrack also won the Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance at the 37th Annual Grammy Awards and remained at the top of the Billboard 200 for nine weeks. By the 10th of November 1999, the RIAA had certified it Diamond for selling 15 million copies.

  The Lion King musical debuted on Broadway in 1997 and opened in the West End in 1999. By 2014 it had grossed over $6 billion and become the top-earning title in box-office history for both stage productions and films, surpassing Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, which had previously held that record.

  John's theatrical instinct extended to other projects. He wrote the music for Disney's musical Aida in 1999, again with Tim Rice, and the pair received the Tony Award for Best Original Score at the 54th Tony Awards and the Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards. That musical premiered at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, before moving to Chicago and opening on Broadway.

  For Billy Elliot the Musical in 2005, John worked with playwright Lee Hall after being moved by the 2000 British coming-of-age film. He said of the title character, "he's like me." Opening to strong reviews, the show won four Laurence Olivier Awards including Best New Musical. The London production ran through April 2016 with 4,566 performances, featuring Tom Holland as Billy for two years. As of December 2015 it had been seen by over 5.25 million people in London and nearly 11 million people worldwide, grossing over $800 million. In 2006 the Walt Disney Company named John a Disney Legend.

• 8. Farewell Yellow Brick Road

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  On the 24th of January 2018 John announced he was retiring from touring. He cited his children as the reason: "Ten years ago if you asked me if I would stop touring I would have said no. But we had children and that changed our lives. I have had an amazing life and career but my life has changed. My priorities are now my children and my husband and my family."

  The Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour began on the 8th of September 2018 in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and consisted of more than 300 concerts worldwide. Rescheduled shows due to the COVID-19 pandemic and health issues pushed the original three-year timeline further. The final concert took place on the 8th of July 2023 in Stockholm, Sweden, at the Tele2 Arena. John opened that final show by saying: "Good evening Stockholm, well this is it." At the time of completion, the tour was the highest-grossing tour ever; it has since been surpassed by Taylor Swift's Eras Tour.

  Two weeks before the tour ended, on the 25th of June 2023, John headlined the Glastonbury Festival, closing on the Pyramid Stage with a two-hour performance that included "Pinball Wizard" played live for the first time in over ten years. The BBC reported a peak UK television audience of 7.6 million viewers and an average of 7.3 million, with nearly 50% of all viewers across all stations watching the event -- Glastonbury's largest ever TV viewing figures.

  The biographical film Rocketman, produced by Paramount Pictures and released in May 2019, dramatised John's life from childhood through the 1980s. Directed by Dexter Fletcher and starring Taron Egerton, it included a new song written for the film, "(I'm Gonna) Love Me Again", which earned John his second Academy Award for Best Original Song. On the 5th of October 2025, John performed at the Singapore Grand Prix before an audience of over 70,000 -- the largest crowd since the end of his retirement tour.