Lotus

Book Review: Me by Elton John

Me by Elton John
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This chatty and mostly self-deprecatory narrative is an immensely readable account of the fantastic life of Captain Fantastic, warts and all. Taking modesty to its extreme, there is no mention of Elton John’s Knighthood in the text – just one photograph with his parents and partner David! However, his excesses, be they in obsessive shopping sprees or his promiscuous life, appear to be a cry for help and comforting. His tribute to Marilyn Monroe in A Candle in the Wind could very well be describing his own life “… never knowing who to cling to…”.
Unfortunately for fervent fans of his music, like me, there are no details about his music. What inspired the music? How did the creative process produce a series of hits like Bennie and the Jets, Candle in the Wind, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, We All Fall In Love Sometimes, Curtains etc? The album with his iconic Daniel is dismissed in a couple of sentences:

I contracted glandular fever just before we went into the studio to record Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only the Piano Player in the summer of 1972… You would never have known I was ill from listening to the album: the guy singing Daniel and Crocodile Rock doesn’t sound unwell.

There is a bit more detail about his other blockbuster:

By the time we got to the Chateau, we had so many songs that Goodbye Yellow Brick Road ended up a double album. When it came out, it took off in a way that none of us expected. It's quite a dark record in many ways. Songs about sadness and disillusion, songs about alcoholics and prostitutes and murders, a song about a sixteen-year-old lesbian who ends up dead in a subway. But it just kep selling and selling and selling until I couldn't work out who was still buying it. i don't mean that flippantly: I really didn't know who was buying it.

But dear Sir Elton, how did you and Bernie come about creating that masterpiece?
Captain Fantastic and Brown Dirt Cowboy was written on a sea voyage in between games of Bingo.
He was that rare talent who could produce hits even with a raging hangover. His enduring friendship with Bernie Taupin (The Brown Dirt Cowboy) is one constant in his life, but not much has been written about him and how their joint creative process worked.
The best and most honest autobiography of a superstar in a long time. As usual, here is another super hit for Elton John!

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