Me

by Elton John

I’m not always the best judge of my own work – I am, after all, the man who loudly announced that ‘Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me’ was such a terrible song that I would never countenance releasing it, of which more later –

Before, I’d been dubious about the idea of playing in America. Now, I was absolutely terrified.

I can remember two things very clearly about the first show we played at the Troubadour. The first is that the applause as I walked onstage had a slightly odd quality to it: it was accompanied by a kind of surprised murmur,

So instead of an introspective hippy singer-songwriter, the audience were greeted by the sight of a man in bright yellow dungarees, a long-sleeved T-shirt covered in stars and a pair of heavy workman’s boots, also bright yellow, with a large set of blue wings sprouting from them. This was not the way sensitive singer-songwriters in America in 1970 looked. This was not the way anyone of sound mind in America in 1970 looked.

Leon Russell appeared backstage again and told me his home-made recipe for a sore throat remedy, as if we were old friends.

The LA Times published a review by their music editor, Robert Hilburn. ‘Rejoice,’ it opened. ‘Rock music, which has been going through a rather uneventful period recently, has a new star. He’s Elton John, a 23-year-old Englishman, whose debut Tuesday night at the Troubadour was, in almost every way, magnificent.’

Because I have decided that tonight is the night I’m going to seduce someone. Or allow myself to be seduced. Definitely one or the other; either will do.

But you can’t take that amount of coke and think in a sane and proper way. You become unreasonable and irresponsible, self-obsessed, a law unto yourself. It’s your way or the highway. It’s a horrible fucking drug.

It wasn’t until John hit me that I came to my senses. It happened the night we threw a fancy dress party at Hercules.

But something had happened and, to me, it felt like a switch had finally been flicked off. I couldn’t make excuses for John’s behaviour any longer. I couldn’t stay with someone who hit me.

The balance of power shifted: until then, he’d been the dominant personality, but after we broke up as a couple, I became more confident and assertive.

I took to him straight away. It wasn’t just that he was a Beatle and therefore one of my idols. He was a Beatle who thought it was a good idea to promote his new album by dancing around with a man dragged up as the Queen, for fuck’s sake. I thought: We’re going to get on like a house on fire. And I was right. As soon as we started talking, it felt like I’d known him my entire life.

The latter was called ‘We All Fall In Love Sometimes’. It made me well up because it was true. I wasn’t in love with Bernie physically, but I loved him like a brother; he was the best friend I’d ever had.

I decided to eschew Regency or Palladian decoration in favour of a style known among interior design specialists as Mid-70s Pop Star On Drugs Goes Berserk. There

I’d been told not to sing ‘Back In The USSR’, so of course I did. If the KGB had been spying on me, they clearly hadn’t been spying closely enough to learn that one of the quickest ways to get me to do something is to tell me not to do it.

Later, Bernie and I wrote a song for him, ‘Empty Garden’. It was a great lyric. Not mawkish or sentimental – Bernie knew John too, and knew he would have hated anything like that – just angry and uncomprehending and sad. It’s one of my favourite songs, but