Elton John
Reg Dwight, a shy boy from Pinner, spent more than half a century setting other people's words to music, and in doing so made some of the most widely sung piano songs in the world.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
Members and companions ⏳🌊
- FamilySheila Farebrother
His mother, who led her son to rock and roll with Elvis Presley records; she died in 2017.
- FriendshipBernie Taupin
His lyric-writing partner since 1967, a partnership that began by post; for more than half a century he has written the words to most of his songs.
- ProducerGus Dudgeon
The producer who made most of the albums of his 1970s heyday, beginning with “Your Song”; he died in 2002.
- ManagerJohn Reid
His manager for roughly a quarter century from 1970, he also managed Queen for a time.
- FriendshipFreddie Mercury
A friend with whom he traded playful nicknames; his death became one of the reasons Elton set up his AIDS foundation.
- FamilyDavid Furnish
His spouse, whom he met in 1993 and married in 2014; he also helps lead Elton's business and foundation work.
I. Reggie of Pinner · 1947–1966
(Pinner) He was born in March 1947 in Pinner, Middlesex, England (today part of the London Borough of Harrow). His given name was Reginald Kenneth Dwight. His father, Stanley, was a Royal Air Force officer and a trumpet player, but he was often away, and when he came home he was strict about table manners and dress. In his memoir, Elton later wrote that he always felt cowed in his father's presence. The boy was raised mostly by his mother, Sheila, and his maternal grandmother, Ivy. (Piano) At about three, the story goes, he picked out on his grandmother's piano a tune he had heard. At eleven he won a scholarship to the junior program of the Royal Academy of Music, and for some five years he studied classical music there every Saturday. He had a remarkable ear that could carry what he heard straight to the keyboard, but by his own account he was not diligent about studying scores. (Rock 'n' roll) The Elvis Presley records his mother brought home, and the unbridled keyboards of Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, drew him out of classical music. Around 1962 his parents divorced, and his mother married a decorator, Fred Farebrother. The boy took to his stepfather, calling him Derf, and in this house he could make music freely for the first time. (Pub) At fifteen he played piano every weekend in the pub of the local Northwood Hills Hotel. Those hours of playing whatever the customers asked for, regardless of genre, left his hands with an omnivorous habit. Around the same time he formed the band Bluesology, which backed American soul singers touring Britain, and from 1966 it worked as the backing band for the blues singer Long John Baldry. He left school just before his final exams and took a job running errands at a music publisher. (Name) Borrowing a piece each from the band's saxophonist, Elton Dean, and from Baldry, he made up the stage name Elton John, and in 1972 he changed his name legally to match.
II. Lyrics in an envelope · 1967–1970
(Advertisement) In 1967 he answered an advertisement for new talent that Liberty Records had placed in a music weekly. The audition went poorly, but the A&R man, Ray Williams, handed him an envelope of lyrics sent in by Bernie Taupin, a seventeen-year-old from Lincolnshire who had answered the same ad. For a while the two exchanged songs by post without ever meeting. (Division of labor) This method became their lifelong way of working. Taupin wrote the lyrics first and passed them over, and Elton set them to music at the piano; the two almost never wrote together in the same room. Taupin's literary lyrics, enchanted with the American West and old tales, met Elton's gospel and soul harmonies to create a texture all their own. (Contract) The pair signed on as salaried staff songwriters with the company of Dick James, the publisher who handled the Beatles' songs. Taupin moved into Elton's mother's flat in Northwood, where the two shared bunk beds in one room. In 1968 Elton was about to marry but changed his mind, and the night Baldry talked him out of it became the subject of a song seven years later. (Debut) His first album, Empty Sky, in 1969, sold almost nothing. The next year his second album, Elton John, made with the newly arrived producer Gus Dudgeon and arranger Paul Buckmaster, changed direction with an intricate sound that layered a string orchestra over the piano. Dudgeon and Buckmaster had worked together on David Bowie's “Space Oddity” in 1969. Elton's early sound was thus born within the network of London studios of the same period. (Troubadour) In August 1970, a performance at the Troubadour, a club in Los Angeles, was the turning point. On a stage introduced by Neil Diamond, he kicked away the piano bench and pounded the keys standing up, and in the audience sat Leon Russell, a pianist he idolized. Robert Hilburn, the Los Angeles Times critic, wrote a rave review, and by the end of the year “Your Song” had entered the British and American charts.
Elton recalled taking Taupin's lyric at the piano in his mother's flat and setting it to music on the spot. It was the song that first made the names of two unknown young men known to the world.
- The introduction is piano alone. While the right hand unfolds the chords one note at a time (arpeggio), the left hand touches the low notes; listen to how the song stands on piano and voice alone through the whole first verse.
- Paul Buckmaster's strings are not there from the start but swell gradually as the song goes on. Listen for the moment the strings first come in, and you will see how sparingly Gus Dudgeon built up the sound.
- The narrator is a shy young man who hesitates as he searches for words for the one he loves. Elton sings it plainly, without ornaments, bringing out the tone of that clumsy confession.
- It was recorded in London in 1970. In concert he has usually sung it as a piano solo without strings, and comparing it with the original shows how much an arrangement can change the impression a song makes.
III. The yellow brick road · 1970–1975
(Band) He toured as a trio with bassist Dee Murray and drummer Nigel Olsson, and in 1972 the Scottish guitarist Davey Johnstone joined, completing the core band. The high harmonies the three of them sang together became something like the signature of the records of this period. From 1970 his business was handled by his manager, John Reid, who from 1975 also managed Queen for several years. (Château) In 1972 the group recorded Honky Château at the Château d'Hérouville, a castle studio outside Paris. The story goes that Taupin would hand over lyrics in the morning, Elton would set them to music at the dining-room piano, and the band would record them in the afternoon. “Rocket Man” came from this album, which became his first number-one album in America. (Peak) In 1973, when plans to record in Jamaica fell through over equipment problems, the group returned to the château and in a short time made the two-record set (double album) Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. That same year he founded his own label, the Rocket Record Company. (Costumes) Shy and insecure about his looks, he built a separate stage persona out of oversized glasses, feathers and platform shoes, and later said those costumes were a place to hide. In 1974 he played piano and sang harmony on John Lennon's “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night,” and that November he brought Lennon out onstage at Madison Square Garden in New York. (Dodgers) In 1975 Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy became the first album ever to enter the Billboard album chart at number one. It was an autobiographical album depicting the two men's years of obscurity. That October, at two concerts at Dodger Stadium, he stood before more than a hundred thousand people in a sequined baseball uniform. But a schedule of two albums and a major tour every year left him deeply exhausted.
Recorded at a French château studio with his newly assembled band, it is the centerpiece of Honky Château, his first American number-one album.
- Taupin has said the idea came from Ray Bradbury's short story “The Rocket Man.” The narrator is a man who goes to space the way others go to the office, and Elton sings it not as a heroic tale but as the quiet monologue of a lonely working man.
- The spacey whooshing sounds heard throughout are synthesizer effects (a keyboard instrument that makes sound with electronic circuits) played by David Hentschel.
- Along with acoustic guitar, Davey Johnstone played slide guitar, sliding a metal bar along the strings to join the notes. Follow the guitar that cries out at length between the choruses.
- The high harmonies in the chorus are Dee Murray, Nigel Olsson and Johnstone singing together. The song ends by repeating a line of the chorus as the sound gradually dies away (fade-out), a passage he often stretched out in concert with long piano improvisations.
A two-record album made after the Jamaica sessions fell through and the group returned to the château, it is the work that most fully displays the skill of the four-piece band at its peak. The video is the album track “Bennie and the Jets.”
- The opening track, “Funeral for a Friend,” begins with wind-like synthesizer and organ and flows without a break into “Love Lies Bleeding.” The sheer length of the two joined pieces, some eleven minutes, announces the album's ambition.
- “Bennie and the Jets” is a studio recording, yet you can hear an audience cheering and clapping. Gus Dudgeon laid crowd noise from another concert recording over it (overdubbing); listen through the applause for the piano chords struck short on the offbeat.
- In the same song Elton sings the heroine's name in a thin, high voice (falsetto). The song was embraced first by Black radio in America and also climbed the R&B chart.
- “Candle in the Wind,” a tribute to Marilyn Monroe, has a spare arrangement built around acoustic guitar and piano. Amid the flamboyant songs, this restraint stands out all the more.
In 1968, on the eve of his wedding, Long John Baldry talked him out of it, and Taupin turned that night into a song. It is the most personal track on the autobiographical album Captain Fantastic.
- At about 6 minutes 45 seconds, it was unusually long for a single at the time, yet it climbed as high as number 4 in America. The slow, unhurried tempo holds to the very end.
- The narrator thanks the friend who saved him while looking back with a wry smile at who he was then. Elton sings in a tone that mixes gratitude with self-mockery.
- As the song moves into its second half, the band's chorus piles up layer upon layer, and at the climax Elton's voice soars into falsetto. Follow that rising curve from beginning to end.
- It was recorded in 1974 at Caribou Ranch studio in Colorado. Piano, Johnstone's guitar and Ray Cooper's percussion are tightly interwoven.
IV. Pause and reunion · 1976–1985
(Confession) In a 1976 Rolling Stone interview he said he was bisexual, and in a 1992 interview with the same magazine he said he was gay. That year “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart,” sung with Kiki Dee, became his first UK number-one single, yet Blue Moves, from the same year, was an album full of dark, slow songs. At a 1977 concert at Wembley in London he announced that he was retiring from the stage, and for a time he worked apart from Taupin as well. (Football) It was also in 1976 that he became chairman of Watford Football Club, the team he had supported since boyhood. Under Graham Taylor, the manager he brought in, the Fourth Division side climbed to the First Division in 1982 and made it all the way to the 1984 FA Cup final. He said the football ground was where he escaped the noise of the music business. (Soviet Union) In 1979 he performed in Leningrad and Moscow in the Soviet Union (today’s Russia), with only percussionist Ray Cooper beside him. It was a rare case of a Western rock star touring the Soviet Union. (Reunion) On 1983’s Too Low for Zero, Taupin once again wrote every lyric, and Murray, Olsson and Johnstone came back too. “I’m Still Standing” sounded like a declaration of that return. In 1984 he married the German-born recording engineer Renate Blauel; they divorced in 1988. (Royalties) In 1985 he and Taupin sued Dick James over the rights and royalties to their early songs, but they did not win back the copyrights. That July he played the Live Aid stage at Wembley, though the day’s biggest sensation was the set by Queen, led by his friend Freddie Mercury.
The signature song of Too Low for Zero, which brought Taupin and the original band back together — a song of homecoming after the hiatus of the late 1970s.
- The piano drives forward relentlessly in fast eighth notes, while Dee Murray’s bass holds the same beat firmly underneath. Follow just the piano in the first few bars and you can feel the song’s momentum.
- The narrator declares to someone who once belittled him that he is still going strong. Elton’s vocal leans toward exhilaration rather than resentment.
- It was recorded at AIR Studios on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, produced by Chris Thomas. With Johnstone’s guitar and Olsson’s drums back, the chemistry of the band’s 1970s heyday came alive again.
- The music video, shot on the beach at Cannes in France, reintroduced him to a younger generation in the MTV era. Watched alongside the video, the song’s buoyant spirit comes through even more clearly.
V. Recovery and remembrance · 1986–1997
(Voice) In late 1986 he toured Australia with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and after throat surgery early the following year his voice became noticeably lower and huskier. In place of the young days when he soared easily into the high notes, his later singing came to rely on the weight of the middle and lower range. (Ryan) He grew as close as family to Ryan White, the American boy who had contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion and been expelled from school, and in April 1990 he was at the boy’s bedside when he died. He has said many times that this was what made him decide to change his life. In his memoir and in interviews he has openly acknowledged the dependence on alcohol and cocaine that had run since the 1970s; he entered treatment in 1990 and has stayed sober ever since. (Foundation) That same year “Sacrifice” became his first UK number-one solo single, and he gave his UK singles earnings to AIDS charities. In 1992 he established the Elton John AIDS Foundation. (Freddie) Freddie Mercury died in November 1991. At the Wembley tribute concert the following April, he sang “The Show Must Go On” with the surviving members of Queen and shared “Bohemian Rhapsody” with Guns N’ Roses’ Axl Rose. That September, at the MTV Video Music Awards, he and Axl performed “November Rain” together. (Diana) “Can You Feel the Love Tonight,” from The Lion King, which he wrote with Tim Rice in 1994, won the Academy Award for Best Original Song the following year. In September 1997, at the funeral of his friend Diana, Princess of Wales, he sang “Candle in the Wind 1997,” with new lyrics by Taupin, and the single, produced by George Martin, became the best-selling single in UK chart history. He has said he will never sing the song in public again.
A ballad sung in the voice that had deepened after his throat surgery, it became his first UK number-one solo single in 1990, with the proceeds going to AIDS charities.
- It appeared on the album Sleeping with the Past, inspired by the R&B and soul of the 1960s and ’70s, and was recorded at a studio in Denmark with Chris Thomas producing.
- Listen to the low register of the first verse. Unlike the high, bright voice of the 1970s, a thick, dark texture underpins the song’s mature emotion.
- The narrator is an adult calmly looking back as a long relationship falls apart. Rather than a dramatic breakup, Taupin’s lyric depicts a marriage slowly growing cold.
- Softly laid synthesizer chords and unhurried drums fill the space wide. That the piano never steps to the front sets it apart from his other signature songs.
VI. A long farewell · 1998–2026
(Stage) Knighted in 1998, he broadened the reach of his stage work. He won the Tony Award for Best Original Score for the musical Aida and wrote the music for Billy Elliot. From 2004 he staged The Red Piano and The Million Dollar Piano in Las Vegas in the United States, playing regular shows at a single venue over several years at a stretch (a residency). (Family) He met the Canadian-born filmmaker David Furnish in 1993; they entered a civil partnership in 2005 and married in 2014, and they have two sons. His mother, Sheila, died in 2017. (Union) In 2010 he released the album The Union with Leon Russell. It was a project that brought a fading idol back onto the stage, and the following year he gave the speech inducting Russell into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2019 came his memoir, Me, and the biopic Rocketman, and the film’s theme song, written with Taupin, won him his second Academy Award. (Collaboration) On the 2021 album The Lockdown Sessions he joined forces with young singers. “Cold Heart,” built from remixed fragments of old songs, went to number one in the UK, and the same year he recorded “Nothing Else Matters” with Miley Cyrus, Yo-Yo Ma and others for a Metallica tribute album. (Farewell) Begun in 2018, the Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour was halted by the pandemic and then resumed, passing 300 shows; after a headlining set at Glastonbury in 2023, it ended that July in Stockholm, Sweden. The broadcast of his farewell concert at Dodger Stadium won an Emmy in 2024, making him one of the rare artists to have received an Emmy·Grammy·Oscar·Tony. In 2025 he released the album Who Believes in Angels? with Brandi Carlile. The touring is over, but his work with Taupin continues past the half-century mark.
Past seventy, he returned to the top of the UK chart with fragments of old songs and the voice of a young singer — a record of his meeting with a new generation as he prepared to say goodbye.
- The Australian duo PNAU took fragments of his old songs “Rocket Man,” “Sacrifice,” “Kiss the Bride” and “Where’s the Shoorah?” and blended them into a new song (a remix). It’s fun to listen to the originals first and then pick out which passage ended up where.
- Dua Lipa’s voice alternates with Elton’s as he sings the melody of 1972’s “Rocket Man.” Listen for the moment when two voices half a century apart run together within a single song.
- A disco·house-style drum that thumps on every beat drives the whole song. What were piano ballads in the originals have, in effect, become a dance track.
Lesser-known stories
(Anonymity) Around 1969–70, before he made his name, he sang uncredited on budget compilation albums of sound-alike covers of other singers’ hits to make a living. In the same period he was also the session musician who played piano on the Hollies’ recording of “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.” Because his name never appeared in the credits, these recordings became widely known only after they were gathered into compilations in the 1990s. (Soul Train) “Bennie and the Jets” was not originally planned as a single, but after it caught on first with Black radio in Detroit, it was released as one and even made the R&B chart. In 1975 he appeared on the Black music television program Soul Train, at a time when the white musicians who had stood on that stage could be counted on one hand. Overshadowed by his image as a flamboyantly costumed pop star, this chapter — the roots of his music in soul and gospel — is often forgotten. (The bet) In 1974, during the recording of John Lennon’s “Whatever Gets You thru the Night,” Elton bet him that if the song reached number one in America, Lennon would join him onstage at one of his concerts. Lennon thought number one unlikely, but the song really did top the chart, and that November the two sang three songs together on the stage of Madison Square Garden. It went down as Lennon’s last major concert before an audience, and Elton became godfather to Lennon’s son Sean, born the following year.
Notes on terms 📚🔎
Arrangement
(Word origin) The word pyeongok (編曲) means ‘weaving’ (編) a tune. The name carries the idea of dressing an existing melody and weaving it into shape. (In rock) It means leaving the melody and harmony as they are while working out which instrument plays what, and when. In “Your Song,” Paul Buckmaster’s decisions about how to lay the strings over the piano were the arrangement. It is much like a school-concert choir deciding who sings the same song high, who sings it low, and which passage goes to a soloist.
Double album
(In rock) An album made up of two LP records. A single LP could usually hold only about 40~50 minutes, so when there were many songs or long ones, the album came out on two discs. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is one. Think of a story that could have fit in one book but was published in two volumes. It was also a sign of how great the maker’s ambition was.
False voice (falsetto)
(Word origin) The word gaseong (假聲) means ‘false (假) voice (聲)’ — that is, a borrowed sound rather than one’s usual voice. The Western name falsetto likewise comes from the Italian falso (‘false’). (In rock) A singing technique that uses thinned vocal cords to produce a sound far higher and slighter than usual. The chorus of “Bennie and the Jets” is the classic example. If you have ever pitched your voice thin and high to imitate a friend, the sound you made was close to falsetto.
Overdubbing
(Word origin) A compound of the English over (‘on top’) and dub (‘to lay on sound’), meaning to lay new sound over sound that already exists. (In rock) A method of recording other instruments, voices or sound effects separately afterward and layering them on top of a performance already recorded. The crowd cheers in “Bennie and the Jets” were laid over the studio recording. It is like placing a transparent sheet over a drawing and adding new lines on top. (Elsewhere) In film and animation, dubbing refers to replacing foreign-language dialogue with voices in Korean.
Fade-out
(Word origin) A compound of the English fade (‘to grow faint’) and out (‘away’), meaning to grow gradually fainter and disappear. (In rock) A way of ending a song not with a clean stop but by turning the volume down little by little while the music keeps going, until it vanishes. “Rocket Man” ends this way, repeating its chorus. It is like a friend’s singing growing fainter and fainter as they walk off across the playground, until you can no longer hear it. (Elsewhere) In film it refers to the screen slowly darkening as one scene gives way to the next.
Residency
(Word origin) From the English resident (‘dwelling, staying’), meaning to stay in one place. (In rock) Instead of a tour that moves from city to city, it means performing regularly at a single venue over months or even years. Elton John staged The Red Piano and The Million Dollar Piano in Las Vegas this way. It is like the difference between a food truck that roams from place to place and a restaurant that sets up shop in one spot and waits for customers. (Elsewhere) In the art world, a program in which an artist stays and works in one place for a set period is called an artist residency.
Remix
(Meaning) A blend of the English re (again) and mix (to combine), meaning to mix again. (In rock) When a recording is made, sounds such as the vocals, drums and piano are captured separately, and blending them into a single finished track is called the mix. A remix takes the sound fragments of an already released track and mixes them anew, or adds new sounds, to create a different version. "Cold Heart" is a song made by remixing several of Elton's old songs. It is much like using a game's map editor to rearrange the pieces of an existing map into a new one.