Elton John

In 1967 a shy twenty-year-old called Reginald Dwight answered an advert the Liberty label had placed in a British music paper. He went to the audition and was not good enough.

Before he left, the man who saw him — Ray Williams — handed him a sealed envelope. Inside were lyrics written by another applicant, a boy from a village who had answered the same advert and whom they were not going to sign either. His name was Bernie Taupin.

Reg took the envelope home and set those words to music before ever meeting the man who had written them.

Almost sixty years later they still work that way: Bernie writes the lyrics and hands them over, Elton sets them, very fast, often without the other man even being in the room. It is one of the longest and most productive partnerships in the history of popular music, and it started with an envelope nobody had opened.

The boy who was never enough

Reg Dwight was a genuine prodigy. At eleven he won a junior scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music and went to Saturday classes in central London for five years.

But he was shy and insecure, raised in a modest house on the outskirts, carrying the weight of a cold father who never celebrated him. That is the raw material: a boy convinced he did not measure up.

And then he changed his name. He borrowed the names of two musicians from Bluesology, the band he had played in: the saxophonist Elton Dean and the singer Long John Baldry. With that name he launched a new self, and with the new self came everything else: the feathers, the impossible glasses, the platform boots, a spectacle of glitter and excess.

The dazzling superstar was a costume the lonely boy built so that he would be loved.

The avalanche

With "Your Song", in 1970, he broke through. And from then on he did not stop: "Rocket Man", "Tiny Dancer", "Crocodile Rock", "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road", "Candle in the Wind", "Don't Go Breaking My Heart". More than three hundred million records. For thirty-one consecutive years, between 1970 and 2000, he always had at least one song on the American charts.

He gave the piano a central place in rock again, in a decade that belonged to guitars. And he turned staging into an art of its own, with the same logic Dolly Parton applied to her sequins: a deliberate excess that decides how you are seen before you get a chance to look at yourself.

The trap in the armour

And yet the bigger the star grew, the lonelier the boy inside remained.

At his peak, Elton John was drowning: cocaine, alcohol, bulimia, a self-contempt no ovation could cover. He has said he barely survived those years.

There is the trap in the armour, and it is worth spelling out: the costume that let him shine on a stage could not make him feel loved. It protects and isolates you with the same gesture. You can be adored by millions and be, inside, completely alone.

What pulled him out

What began to rescue him was, in part, other people's pain.

He became friends with Ryan White, an American teenager dying of AIDS whom his town rejected out of fear and ignorance. That boy's dignity, and his death in 1990, shook him deeply. Shortly afterwards he also lost Freddie Mercury.

And that same year he did the first thing that saved his life: he gave up drugs and alcohol. He has been sober since 1990, without a break.

The second came in 1992, when he founded the Elton John AIDS Foundation, which has since raised hundreds of millions of dollars for the fight against AIDS. He turned his own near-destruction into a tool for saving other people. Getting sober did not switch him off: it saved him, and made him useful.

And then, at last, he was loved close up

Clean, he met David Furnish, a Canadian filmmaker. They entered a civil partnership in 2005, as soon as English law allowed it, and married in 2014, when the law allowed the other thing. They had two sons.

The lonely man in feathers became a devoted husband and a present father. He had spent decades singing about love to full stadiums; at last he had it at home, quietly, with no audience.

He retired from touring in 2023, after a farewell that ended up being the highest-grossing anyone has ever staged, to devote himself to the only thing he had ever wanted: being with his family.

The envelope, fifty-seven years on

And through all of it — the success, the hell, the salvation — one thing never broke: the friendship with Bernie Taupin. The stranger whose lyrics he began setting by post, having never laid eyes on him, is still the man who writes his words almost sixty years later.

Two loves rescued Reg Dwight: a friend's words and a husband's love. And a mission, the fight against AIDS, gave his pain a use.

If you only know the hits, meet the man underneath them. Put on "Your Song", the first thing he and Bernie made that the world handed back to them with affection, and listen to it for what it really is: a shy man saying out loud, for the first time, how badly he needed somebody to stay.

Sources

Sir Elton Hercules John (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight; Pinner, Middlesex, England, 25 March 1947), British singer, pianist and songwriter, one of the best-selling artists in history, with more than 300 million records. At eleven he won a junior scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, where he attended Saturday classes for five years. In 1967 he answered an advert placed by the Liberty label in the British music press; Ray Williams gave him a sealed envelope of lyrics by Bernie Taupin, who had answered the same advert, beginning a songwriting partnership that continues to this day, with Taupin writing the lyrics and John setting them to music. He took the name "Elton John" in homage to two musicians from Bluesology, the band he played in: the saxophonist Elton Dean and the singer Long John Baldry. "Your Song" (1970) was his first major hit; it was followed by "Rocket Man", "Tiny Dancer", "Crocodile Rock", "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road", "Candle in the Wind" and "Don't Go Breaking My Heart", among many others. He is credited with having had at least one song on the Billboard Hot 100 for 31 consecutive years, between 1970 and 2000, a figure widely cited in the music press. At the height of his fame he went through cocaine and alcohol addiction and bulimia; he has been sober since 1990. His friendship with the American teenager Ryan White, who died of AIDS in 1990, and the death of Freddie Mercury in 1991 marked his turn to activism: in 1992 he founded the Elton John AIDS Foundation, which has raised hundreds of millions of dollars. He came out as bisexual in 1976 and as openly gay from 1988. He entered a civil partnership with the Canadian filmmaker David Furnish in 2005 and married him in 2014; they have two sons. He retired from touring in 2023 after the "Farewell Yellow Brick Road" tour, the highest-grossing in history. "Candle in the Wind 1997", rewritten for Princess Diana's funeral, is one of the best-selling singles of all time. Externally authored text, edited and verified for Rebobinados. Interpretations of the meaning of his work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, Britannica and press coverage.