Me: Elton John Official Autobiography

by Elton John

Bernie got the lyrics to ‘Your Song’ over breakfast one morning in Frome Court, handed them to me and I wrote the music in fifteen minutes flat

Bernie writes the words, gives them to me, I read them, play a chord and something else takes over, something comes through my fingers. The muse, God, luck: you can give it a name if you want, but I’ve no idea what it is. I just know straight away where the melody’s going to go. Sometimes a song only takes as long to write as it does to listen to. ‘Sad Songs (Say So Much)’ was like that – I sat down, read the lyric and played it, pretty much the same as you hear on the record. Sometimes it takes a bit longer. If I don’t like what I’ve done after about forty minutes, I give up and move on to something else.

That’s the thing about success. It gives you a licence to misbehave, a licence that doesn’t get revoked until your success dries up completely, or you man up and decide to hand it in yourself. And, for the time being, there was no danger of either of those things happening to me.

It was another in an endless line of young, blond, pretty hostage situations.

If you fancy living in a despondent world of unending, delusional bullshit, I really can’t recommend cocaine highly enough.

At that stage in my life, what I said went and if anyone tried to challenge me, people got screamed at and inanimate objects got thrown and smashed.

Despite my self-destructive behaviour, I didn’t actually want to self-destruct. I had no idea how to live, but I didn’t want to die.

I talked a little about my past relationships, about my unerring ability to take over other people’s lives for my own selfish, deluded reasons.

Some people really struggle when they come out of addiction into sobriety, but I was the opposite. I was elated. I never really wanted to use again; I was just happy waking up every morning without feeling like shit.

I’m perfectly aware how ridiculous my life is, and perfectly aware of what an arsehole I look like when I lose my temper over nothing – I go from nought to nuclear in seconds and then calm down just as quickly.

Leather Jackets, you may remember, wasn’t an album so much as an exercise in trying to make music while taking so much cocaine you’ve essentially rendered yourself clinically insane.

I’d rather try and build a bridge to someone on the opposite side to me than put up a wall.

There’s a scene at the end of Rocketman where I hug my younger self. In a way, that sums up my life perfectly. I spent my whole life trying to run away from Reg Dwight, because Reg Dwight really wasn’t a happy budgie. But what running away from Reg Dwight taught me is that when I got too far from him, too removed from the normal person I once was, things went horribly wrong; I was more miserable than ever. I need – everybody needs – some connection to reality.

My history is full of what ifs, weird little moments that changed everything.

There’s really no point in asking what if? The only question worth asking is: what’s next?