Elton John’s Me – hilarious, jaw-droppingly candid memoir
In our increasingly dull and sanitised age, where our rock and pop idols tend to be the privately educated milquetoast children of investment bankers and has-been soap stars, there is something rather wonderful about the continued existence of Sir Elton Hercules John, recently appointed to the prestigious order of the Companionship of Honour. Quite what Her Majesty will make of The Artist Formerly Known As Reg Dwight is a mystery, especially assuming that some flunky or other has read her Sir Elton’s hilarious, jaw-droppingly candid memoir Me. It is, frequently, enough to make her hide the corgis away and wonder what on earth she has done.
Elton John is, in that dreadful, sycophantic cliché, a national treasure, although on the evidence of this scintillating book, less so for his musical career and more for having survived decades of debauchery with his wit, if not his hair, intact. There is a cherishable description of his being seen by a horrified domestic worker with his latest wig askance, and he helpfully makes the comparison between himself and comedian Frankie Howerd.
His early years in Pinner were grim, with a cold, distant father who was more interested in his record collection than his son, and with a blowsy, domineering mother whose major contribution to his life was to recognise his musical talent, ensuring that he was accepted for study at the Royal Academy of Music. After he had served as keyboard player to the then-fashionable singer Long John Baldry, he changed his name, began collaborating with Bernie Taupin and the rest is history.
Except, of course, it isn’t. Elton has made the excellent choice to work with Alexis Petridis as his ghostwriter, and anyone who has enjoyed Petridis’ writing in the Guardian in the last couple of decades will know of his finely honed way with a laugh-out-loud joke, and virtually every other page has some quotable bon mot. Whether he’s bemoaning his failed attempts at hippydom (“I looked like a finalist in a competition to find Britain’s least convincing flower child”), candidly discussing his drug use (“If you fancy living in a despondent world of unending, delusional bullshit, I really can’t recommend cocaine highly enough”) or enlightening the reader with his tales of voyeurism and sex on snooker tables (“Don’t come on the baize!”), this has to be one of the liveliest and funniest rock memoirs ever written.
Those expecting much in the way of musical analysis will be disappointed; as far as Elton presents it here, he receives Taupin’s, often, to be fair, dreadful, lyrics, and then sits down at the piano and bashes out an appropriate tune. He began his career as a would-be Tin Pan Alley songwriter, and that dedication to graft is ever-present; whether he’s playing hundreds of gigs a year or knocking out songs one after the other, before, back in the day, plunging his face down into a mountain of cocaine or today having a wholesome game of tennis before playing with his two young sons with his husband, David Furnish.
The book is at its funniest and most enjoyable in the first two thirds, with walk-ons from virtually every great musical star of the 20th century, and memorable appearances from a variety of industry grotesques. Manager John Reid does not come out of this well, any more than he emerged from the films Bohemian Rhapsody or Rocketman. When Elton embraces sobriety and married life, the narrative begins to sag, although there are still excellent stories of absurd diva behaviour and a riotous/disturbing account of his playing a concert almost immediately after major surgery, and realising that he has urinated uncontrollably while taking the audience’s applause. And his account of his love of his young sons feels sincere and moving, rather than gushily sentimental, although it is hard to take seriously his claims that they will have a “normal” childhood; still, one only hopes for their sake that it will be a happier one than his.
It might seem extraordinary that a plump, balding young man could go on to become one of the most successful musical stars that Britain ever produced, and certainly one of the likeable aspects of Elton’s story is that, decades after his first success, he still seems faintly incredulous that it managed to work out for him. He writes affectingly about the loneliness and boredom that he often felt, even at the peak of his fame, and yet again manages to give the impression that multi-millionairedom is as much of a curse as it is a blessing – although Petridis, who frequently rails in his reviews at how boring a lyrical theme a superstar moaning about success is, manages to make this wryly amusing rather than self-indulgent – even while coyly hinting that there are even more outrageous stories that have been omitted from the book on legal or spiritual advice. One honestly wonders what they are, and what they could have involved. Satanism?
Still, what we have is a riotously engaging romp through an era where bad taste and great music walked happily together, and where a sentence like “I sat in a dressing gown covered in puke, wanking” is not even the most eyebrow-raising revelation of the chapter. The Queen, who has quite enough on her plate at the moment, might not quite be prepared for what she is getting into with her Honourable Companion, but the rest of us will be extremely grateful for so candid and uproarious a dive into a life lived to the full.