In recent days, Elton John has once again given a lot of talk thanks to the fact that he officially became an EGOT artist, that is, he has become one of the very few celebrities worldwide who have managed to win an Emmy award, a Grammy , an Oscar and a Tony.
Elton had just given a farewell world tour with unprecedented revenue that made it the most lucrative in history (although a certain blonde girl is about to take the title from him).
Without a doubt, this last year everyone was able to see Elton John reap the fruit of a life dedicated to music and entertainment, but above all, dedicated to breaking all kinds of stereotypes.
How could a shy, gay pianist from the London suburbs become a rock star in the 1970s? What’s more, how did he manage to stand the test of time and keep his songs being sung by younger generations?
The truth is that it was not an easy process, because while the stadiums were filling up, the albums were selling out and the awards were piling up, Elton had a heartbreaking fight against himself, which on more than one occasion came close to costing him his life. .
Elton John debuted in 1969 with the album Empty Sky. It was a resounding success for his first album with around 3 million copies sold at that time. However, it would be his second album titled simply Elton John that would turn the musician into a global phenomenon, with pieces such as Your Song, Take me to the Pilot and Rock & Roll Madonna.
As soon as Elton reached the top, the excesses came practically immediately, and the submissive boy who was born Reginald Kenneth Dwight did not take long to “become a monster,” as the artist himself confessed after the premiere of his biographical film Rocketman.
“In this period of my life that we are showing, I did more in those 20 years than most people do in a lifetime. “I behaved like a monster at times and was completely irrational, and that’s life when you’re an artist,” said Elton John, who during his golden age was completely drunk, drugged, and suffering from bulimia.
For the public, Elton was the brightest star in the sky, because at the end of the day he tried to be so with those scandalous outfits in which he went on stage. To his friends, he was the one who could clear a table full of cocaine in one night and search for more in the morning, but in his lonely moments, Elton John was little Reginald again, hating himself for having to become another person so that people would love him.
“I walked around the house, I didn’t shower for three or four days, I stayed up watching porn all the time, I drank a bottle of whiskey a day. And I was also bulimic, so I wouldn’t eat for three days, then I would stuff myself with six bacon sandwiches and a pint of ice cream and throw it up. Then I would shower and start the whole process again. There was no self-esteem at all. It was fucking horrible. You look back and think, how the hell could I do that? But I did it,” Elton declared in a 2010 interview with The Telegraph.
And so the years passed: on stage applause and ovations, in the bedroom tears and dizziness. This duality reached its peak in 1975, that afternoon Elton attempted to kill himself.
After giving two historic shows at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, and inaugurating his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Elton threw a party at his Benedict Canyon mansion. Among the guests at the meeting were his mother and grandmother, who saw a then 28-year-old Elton approach the pool completely exhausted and utter the following words: “I have taken 85 Valiums, I will die in an hour,” and immediately , he jumped into the water.
In her book His Song: The Musical Journey of Elton John, journalist and writer Elizabeth Rosenthal shared that Elton regained his desire to live almost immediately and kicked his way to the surface. It’s not clear how much time passed or if anyone tried to get the musician out of the pool, but guitarist Caleb Quaye claims he saw a medical team trying to bring Elton back to life, fortunately successfully.
Valium is a medication prescribed for anxiety, which quickly develops addiction and resistance in the patient; This means that more and more doses are needed to achieve the desired effects. Depression, vertigo, low blood pressure and headache are some of the consequences of consuming Valium, but in a case of overdose, the body can go into a coma and subsequently die.
It took 35 years, in that interview with Telegraph, for Elton John to tell his version of the story of this infamous day that was even captured in Rocketman. The musician gave little importance to the matter, ensuring that it was common then for him to throw a tantrum from time to time and that in reality he had no intention of committing suicide. However, he accepted that in those years he was an unhappy person dealing with himself.
“It was the stress. She had been working non-stop for five years. But it was typical of me. There was no way I was going to kill myself doing that. And of course, my grandmother came out with the perfect line: ‘I guess we all have to go home now.’”
Elton remembers this time as “a complete and utter blur,” and of course, this exercise of staying on the brink of death was a constant.
“There were times when I was convinced I was going to die. I had massive attacks where my head seemed to spin like Linda Blair in The Exorcist and I would collapse. I remember one time I collapsed in my room and they found me – and it’s a wonder they did – and I was blue. They put me back in bed, resuscitated me, left and 30 minutes later I was inhaling again, can you imagine?”
It took 15 years for Elton John to finally decide to begin his rehabilitation. Not even finding a clinic was easy, since all the ones he visited closed the door in his face for having “too many addictions.” Finally, a center in Chicago accepted him and now the real problem would begin: dealing with withdrawal. Against all odds, Elton managed to overcome himself, and in 2020, he celebrated 30 years of sobriety.
“The rock and roll life is not a normal life. You separate yourself from people, you isolate yourself, it is easy to lose your values and self-esteem. She reached a point where she didn’t know how to talk to someone unless she had snorted cocaine. Nothing satisfied me. I had to change because I was scared. I didn’t want to die angry and bitter and sad, and that’s what I had become. “Physically horrible, spiritually horrible… a tramp, a pig.”