Elton John
A shy piano boy spent half a century dressing another man's words in melodies that were wholly his own.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
The people beside him ⏳🌊
- FamilySheila Fairbrother
Unlike his father, who opposed music, she bought her young son rock 'n' roll records and opened his ears.
- CollaboratorBernie Taupin
His lifelong lyricist, who began by trading lyrics by post in 1967 and went on to write the words to most of his songs for more than half a century.
- ColleagueGus Dudgeon
The producer who, beginning with the 1970 album “Elton John,” oversaw most of the albums of his 1970s heyday and refined his sound.
- FriendshipJohn Lennon
When the song they had recorded together in 1974 reached number one, he kept his promise, taking the stage at Madison Square Garden to sing with Elton.
- FriendshipGeorge Michael
A younger friend who sang “Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me” with him at Live Aid and in a 1991 live recording that went to number one in Britain and America.
- FamilyDavid Furnish
The partner he entered a civil partnership with in 2005 and married in 2014, who has worked closely alongside him ever since.
I. The boy from Pinner · 1947–1966
(Birth) In March 1947, Reginald Kenneth Dwight was born in Pinner, Middlesex, England. His father, Stanley Dwight, was a Royal Air Force officer who had played the trumpet as a young man, yet he opposed his son making a living from music. With a father often away from home and a strict atmosphere in the house, the boy grew up at the side of his mother, Sheila, and his maternal grandmother, Ivy. (The ear) It is said that around the age of three he sat at his grandmother's piano and picked out by ear the tunes he had heard. At eleven he won a scholarship to the Saturday junior program at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he studied classical music for several years. Quicker by ear than on the page, he learned his Chopin and Bach yet was drawn far more deeply to the Elvis Presley and Little Richard records his mother brought home. (The pub) His parents divorced around 1962, when he was in his teens. His mother remarried a decorator named Fred Fairbrother, and this stepfather, whom the boy called Derf, supported his music. From the age of fifteen he played piano every weekend in the pub of the local Northwood Hills Hotel, accompanying the customers' singalongs. He later recalled that it was there, in a noisy bar, that he learned how to hold people's ears. (Bluesology) As he was finishing school he worked as an office boy at a music publisher and played keyboards in the band Bluesology. The band backed visiting American soul singers on their British tours before becoming the backing group for the blues singer Long John Baldry. It was in these years as a keyboard player at the back of the stage that he borrowed his future stage name from the band's saxophonist, Elton Dean, and from Baldry.
II. Partners by post · 1967–1970
(The advertisement) In June 1967, Liberty Records placed an ad in a music weekly seeking new writers and singers. He made little impression at the audition, but the label's Ray Williams handed him a bundle of lyrics by Bernie Taupin, a seventeen-year-old from Lincolnshire who had answered the same ad. For a while the two traded lyrics and melodies by post without ever having met. (Division of labor) Their method took shape then. Taupin would write the words first and pass them along, and Elton would sit alone at the piano and set them to music, usually in a short time. They almost never wrote face to face in the same room, and this division of labor would last more than half a century. With a writing contract at Dick James Music in 1968, the two became full-time songwriters on a weekly wage. For a time Taupin lived with Elton at his home near Pinner, the two sharing a room. (Obscurity) For the first few years they wrote songs for other singers while, to make ends meet, he kept taking session work, called in to play on other people's recordings. His first album, “Empty Sky,” in 1969, drew little response. The way opened with the 1970 album “Elton John,” when the producer Gus Dudgeon and the arranger Paul Buckmaster came aboard. Buckmaster's thickly layered string arrangements and Dudgeon's meticulous recording expanded songs for a single piano to cinematic scale. (Troubadour) In August 1970, his first American concert, at the Troubadour club in Los Angeles, proved the turning point. Robert Hilburn, the Los Angeles Times critic, wrote a rave review of a show in which he kicked away the piano bench and flung himself across the keys. Soon after, “Your Song” from the album climbed the American and British charts, and the unknown songwriter became, overnight, a singer everyone was watching.
A song Elton set to lyrics Taupin wrote in his teens, and the first hit that introduced the two unknown songwriters to the world.
- After a brief introduction in which the piano unfolds its chords one note at a time, the voice enters relaxed, almost speaking. A plainness that never shouts sets the character of the song.
- As the song goes on, the strings arranged by Paul Buckmaster layer in little by little. It sounds as though a private confession at a single piano were spreading into an ever wider room.
- The lyric speaks in the voice of a young man embarrassed that he cannot find the right words for what he wants to say. The conceit of a clumsy confession is precisely what makes it sound sincere.
- In the chorus the melody opens upward and the feeling bursts out all at once, then returns straight away to the quiet verse. Restraint and climax alternate in quick succession, holding the ear.
III. The yellow brick road · 1971–1976
(The sprint) Through the first half of the 1970s he released an album or two every year. After “Tumbleweed Connection” and “Madman Across the Water,” beginning with “Honky Château” in 1972, his touring band of bassist Dee Murray, drummer Nigel Olsson and guitarist Davey Johnstone also played on the recordings, and he gained a tight band sound. Made at the Château d'Hérouville studio outside Paris, the album reached number one on the American album chart, the start of a run of seven consecutive number-one albums. (The mask) The 1973 double album “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” made him a global star. Onstage he transformed himself with feathers, sequined costumes and enormous glasses. In many interviews he said that shy Reggie Dwight, unsure of his looks, could become bold behind the flamboyant costumes. That same year he founded his own label, Rocket Records. (Lennon) In 1974 he played piano and sang backing vocals on John Lennon's “Whatever Gets You thru the Night,” and extracted a promise that if the song reached number one, Lennon would join him onstage at one of his concerts. The song did reach number one, and that November Lennon took the stage at Madison Square Garden in New York. It would remain the last major concert appearance of Lennon's lifetime. (The summit) In 1975 “Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy” became the first album to enter the Billboard album chart at number one. It was an autobiographical look back at Elton and Taupin's years of obscurity. That October, two concerts at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles drew more than 100,000 people. In 1976 he became owner of Watford FC, the football club near his hometown that he had supported since childhood, and he saw the lower-league side through its climb to the First Division.
The signature song of “Honky Château,” recorded with his touring band at the Château d'Hérouville, and the song that announced his sprint through the first half of the 1970s.
- The monologue of an astronaut who accepts spaceflight as calmly as a daily commute. Taupin has said the idea came from a Ray Bradbury short story. It paints a glamorous subject through the eyes of a lonely working life.
- Davey Johnstone's slide guitar (a technique of gliding a metal bar along the strings to draw out the notes) creates a hazy sense of cosmic distance.
- In the chorus the harmony vocals of Dee Murray and Nigel Olsson layer together and the sound suddenly widens. It is the passage where the effect of the band playing on the record comes through most clearly.
- Long synthesizer notes laid in the background fill the space. Thanks to producer Gus Dudgeon's tidy recording, every instrument can be heard distinctly in its place.
The title track of the album that made him a global star, though the song itself carries a longing to leave the glittering world and return to a simple life.
- In the chorus the voice rises beyond its usual range into a light, high falsetto. It sounds less like a showy high note than like the wistfulness of someone leaving.
- Strings arranged by Del Newman gently support the piano chords from below. The sound is rich yet never giddy.
- The lyric tells of a speaker who bids farewell to a glittering world bent on taming its stars and vows to go back to the country. The paradox of doubting the summit from the summit itself is the backbone of the song.
- Moving from verse to chorus, the harmony turns in an unexpected direction and the mood brightens. It is the point where his classically trained harmonic sense shows itself.
A grand ballad from the 1974 album “Caribou,” which later found new life as a duet with George Michael at Live Aid and in a 1991 live recording.
- Carl Wilson and Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys sang on the backing vocals. Their color can be heard in the thick, sleek harmonies behind the chorus.
- The brass (horn section) arranged by Del Newman bursts out all at once at the climax, lifting the song to grandeur.
- It begins with quiet piano and voice and builds in stages up to the final chorus. The desperation of trying to hold on to a relationship on the verge of collapse grows into sheer volume of sound.
- At Live Aid in 1985 George Michael sang this song with him, and Elton praised him warmly in his introduction. It is remembered as the image of an elder handing the stage to a young singer.
IV. Still standing · 1977–1989
(Fatigue) Ceaseless touring and recording had worn him down. Around 1977 he cut back sharply on performing, and for a while he and Taupin went their separate ways. On the 1978 album “A Single Man” he teamed up with lyricist Gary Osborne. In 1979 he toured the Soviet Union with percussionist Ray Cooper as his only accompanist, becoming one of the rare Western pop stars to play a Soviet stage during the Cold War. (Confession) In a 1976 interview with “Rolling Stone” he said he was bisexual, and he later came out publicly as gay. His private life was in the papers again and again in those years, but he never stopped making music. (Reunion) Reunited with Taupin in the early 1980s, he regained his footing with “Too Low for Zero” in 1983. “I'm Still Standing” was heard as a declaration that he had risen above the slump of the late 1970s. In July 1985, on the Live Aid stage at London's Wembley, he sang “Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me” with George Michael. Their duet was released again in 1991 as a live recording from George Michael's Wembley concert and went to No. 1 in both Britain and the United States. (Lawsuit) Money matters ended up in court. He and Taupin sued Dick James's side, arguing that their early contracts had been unfair to two young songwriters, and in 1985 London's High Court ordered the payment of back royalties (the fees paid to the writers each time a song is used). It did not, however, return the copyrights to the songs themselves. In 1987 he underwent throat surgery, and afterward his voice grew noticeably lower and thicker. His 1989 album “Sleeping with the Past” held mature ballads sung in that new voice.
A song from “Too Low for Zero,” made after he reunited with Taupin, it was taken as his comeback declaration after the slump of the late 1970s.
- The piano hammers out chords on a steady beat and drives the whole song forward. The keyboard is itself the rhythm instrument.
- The lyrics speak to someone who once belittled him, showing off just how well he is doing. It is less a grudge than a cheerful counterpunch.
- In the chorus, the shouted title comes back short and hard, again and again, so you can sing along after a single listen.
- The music video, directed by Russell Mulcahy, was shot on the beaches of Cannes and Nice in France. With its dancers and primary-colored costumes, it became one of the defining images of early MTV.
V. Recovery and devotion · 1990–2004
(Recovery) In 1990 he went into treatment for alcohol and drug addiction, and he has said in his memoir and in interviews that he has stayed clean ever since. Among those he credits as a turning point was Ryan White, a boy from Indiana who had contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion and was fighting discrimination. Elton stood by the boy's family, and at the funeral in April 1990 he played the piano and sang. (Foundation) That same year, when “Sacrifice” became his first solo No. 1 single in Britain, he donated the single's proceeds to AIDS charities. After losing his friend Freddie Mercury to AIDS in 1991, he founded the Elton John AIDS Foundation in the United States in 1992 and in Britain in 1993. The foundation has since raised hundreds of millions of dollars to support prevention and treatment programs around the world. (Lion) In 1994 he wrote songs with lyricist Tim Rice for Disney's animated film “The Lion King,” and “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” won him the Academy Award for Best Original Song. The work opened his path as a theater composer, leading to the musicals “The Lion King” and “Aida” and, later, “Billy Elliot.” From that same year he also mounted several joint tours with Billy Joel under the name “Face to Face.” In these shows the two piano men faced each other from opposite sides of the stage, trading each other's songs. (Tribute) At the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, in September 1997, he sang “Candle in the Wind 1997,” with lyrics newly rewritten by Taupin. The song had originally been written in 1973 in memory of Marilyn Monroe. The single became the best-selling single in the history of the British charts, and its proceeds went to the Diana memorial fund. The following year he was knighted. With “Songs from the West Coast” in 2001 he returned to the piano-centered songwriting of the early 1970s and won warm reviews.
A ballad sung in the voice lowered by his throat surgery; when it became his first British solo No. 1 in 1990, he donated the proceeds to AIDS charities.
- Over a slow tempo, synthesizers lay down long, soft chords. It is a sound that spreads like air, unlike the piano ballads of the 1970s.
- The voice, lower and thicker since the surgery, sings calmly in the middle and low registers. It carries weight without having to climb high.
- The lyrics deal with a grown-up parting, an old relationship slowly cooling. In place of dramatic collapse, the mood is resignation and regret.
- The verses of the 2021 hit “Cold Heart” come straight from this song's melody. Listen to the two back to back and you can hear a melody's vitality leaping across some thirty years.
Written with Tim Rice for “The Lion King,” it won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and opened the door to his career as a composer of musicals.
- In the film itself the characters sing it, while over the end credits plays a pop version sung by Elton himself. Comparing the two, you can hear how the same melody is used differently on screen and on record.
- In Elton's version, piano and chorus gradually pile up, swelling into the solemn grandeur of a church hymn (gospel style).
- The chorus melody never leaps far but climbs step by step like a staircase, so it is easy for everyone from children to adults to sing along.
- The lyrics portray the hesitation of two characters who have feelings for each other but cannot say so. The song's mood is the quiet flutter just before a confession.
VI. Farewell, and onward · 2005–2026
(Family) In December 2005, on the first day same-sex couples in Britain could register civil partnerships, he entered a civil partnership with the Canadian-born filmmaker David Furnish, and in 2014 they formally married. The couple have two sons. From 2004 he also ran “The Red Piano,” a residency at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, staying at a single venue and performing there on a regular schedule. (Duets) In 2010 he sought out Leon Russell, the American pianist who had been his idol in his youth, and together with producer T Bone Burnett they made the album “The Union.” At that year's Grammy Awards he set two pianos face to face with Lady Gaga and sang “Your Song” and Gaga's “Speechless” back to back. In 2021 “Cold Heart,” a mashup the Australian duo PNAU built from several of his old songs, went to No. 1 in Britain as a duet with Dua Lipa, and in 2022 he released “Hold Me Closer” with Britney Spears, weaving together “Tiny Dancer” and others. (Farewell) The “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour, launched in 2018, was halted by the COVID-19 pandemic and then resumed; after headlining the Glastonbury Festival in June 2023, it came to a close in Stockholm, Sweden, in July. At the time it was the highest-grossing tour ever, a record later surpassed by Taylor Swift's “The Eras Tour.” In 2019 came the biopic “Rocketman” and his memoir “Me,” and the following year a song he wrote with Taupin for the film won him his second Academy Award for Best Original Song. (Now) Winning an Emmy in 2024, he became one of the few people to have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony, and that same year he and Taupin received the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize. He has stepped back from large-scale touring, but he keeps writing songs, releasing the album “Who Believes in Angels?” with Brandi Carlile in 2025. His method—sitting down at the piano once Taupin's lyrics arrive—is no different from the days when he first received lyrics by mail.
A mashup the Australian duo PNAU built from his old songs, it put him back at No. 1 in the clubs and charts of a younger generation half a century after his debut.
- The chorus comes from the melody of “Rocket Man,” the verses from “Sacrifice.” Songs from 1972 and 1989 meet within a single track.
- A house beat lays down a kick drum thumping evenly on every beat (four on the floor), turning the lonely ballads of the originals into dance music.
- Elton sings the part taken from “Sacrifice,” and Dua Lipa the chorus taken from “Rocket Man.” The contrast between a clear, light young voice and a low voice weighted with years is the heart of the song.
- The cosmic loneliness of the original remains, but thanks to the glittering synthesizers it sounds less like longing than a giddy sense of release.
Lesser-known stories
(Anonymity) Between 1969 and 1970 he sang, uncredited, on budget cover records that imitated the hits of the day as closely as possible and sold them cheap. Because it was work done to make a living, his name never appeared in the credits; the recordings lay forgotten for years until collectors recognized his voice, and in the 1990s they were gathered again on compilation albums. (Sessions) Around the same time he also worked as a session pianist, and he is known to have played piano on the Hollies' 1969 hit “He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother.” Since this was before he became a star, no one at the time thought much of it. (Eurovision) In 1969, in the contest to choose Britain's Eurovision entry, a song by Elton and Taupin sung by Lulu made the shortlist but finished last of six. Overshadowed by later fame, it survives only as a footnote, an early setback for the pair. (Hercules) In 1972 he legally changed his name to Elton Hercules John. The middle name Hercules was a joke, taken from the name of a horse in the British sitcom “Steptoe and Son.” (Russell) The pianist he most wanted to emulate in his youth was the American Leon Russell. Forty years later, saddened to see Russell fading from memory, he reached out first, and the result was the 2010 album “The Union,” which opened the last great chapter of Russell's career.
Glossary 📚🔎
Producer
(Meaning) The English word produce means to bring forth, so a producer is, quite literally, someone who brings something forth. (In pop) When a song is recorded, the producer is the person responsible for the whole: which instruments to use, how to shape the sound, even which of several takes to choose. If the singer is the actor, the producer is closer to the film director. It is like a class play: one friend writes the script and others do the acting, but there is still a separate director who decides how the whole show will look on stage. (Elsewhere) In broadcasting and film, the word refers to the person who leads the making of a work, managing its budget and schedule.
Arrangement
(Meaning) Pyeongok (編曲) means to weave (編) a piece (曲)—to take an existing song and weave it together anew. (In pop) It is the work of deciding, for a finished melody and harmony, which instruments come in when and what rhythm supports them. Depending on the arrangement, the same song can become a quiet piece for a single piano or a grand one ringing with strings. It is much like cooking the same instant ramen: depending on what you add and when—egg, scallions, cheese—you get an entirely different taste.
Royalty
(Meaning) The English word royalty originally meant the power of a king. Its present meaning comes from the way a king would grant rights such as mining and collect a fee for their use. (In pop) It is the fee paid to the composer, lyricist and singer each time a song is used on records, on the air or through streaming. Depending on the contract signed at the start, the same song selling the same amount can bring very different shares into their hands. Suppose your friends agreed to pay you a small fee each time they used a game map you made. If you struck a bad deal at the start, your share stays small no matter how popular the map becomes. (Elsewhere) In English, royalty is also used to mean the members of a royal family.
Session playing
(In pop) It is the work of a musician who belongs to no particular band, called in to play whenever there is a recording and paid for it. Their names are often printed small on the album or left off entirely, so it can be years before anyone learns who played on a famous track. It is like a relay race at field day: when a class is short a runner, a friend from another class steps in to run for a moment. (Elsewhere) Session usually means a single meeting or class period, and on a computer it refers to the time you stay logged in.
Falsetto
(Meaning) From the Italian falso ('false'); in Korean it is called gaseong (假聲), a 'false voice.' (In pop) A light, clear voice produced by thinning the vocal folds to reach notes far higher than one's ordinary speaking voice. When a male singer suddenly soars up high and delicate, almost like a woman's voice, that passage is usually falsetto. If you have ever thinned and raised your voice to imitate a friend, that was a very clumsy version of falsetto.
Mashup
(Meaning) To mash is to crush and mix together, the same mash as in mashed potatoes. (In pop) A technique that lifts sections from two or more songs and splices and layers them so they play as a single track. The chorus of one song meets the verse of another over a new beat. It resembles the medley at a school talent show, where several songs are sung one after another, but where a medley strings songs together one at a time, a mashup blends them outright into a single song. (Elsewhere) In programming, combining data from several services to build a new one is also called a mashup.
Residency
(Meaning) The English word residency means dwelling, staying in one place as if you lived there. (In pop) Instead of touring from city to city, a singer settles into one venue and performs there regularly over months or even years. Las Vegas is the classic stage for it. If a tour is a string of away games played in stadium after stadium, a residency is a season's worth of home games played at the home ballpark. (Elsewhere) In medicine, it refers to the training a doctor undergoes to become a specialist; in the art world, to a program in which an artist lives and works on-site for a set period.