New Trailer: Rocketman - Taron Egerton Sings Tiny Dancer In Elton John Biopic
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Rocketman Tries to Levitate Its Audience, But It Falls Flat Instead
By David Edelstein
Photo: Gavin Bond/Paramount Pictures
At the start of Rocketman, Taron Egerton as a plumed, winged Elton John staggers down a dim corridor to what turns out to be a group therapy session — although one in which Elton, per usual, sucks up all the oxygen. He’s going to regale us with the story of his rocket-like rise, his plunge into alcohol and drug abuse, and his continuing struggle to navigate life as “a poofter, a fairy, a queer” (his words) who was never unconditionally loved by his repressed, middle-class dad and self-centered mum. Oi, ‘e ‘ad it ‘ard, did our Reg — Reginald Kenneth Dwight by birth, Elton Hercules John after another musician tells him, “You have to kill the person you were born to be to become the person you want to be,” and then gives him a smooch. But the person he was “born to be” keeps turning up in Elton’s fantasies: the little Reggie glaring at him over the piano keys, as if to say, “Remember my hurt.” How could we have ever forgotten it?
In common with most recovery stories, Rocketman boils down to a fat lump of self-pity, but the music does leaven things. It will inevitably be compared to last year’s Bohemian Rhapsody, in part because they share an antagonist (music manager John Reid, played by Lord Baelish in BR and Rob Stark here), in part because Rocketman’s director, Dexter Fletcher, took over (sans credit) on BR when Bryan Singer was bounced for myriad allegations of sexual assault. But BR confined its numbers to performance sequences, while Rocketman has Elton and others break the fourth wall and burst into song — making this both a performance film and a “jukebox musical” along the lines of Jersey Boys and dozens of lesser works that fail to shape a dramatic arc from assemblages of disparate hits.
Rocketman has unusual dramatic heft for a jukebox musical, but that’s a big curve on which to grade — the characters are still skin-deep. The problem isn’t the shallowness: BR was shallower but still managed to convey the depth of Freddy Mercury’s commitment to creating a persona that would levitate audiences. In Rocketman, Fletcher has to levitate the audience literally to achieve the same effect. I have not misused literally: During Elton’s commercial breakthrough at L.A.’s Troubadour, Elton literallylevitates and the audience literally levitates along with him. I, meanwhile, deflated. It was one of the silliest things I’ve ever seen.
Until then, the movie has been a grim slog. Reg’s dad, Stanley (Steven Mackintosh), is a former musician but shares little with his son. It’s not that he’s self-contained, it’s that his self contains nothing. He’s a vacuum. Rather than wither from inattention, Reg’s mum, Sheila (Bryce Dallas Howard with a respectable British accent), canoodles with a local painter, Fred (Tom Bennett), while it’s left to Reg’s gran, Ivy (Gemma Jones), to encourage the boy’s piano playing. The odd thing is that the movie uses songs from Elton’s repertoire as if they’re umbilically connected to his life — but the words are all by Bernie Taupin (played onscreen by Jamie Bell), whose method was to present Elton with a finished lyric. The songs would be more appropriate for a jukebox musical called Bernie! At a party at Mama Cass’s after Elton’s Troubadour triumph, Taupin slips off with a young woman while Elton sits, abandoned, and gazes at a girl talking to some musicians. “Blue jean baby,” he sings, “L.A. lady … ” The performance of “Tiny Dancer” is so incongruous that all I could think of was a bit from The Sunshine Boys: “How do you like that? Saul Burton died.” “Who?” “Saul Burton the songwriter. Eighty-nine years old. He went just like that from nothing. You know what kind of songs he wrote? Shit. ‘Lady, lady, be my baby.’ Lady rhymes with baby. Oy. No wonder he’s dead.”
What’s more annoying is that Rocketman views Elton John’s career as if his principal influences were Elvis Presley and the Beatles. You’d never know how retro “Crocodile Rock” was in its time, and how Elton was emboldened in his drag-circus fashion choices by the rise of Marc Bolan, David Bowie, and other glam pioneers. Egerton does fine vocal impersonations and nails Elton’s mixture of entitlement and neediness, but he’s almost too good in suggesting how synthetic John’s whole get-up was, in how little joy there was in John’s virtuosity. It’s like Bohemian Rhapsody without the rhapsody. At his nadir, he’s alone in his room gobbling pills, snorting coke, and gazing down at his teeming pool party: The Gay Gatsby.
Having heard some horror stories about Elton’s backstage behavior in the old days, I was glad when in the first scene he tells the people in his therapy group that he has problems with drink, drugs, and anger management. Maybe we’d see some of that anger! Alas, the Elton of Rocketman is more sinned against than sinning. As John Reid, his manager and sometime lover, the Scots-born Richard Madden is smoking hot (as if he’d internalized the dynamite that was strapped to him in Bodyguard) but signals his Machiavellian intentions so broadly that there’s never even the smallest hope that the relationship could work out. Poor little Reg! So rich, so improperly loved. The credits tell you that John has been sober more than a quarter century and met and married a man who’d love him properly — but why wasn’t that part in the movie? It might be that Oscar bait music biopics don’t know how to handle joy unless it’s part of a larger victimization. I guess that’s why they call it the blues.
By David Edelstein
Photo: Gavin Bond/Paramount Pictures
At the start of Rocketman, Taron Egerton as a plumed, winged Elton John staggers down a dim corridor to what turns out to be a group therapy session — although one in which Elton, per usual, sucks up all the oxygen. He’s going to regale us with the story of his rocket-like rise, his plunge into alcohol and drug abuse, and his continuing struggle to navigate life as “a poofter, a fairy, a queer” (his words) who was never unconditionally loved by his repressed, middle-class dad and self-centered mum. Oi, ‘e ‘ad it ‘ard, did our Reg — Reginald Kenneth Dwight by birth, Elton Hercules John after another musician tells him, “You have to kill the person you were born to be to become the person you want to be,” and then gives him a smooch. But the person he was “born to be” keeps turning up in Elton’s fantasies: the little Reggie glaring at him over the piano keys, as if to say, “Remember my hurt.” How could we have ever forgotten it?
In common with most recovery stories, Rocketman boils down to a fat lump of self-pity, but the music does leaven things. It will inevitably be compared to last year’s Bohemian Rhapsody, in part because they share an antagonist (music manager John Reid, played by Lord Baelish in BR and Rob Stark here), in part because Rocketman’s director, Dexter Fletcher, took over (sans credit) on BR when Bryan Singer was bounced for myriad allegations of sexual assault. But BR confined its numbers to performance sequences, while Rocketman has Elton and others break the fourth wall and burst into song — making this both a performance film and a “jukebox musical” along the lines of Jersey Boys and dozens of lesser works that fail to shape a dramatic arc from assemblages of disparate hits.
Rocketman has unusual dramatic heft for a jukebox musical, but that’s a big curve on which to grade — the characters are still skin-deep. The problem isn’t the shallowness: BR was shallower but still managed to convey the depth of Freddy Mercury’s commitment to creating a persona that would levitate audiences. In Rocketman, Fletcher has to levitate the audience literally to achieve the same effect. I have not misused literally: During Elton’s commercial breakthrough at L.A.’s Troubadour, Elton literallylevitates and the audience literally levitates along with him. I, meanwhile, deflated. It was one of the silliest things I’ve ever seen.
Until then, the movie has been a grim slog. Reg’s dad, Stanley (Steven Mackintosh), is a former musician but shares little with his son. It’s not that he’s self-contained, it’s that his self contains nothing. He’s a vacuum. Rather than wither from inattention, Reg’s mum, Sheila (Bryce Dallas Howard with a respectable British accent), canoodles with a local painter, Fred (Tom Bennett), while it’s left to Reg’s gran, Ivy (Gemma Jones), to encourage the boy’s piano playing. The odd thing is that the movie uses songs from Elton’s repertoire as if they’re umbilically connected to his life — but the words are all by Bernie Taupin (played onscreen by Jamie Bell), whose method was to present Elton with a finished lyric. The songs would be more appropriate for a jukebox musical called Bernie! At a party at Mama Cass’s after Elton’s Troubadour triumph, Taupin slips off with a young woman while Elton sits, abandoned, and gazes at a girl talking to some musicians. “Blue jean baby,” he sings, “L.A. lady … ” The performance of “Tiny Dancer” is so incongruous that all I could think of was a bit from The Sunshine Boys: “How do you like that? Saul Burton died.” “Who?” “Saul Burton the songwriter. Eighty-nine years old. He went just like that from nothing. You know what kind of songs he wrote? Shit. ‘Lady, lady, be my baby.’ Lady rhymes with baby. Oy. No wonder he’s dead.”
What’s more annoying is that Rocketman views Elton John’s career as if his principal influences were Elvis Presley and the Beatles. You’d never know how retro “Crocodile Rock” was in its time, and how Elton was emboldened in his drag-circus fashion choices by the rise of Marc Bolan, David Bowie, and other glam pioneers. Egerton does fine vocal impersonations and nails Elton’s mixture of entitlement and neediness, but he’s almost too good in suggesting how synthetic John’s whole get-up was, in how little joy there was in John’s virtuosity. It’s like Bohemian Rhapsody without the rhapsody. At his nadir, he’s alone in his room gobbling pills, snorting coke, and gazing down at his teeming pool party: The Gay Gatsby.
Having heard some horror stories about Elton’s backstage behavior in the old days, I was glad when in the first scene he tells the people in his therapy group that he has problems with drink, drugs, and anger management. Maybe we’d see some of that anger! Alas, the Elton of Rocketman is more sinned against than sinning. As John Reid, his manager and sometime lover, the Scots-born Richard Madden is smoking hot (as if he’d internalized the dynamite that was strapped to him in Bodyguard) but signals his Machiavellian intentions so broadly that there’s never even the smallest hope that the relationship could work out. Poor little Reg! So rich, so improperly loved. The credits tell you that John has been sober more than a quarter century and met and married a man who’d love him properly — but why wasn’t that part in the movie? It might be that Oscar bait music biopics don’t know how to handle joy unless it’s part of a larger victimization. I guess that’s why they call it the blues.
The Changes Rocketman Made to Elton John's Real Life Actually Work
This is a musical that's intended to capture the emotion, not the facts, director Dexter Fletcher explains.
BY MATT MILLER
MAY 31, 2019
GETTY/PARAMOUNT
As you've probably gathered, Elton John did not literally levitate along with the audience during his August 25, 1970 show at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. Neither did he turn into an actual "rocket man" during his Dodgers Stadium shows in October 1975. But that's how events are depicted in Rocketman, the film about Elton John, because this is not a biography—it's a musical intended to capture the emotion of John's life, as the movie's director, Dexter Fletcher, tells me.
"There could be a factual, chronological documentary that would tell you absolutely everything about what Elton did, where he was, and when he did it, but the film just absolutely explores his inner, emotional life," Fletcher says. "We know he was at the Troubadour, but it's really trying to communicate what that felt like, not just the fact that he was there."
The script was developed by Lee Hall, who spent many hours with John, hearing stories and anecdotes, according to Fletcher. And, for the most part, the movie fairly accurately recreates John's life as a young boy through the '70s. There are some differences though.
Taron Egerton, left, who plays Elton John in Rocketman, with Dexter Fletcher at the movie’s Australian premiere on May 25, 2019 in Sydney, Australia.
Brendon ThorneGetty Images
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The biggest changes involve how he met John Reid, his marriage to Renate Blauel, and the framing of the story using John's time in rehab. John did not meet Reid at an afterparty for his Troubadour show in L.A. The two actually met a year before this show, at a Christmas party in Motown's U.K. offices.
Rocketman depicts John getting married to Blauel sometime in the late '70s. However, the two met during the 1983 sessions for John's album, Victim of Love, and got married on Valentine's Day 1984. They divorced four years later.
The framing of Rocketman shows John storming out of his Madison Square Garden gig and going directly to rehab, where he tells his story. In reality, though, John didn't go to rehab until 1990 after his Sleeping With the Past tour. As John told Larry King in 2008 about his decision to go to rehab:
I was an alcoholic and a drug addict for 16 years. And during that time, the AIDS epidemic started, in the early '80s. I never felt really that, during that time, I did enough for AIDS, people with AIDS, being a gay man. I became very friendly with the Ryan White family, with Ryan and his mother Jeanie. And that helped me a lot to see how out of whack my life was, you know, how impossible my life had become, how self- obsessed I had become.
And shortly after Ryan died, which I was at the funeral for in Indianapolis—and I played at the funeral—I decided six months later, that my life was, you know, pretty horrible. And someone guided me into saying that I need help.
And I went into rehab and I, you know, I've been—this year, hopefully, in July, I'll be 18 years sober and clean. And as soon as I got sober and clean, I thought, you know what, I've been so fortunate to have, you know, been a drunk and been a drug addict and not become HIV-positive, and I've got to do something to help people like Ryan White and the people that I've kind of betrayed when I was doing those kind of things.
As Fletcher explains, it would have been impossible to create a strict biography of John's life. So he set out to do something different.
"My approach is always, it's a memory, not a biography. And a memory is absolutely linked and connected to feelings," Fletcher says. "Memories are not 'I went down to the shop and bought a pint of milk.' You know, that is a particularly dry story. If you say, 'I went down to the shop and I bought a milk bottle, but I was actually freezing and starving because I had no money, and it was the most important pint of milk I ever drank at that particular time in my life,' it's now about the emotional content of that. That makes it interesting."
Paramount
As many John fans will likely notice, the songs in the film don't appear chronologically with John's life. That was intentional, according to Fletcher, because of this emotional story he was seeking to tell. In fact, the movie is similar to a musical, with songs that have already been written. "It's like Mamma Mia in one respect," Fletcher says.
"It's completely irrelevant, when the song was written," he adds. "Does it fit? What will you need to achieve at this moment? We didn't write the film around the songs."
Related Stories
Elton John and John Reid's Explosive Relationship
See the Rocketman Cast With Their Real Life People
Does Taron Egerton Actually Sing in 'Rocketman'?
"We got this great moment where we're sitting around the dining room table and they sing, 'I Want Love," Fletcher continues, referencing an early scene in Rocketman. "That captures these emotional inner voices that the audience completely understands, and gets us a lot of empathy for people's sort of behavior. But 'I Want Love' wasn't written until the 80s, but for me it's a musical. It doesn't matter, you know."
As a result, Rocketman is more fun, imaginative, and heartfelt than something like the mega-hit Bohemian Rhapsody, which struggled to accurately capture the life and times of Freddie Mercury. If we want a strict re-telling of Elton John's life, we might just have to wait for the musician to write a biography of his own.
This is a musical that's intended to capture the emotion, not the facts, director Dexter Fletcher explains.
BY MATT MILLER
MAY 31, 2019
GETTY/PARAMOUNT
As you've probably gathered, Elton John did not literally levitate along with the audience during his August 25, 1970 show at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. Neither did he turn into an actual "rocket man" during his Dodgers Stadium shows in October 1975. But that's how events are depicted in Rocketman, the film about Elton John, because this is not a biography—it's a musical intended to capture the emotion of John's life, as the movie's director, Dexter Fletcher, tells me.
"There could be a factual, chronological documentary that would tell you absolutely everything about what Elton did, where he was, and when he did it, but the film just absolutely explores his inner, emotional life," Fletcher says. "We know he was at the Troubadour, but it's really trying to communicate what that felt like, not just the fact that he was there."
The script was developed by Lee Hall, who spent many hours with John, hearing stories and anecdotes, according to Fletcher. And, for the most part, the movie fairly accurately recreates John's life as a young boy through the '70s. There are some differences though.
Taron Egerton, left, who plays Elton John in Rocketman, with Dexter Fletcher at the movie’s Australian premiere on May 25, 2019 in Sydney, Australia.
Brendon ThorneGetty Images
ADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING BELOW
The biggest changes involve how he met John Reid, his marriage to Renate Blauel, and the framing of the story using John's time in rehab. John did not meet Reid at an afterparty for his Troubadour show in L.A. The two actually met a year before this show, at a Christmas party in Motown's U.K. offices.
Rocketman depicts John getting married to Blauel sometime in the late '70s. However, the two met during the 1983 sessions for John's album, Victim of Love, and got married on Valentine's Day 1984. They divorced four years later.
The framing of Rocketman shows John storming out of his Madison Square Garden gig and going directly to rehab, where he tells his story. In reality, though, John didn't go to rehab until 1990 after his Sleeping With the Past tour. As John told Larry King in 2008 about his decision to go to rehab:
I was an alcoholic and a drug addict for 16 years. And during that time, the AIDS epidemic started, in the early '80s. I never felt really that, during that time, I did enough for AIDS, people with AIDS, being a gay man. I became very friendly with the Ryan White family, with Ryan and his mother Jeanie. And that helped me a lot to see how out of whack my life was, you know, how impossible my life had become, how self- obsessed I had become.
And shortly after Ryan died, which I was at the funeral for in Indianapolis—and I played at the funeral—I decided six months later, that my life was, you know, pretty horrible. And someone guided me into saying that I need help.
And I went into rehab and I, you know, I've been—this year, hopefully, in July, I'll be 18 years sober and clean. And as soon as I got sober and clean, I thought, you know what, I've been so fortunate to have, you know, been a drunk and been a drug addict and not become HIV-positive, and I've got to do something to help people like Ryan White and the people that I've kind of betrayed when I was doing those kind of things.
As Fletcher explains, it would have been impossible to create a strict biography of John's life. So he set out to do something different.
"My approach is always, it's a memory, not a biography. And a memory is absolutely linked and connected to feelings," Fletcher says. "Memories are not 'I went down to the shop and bought a pint of milk.' You know, that is a particularly dry story. If you say, 'I went down to the shop and I bought a milk bottle, but I was actually freezing and starving because I had no money, and it was the most important pint of milk I ever drank at that particular time in my life,' it's now about the emotional content of that. That makes it interesting."
Paramount
As many John fans will likely notice, the songs in the film don't appear chronologically with John's life. That was intentional, according to Fletcher, because of this emotional story he was seeking to tell. In fact, the movie is similar to a musical, with songs that have already been written. "It's like Mamma Mia in one respect," Fletcher says.
"It's completely irrelevant, when the song was written," he adds. "Does it fit? What will you need to achieve at this moment? We didn't write the film around the songs."
Related Stories
Elton John and John Reid's Explosive Relationship
See the Rocketman Cast With Their Real Life People
Does Taron Egerton Actually Sing in 'Rocketman'?
"We got this great moment where we're sitting around the dining room table and they sing, 'I Want Love," Fletcher continues, referencing an early scene in Rocketman. "That captures these emotional inner voices that the audience completely understands, and gets us a lot of empathy for people's sort of behavior. But 'I Want Love' wasn't written until the 80s, but for me it's a musical. It doesn't matter, you know."
As a result, Rocketman is more fun, imaginative, and heartfelt than something like the mega-hit Bohemian Rhapsody, which struggled to accurately capture the life and times of Freddie Mercury. If we want a strict re-telling of Elton John's life, we might just have to wait for the musician to write a biography of his own.
What song was this?
Sorry Bruh.
I meant to put it in my post until IE just closed on me.
It was "ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST".
Just saw this with the wife, who was the black girl that his best friend was hanging with after his first concert in America? She was gorgeous!
I also liked his mom!
I also liked his mom!
Lol yall going to see this 90 min ode to flaming homosexuality?
Dudes finna be dressed up in their best Elton Jon cosplay outfits
Dudes finna be dressed up in their best Elton Jon cosplay outfits
Right!
Why I want to see a film about a flamboyant faggot?
I saw it with the wife. But that chick was bad
I was REALLY REALLY REALLY wrong on this one.
We Regret to Inform You That Elton John Did Not Approve of Beyoncé’s Lion King Soundtrack
By Justin Curto
Photo: Getty Images
For someone who’s met multiple queens, Elton John might not know royalty when he sees it. The singer recently spoke to British GQ to promote his new memoir Me and was asked for his thoughts on Disney’s remake of The Lion King — since, after all, he originally gave us such hits as “The Circle of Life.” “The new version of The Lion King was a huge disappointment to me, because I believe they messed the music up,” he said. Why don’t you tell us how you really feel, Sir Elton? “Music was so much a part of the original and the music in the current film didn’t have the same impact. The magic and joy were lost.” But John may have forgotten that he co-wrote most of the remake’s new music, including the hit “Spirit.” (Although he had nothing to do with Beyoncé’s curated album The Gift.) “I wish I’d been invited to the party more, but the creative vision for the film and its music was different this time around and I wasn’t really welcomed or treated with the same level of respect,” he added. “That makes me extremely sad.”
As if that wasn’t enough to get the Beyhive sent after him, elsewhere in the interview John claimed, “The only real star at the moment is Lady Gaga.” He only invoked Beyoncé by name as an example of how the American press “treat everyone like royalty.” Because she’s the closest thing we have to it! Just let Beyoncé await her Oscar in peace.
By Justin Curto
Photo: Getty Images
For someone who’s met multiple queens, Elton John might not know royalty when he sees it. The singer recently spoke to British GQ to promote his new memoir Me and was asked for his thoughts on Disney’s remake of The Lion King — since, after all, he originally gave us such hits as “The Circle of Life.” “The new version of The Lion King was a huge disappointment to me, because I believe they messed the music up,” he said. Why don’t you tell us how you really feel, Sir Elton? “Music was so much a part of the original and the music in the current film didn’t have the same impact. The magic and joy were lost.” But John may have forgotten that he co-wrote most of the remake’s new music, including the hit “Spirit.” (Although he had nothing to do with Beyoncé’s curated album The Gift.) “I wish I’d been invited to the party more, but the creative vision for the film and its music was different this time around and I wasn’t really welcomed or treated with the same level of respect,” he added. “That makes me extremely sad.”
As if that wasn’t enough to get the Beyhive sent after him, elsewhere in the interview John claimed, “The only real star at the moment is Lady Gaga.” He only invoked Beyoncé by name as an example of how the American press “treat
13 of the Best Celebrity Stories From Elton John’s Name-dropping Memoir, Me
By Justin Curto
Elton John and English TV host David Frost meeting the queen at Windsor for the queen’s Silver Jubilee Appeal in 1977. Photo: PA Images via Getty Images
At certain points, Elton John’s memoir, Me, reads like a conversation with Tahani Al-Jamil from The Good Place (and let’s be honest, they probably know each other!). References abound — to feeling “worse than I did after Ringo Starr’s 1974 New Year’s Eve Party,” to how actress Elizabeth Hurley “had stayed at Woodside [John’s Berkshire home] after she had given birth to keep out of the media’s glare,” to John’s “old costumier Bob Mackie.” (Don’t worry, Cher’s in there, too.) He’s Eminem’s AA sponsor, if you didn’t know, and Lady Gaga is one of the godparents of his child. Prior to the book’s release, stories about royalty, musicians, and actors alike came out, but that was only the tip of the iceberg. Here are 13 of the best celebrity moments from his book.
A random assortment of performers first told him he was gay: “People form adjoining tables became involved. Because it was the Bag O’ Nails, the people from adjoining tables all happened to be pop stars, which lent everything an increasingly surreal edge. Cindy Birdsong from the Supremes chipped in — I’d known her back in the Bluesology days, when she’d been one of Patti LaBelle’s Blue Belles. Then, somehow, P.J. Proby became embroiled in the conversation. I’d love to be able to tell you what the trouser-splitting, ponytail-wearing enfant terrible of mid-sixties pop had to say regarding my impending wedding, its potential cancellation and, indeed, whether or not I was a homosexual, but by then I was incredibly pissed.”
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He partied with every iconic ’60s musician ever, at once: “I was invited to a party at Mama Cass Elliot’s house on Woodrow Wilson Drive in LA, famed as the leading hangout for Laurel Canyon’s musicians, the place where Crosby, Stills and Nash had formed and David Crosby had shown off his new discovery, a singer-songwriter called Joni Mitchell, to his friends. When I arrived, they were all there. It was nuts, like the record sleeves in [my] bedroom at Frome Court had come to life: what the fuck is happening?”
Katharine Hepburn used (and cleaned) his pool: “One summer Sunday afternoon, John and I were sitting outside the bungalow having a snack, when we noticed a sixty-something lady who looked a little like Katharine Hepburn cycling up our drive. It was Katharine Hepburn: ‘I’m staying with [Stepford Wives director] Bryan Forbes — he said it would be OK if I used your pool.’ John and I just nodded, dumbstruck. Five minutes later, she reappeared in a swimsuit, complaining that there was a dead frog in the pool. When I dithered about how to get it out — I’m a bit squeamish about things like that — she just jumped in and grabbed it with her hand. I asked her how she could bear to touch it.
“‘Character, young man,’ she nodded sternly.”
Stevie Wonder visited his Rocky Mountain hole-up: “Musicians passing through Denver or Boulder would drop by to visit … Stevie Wonder turned up one day and took out a snowmobile, insisting on driving it himself. To pre-empt your question: no, I have no idea how Stevie Wonder successfully piloted a snowmobile through the Rocky Mountains of Colorado without killing himself, or indeed anyone else, in the process, but he did.”
John Lennon convinced him to not let Andy Warhol in his room: “One evening in New York, we were holed up in my suite at the Sherry-Netherland hotel, determinedly making our way through a pile of coke, when someone knocked at the door. My first thought was that it was the police: if you’ve taken a lot of cocaine and someone unexpectedly knocks at the door, your immediate thought is always that it’s the police. John gestured at me to see who it was. I looked through the spyhole. My reaction was a peculiar combination of relief and incredulity.
“‘John,’ I whispered. ‘It’s Andy Warhol.’
“John shook his head frantically and drew his finger across his throat. ‘No fucking way. Don’t answer it,’ he hissed.
“‘What?’ I whispered back. ‘What do you mean don’t answer it? It’s Andy Warhol.’
“There was more knocking. John rolled his eyes. ‘Has he got that fucking camera with him?’ he asked.
“I looked again through the spyhole and nodded. Andy took his Polaroid camera everywhere.
“‘Right,’ said John. ‘And do you want him coming in here taking photos when you’ve got icicles of coke hanging out of your nose?’
“I had to concede that I did not. ‘Then don’t fucking answer it,’ whispered John, and we crept back to doing whatever we were doing, trying to ignore the continued knocking of the world’s most famous pop artist.”
And he claims he got John back together with Yoko: “He still played with us at Madison Square Garden on Thanksgiving 1974, on the condition that we made sure Yoko didn’t come: they were still estranged. Of course, Yoko turned up anyway — which I have to say is very Yoko — but Tony [King, manager of Apple Records] made sure her tickets were out of the sightline of the stage. Before the show, she sent John a gardenia, which he wore in his buttonhole onstage …
“After the show, Yoko came backstage. We all ended up back at the Pierre hotel — me, John, Yoko, Tony and John Reid. We were sat in a booth and having a drink and — as if the whole situation wasn’t peculiar enough — Uri Geller suddenly materialized out of nowhere, came over to our table and started bending all the spoons and forks on it. Then he began doing his mind-reading act. It had been a bizarre day. But ultimately it led to John reuniting with Yoko, having Sean — my godson — and retreating into a life of domestic contentment in the Dakota Building.”
He and drag icon Divine got turned away from the club: “That was the music I heard when I went out to gay clubs in New York: Crisco Disco, Le Jardin and 12 West. I loved them, even though Crisco Disco once refused to let me in. I was with Divine, too, the legendary drag queen. I know, I know: Elton John and Divine getting turned away from a gay club. But he was wearing a kaftan, I had on a brightly coloured jacket and they said we were overdressed: ‘Whaddaya think this is? Fuckin’ Halloween?’”
A typical L.A. day might feature Dusty Springfield or Paul Simon: “If Dusty Springfield was around, we’d go to the roller derby to see the LA Thunderbirds. It was so camp and fabulous, all scripted, like wrestling, but lesbians loved it — it was basically a load of dykes whizzing round on skates and fighting each other. And we’d have fantastic lunch and dinner parties. Franco Zeffirelli came for lunch and revealed that his close friends called him Irene. Simon and Garfunkel had dinner one night, then played charades. They were terrible at it.”
Yes, Mae West once came onto him: “It was the city where, more or less, I’d become a star; where I’d been feted by my idols; where I’d somehow ended up taking tea with Mae West (to my delight, she swanned in with a lascivious smile and the words, ‘Ah, my favorite sight — a room full of men’, which, given that the men present were me, John Reid and Tony King, suggested she was in for an evening of disappointment).”
Depending on the day, he could see Lou Reed or Liza Minnelli at Studio 54: “Rocket [Record Company] once threw a party there, and at one point, I spotted Lou Reed and Lou’s transgender lover Rachel locked in conversation with, of all people, Cliff Richard. While it was nice to see people with what you might tactfully describe as having different outlooks on life getting along so famously, the mind did boggle a little at what on earth they were actually talking about … One night I was interrupted by a visibly zonked Liza Minnelli, who wanted to know if I would marry her.”
He never wore his best watch for Elizabeth Taylor: “She was incredibly kind and welcoming and she was hilarious — she had a really filthy English sense of humor — although you had to watch your jewellery around her. She was obsessed. If you were wearing something she liked the look of, she’d somehow just charm you into giving it to her; you would walk into her dressing room wearing a Cartier watch and leave without it, never entirely sure how she’d managed to get it off you.”
Even on his deathbed, Freddie Mercury loved to throw shade with him: “He was too frail to get out of bed, he was losing his sight, his body was covered in Kaposi’s sarcoma lesions, and yet he was still definitely Freddie, gossiping away, completely outrageous: ‘Have you heard Mrs Bowie’s new record [Tin Machine II], dear? What does she think she’s doing?’”
And his stag party with then-fiancé David Furnish, thrown by “our friend Patrick Cox,” the fashion designer, featured everyone you’d expect: “Paul O’Grady hosted the whole thing and sang a duet with Janet Street-Porter. Sir Ian McKellen came dressed as Widow Twankey. Bryan Adams sang and Sam Taylor-Wood did a version of ‘Love to Love You Baby.’ There were video messages from Elizabeth Taylor and Bill Clinton in between performances by the famous New York drag act Kiki and Herb and Eric McCormack, who played Will in Will and Grace, and was an old schoolfriend of David’s back in Ontario. Jake Shears from the Scissor Sisters got so overexcited he ended up taking all his clothes off and demonstrating the pole-dancing skills he’d learned working in New York strip clubs before the band became successful.”
By Justin Curto
Elton John and English TV host David Frost meeting the queen at Windsor for the queen’s Silver Jubilee Appeal in 1977. Photo: PA Images via Getty Images
At certain points, Elton John’s memoir, Me, reads like a conversation with Tahani Al-Jamil from The Good Place (and let’s be honest, they probably know each other!). References abound — to feeling “worse than I did after Ringo Starr’s 1974 New Year’s Eve Party,” to how actress Elizabeth Hurley “had stayed at Woodside [John’s Berkshire home] after she had given birth to keep out of the media’s glare,” to John’s “old costumier Bob Mackie.” (Don’t worry, Cher’s in there, too.) He’s Eminem’s AA sponsor, if you didn’t know, and Lady Gaga is one of the godparents of his child. Prior to the book’s release, stories about royalty, musicians, and actors alike came out, but that was only the tip of the iceberg. Here are 13 of the best celebrity moments from his book.
A random assortment of performers first told him he was gay: “People form adjoining tables became involved. Because it was the Bag O’ Nails, the people from adjoining tables all happened to be pop stars, which lent everything an increasingly surreal edge. Cindy Birdsong from the Supremes chipped in — I’d known her back in the Bluesology days, when she’d been one of Patti LaBelle’s Blue Belles. Then, somehow, P.J. Proby became embroiled in the conversation. I’d love to be able to tell you what the trouser-splitting, ponytail-wearing enfant terrible of mid-sixties pop had to say regarding my impending wedding, its potential cancellation and, indeed, whether or not I was a homosexual, but by then I was incredibly pissed.”
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He partied with every iconic ’60s musician ever, at once: “I was invited to a party at Mama Cass Elliot’s house on Woodrow Wilson Drive in LA, famed as the leading hangout for Laurel Canyon’s musicians, the place where Crosby, Stills and Nash had formed and David Crosby had shown off his new discovery, a singer-songwriter called Joni Mitchell, to his friends. When I arrived, they were all there. It was nuts, like the record sleeves in [my] bedroom at Frome Court had come to life: what the fuck is happening?”
Katharine Hepburn used (and cleaned) his pool: “One summer Sunday afternoon, John and I were sitting outside the bungalow having a snack, when we noticed a sixty-something lady who looked a little like Katharine Hepburn cycling up our drive. It was Katharine Hepburn: ‘I’m staying with [Stepford Wives director] Bryan Forbes — he said it would be OK if I used your pool.’ John and I just nodded, dumbstruck. Five minutes later, she reappeared in a swimsuit, complaining that there was a dead frog in the pool. When I dithered about how to get it out — I’m a bit squeamish about things like that — she just jumped in and grabbed it with her hand. I asked her how she could bear to touch it.
“‘Character, young man,’ she nodded sternly.”
Stevie Wonder visited his Rocky Mountain hole-up: “Musicians passing through Denver or Boulder would drop by to visit … Stevie Wonder turned up one day and took out a snowmobile, insisting on driving it himself. To pre-empt your question: no, I have no idea how Stevie Wonder successfully piloted a snowmobile through the Rocky Mountains of Colorado without killing himself, or indeed anyone else, in the process, but he did.”
John Lennon convinced him to not let Andy Warhol in his room: “One evening in New York, we were holed up in my suite at the Sherry-Netherland hotel, determinedly making our way through a pile of coke, when someone knocked at the door. My first thought was that it was the police: if you’ve taken a lot of cocaine and someone unexpectedly knocks at the door, your immediate thought is always that it’s the police. John gestured at me to see who it was. I looked through the spyhole. My reaction was a peculiar combination of relief and incredulity.
“‘John,’ I whispered. ‘It’s Andy Warhol.’
“John shook his head frantically and drew his finger across his throat. ‘No fucking way. Don’t answer it,’ he hissed.
“‘What?’ I whispered back. ‘What do you mean don’t answer it? It’s Andy Warhol.’
“There was more knocking. John rolled his eyes. ‘Has he got that fucking camera with him?’ he asked.
“I looked again through the spyhole and nodded. Andy took his Polaroid camera everywhere.
“‘Right,’ said John. ‘And do you want him coming in here taking photos when you’ve got icicles of coke hanging out of your nose?’
“I had to concede that I did not. ‘Then don’t fucking answer it,’ whispered John, and we crept back to doing whatever we were doing, trying to ignore the continued knocking of the world’s most famous pop artist.”
And he claims he got John back together with Yoko: “He still played with us at Madison Square Garden on Thanksgiving 1974, on the condition that we made sure Yoko didn’t come: they were still estranged. Of course, Yoko turned up anyway — which I have to say is very Yoko — but Tony [King, manager of Apple Records] made sure her tickets were out of the sightline of the stage. Before the show, she sent John a gardenia, which he wore in his buttonhole onstage …
“After the show, Yoko came backstage. We all ended up back at the Pierre hotel — me, John, Yoko, Tony and John Reid. We were sat in a booth and having a drink and — as if the whole situation wasn’t peculiar enough — Uri Geller suddenly materialized out of nowhere, came over to our table and started bending all the spoons and forks on it. Then he began doing his mind-reading act. It had been a bizarre day. But ultimately it led to John reuniting with Yoko, having Sean — my godson — and retreating into a life of domestic contentment in the Dakota Building.”
He and drag icon Divine got turned away from the club: “That was the music I heard when I went out to gay clubs in New York: Crisco Disco, Le Jardin and 12 West. I loved them, even though Crisco Disco once refused to let me in. I was with Divine, too, the legendary drag queen. I know, I know: Elton John and Divine getting turned away from a gay club. But he was wearing a kaftan, I had on a brightly coloured jacket and they said we were overdressed: ‘Whaddaya think this is? Fuckin’ Halloween?’”
A typical L.A. day might feature Dusty Springfield or Paul Simon: “If Dusty Springfield was around, we’d go to the roller derby to see the LA Thunderbirds. It was so camp and fabulous, all scripted, like wrestling, but lesbians loved it — it was basically a load of dykes whizzing round on skates and fighting each other. And we’d have fantastic lunch and dinner parties. Franco Zeffirelli came for lunch and revealed that his close friends called him Irene. Simon and Garfunkel had dinner one night, then played charades. They were terrible at it.”
Yes, Mae West once came onto him: “It was the city where, more or less, I’d become a star; where I’d been feted by my idols; where I’d somehow ended up taking tea with Mae West (to my delight, she swanned in with a lascivious smile and the words, ‘Ah, my favorite sight — a room full of men’, which, given that the men present were me, John Reid and Tony King, suggested she was in for an evening of disappointment).”
Depending on the day, he could see Lou Reed or Liza Minnelli at Studio 54: “Rocket [Record Company] once threw a party there, and at one point, I spotted Lou Reed and Lou’s transgender lover Rachel locked in conversation with, of all people, Cliff Richard. While it was nice to see people with what you might tactfully describe as having different outlooks on life getting along so famously, the mind did boggle a little at what on earth they were actually talking about … One night I was interrupted by a visibly zonked Liza Minnelli, who wanted to know if I would marry her.”
He never wore his best watch for Elizabeth Taylor: “She was incredibly kind and welcoming and she was hilarious — she had a really filthy English sense of humor — although you had to watch your jewellery around her. She was obsessed. If you were wearing something she liked the look of, she’d somehow just charm you into giving it to her; you would walk into her dressing room wearing a Cartier watch and leave without it, never entirely sure how she’d managed to get it off you.”
Even on his deathbed, Freddie Mercury loved to throw shade with him: “He was too frail to get out of bed, he was losing his sight, his body was covered in Kaposi’s sarcoma lesions, and yet he was still definitely Freddie, gossiping away, completely outrageous: ‘Have you heard Mrs Bowie’s new record [Tin Machine II], dear? What does she think she’s doing?’”
And his stag party with then-fiancé David Furnish, thrown by “our friend Patrick Cox,” the fashion designer, featured everyone you’d expect: “Paul O’Grady hosted the whole thing and sang a duet with Janet Street-Porter. Sir Ian McKellen came dressed as Widow Twankey. Bryan Adams sang and Sam Taylor-Wood did a version of ‘Love to Love You Baby.’ There were video messages from Elizabeth Taylor and Bill Clinton in between performances by the famous New York drag act Kiki and Herb and Eric McCormack, who played Will in Will and Grace, and was an old schoolfriend of David’s back in Ontario. Jake Shears from the Scissor Sisters got so overexcited he ended up taking all his clothes off and demonstrating the pole-dancing skills he’d learned working in New York strip clubs before the band became successful.”