Elton John - rare 1993 interview!

they call him captain fantastic and he's quite simply one of the greatest rock performers of our time for more than two decades elton john has dominated pop charts around the world and if you've ever been fortunate enough to see him live then i'm sure you'd agree he is virtually without equal when it comes to turning a concert into an event this week some 40 000 new zealanders will get the chance to witness this phenomenon first hand when elton plays his only new zealand show in auckland but the elton who will take the stage at the mount smart stadium is not the same man who performed here in 1990. today there's a new elton john as i found out when i met him recently in los angeles as most people know i don't drink and i don't take drugs and that's been over two and a half years and that's changed my life considerably because i was a huge addict elton john the man who's made a career out of reinventing himself to suit the changing times clean and sober in the 90s i realized how lucky and grateful i'm to have my health after all that i did to myself and i keep a very a very rigorous schedule but my schedule is all around my health uh my spiritual well-being um and and really trying to stay clean and i love this new life i mean i never knew life could be as good as this up at night and pinch yourself and say is this real have i really made it this far um oh good question um sometimes i don't like it and um about being you know the whole thing about the faint thing as i get older i like it less when i was younger i liked it more because it's exciting i like what i do i like writing and i like singing i like playing but the extracurricular stuff that goes along with it as i get older i like it less i'm a fairly nice person but when i was on drugs or drinking a lot i was very responsible and nobody knew from one minute to the next how i was going to be and i heard a lot of people that i loved a lot my mother moved countries she left england she went moved to spain so i'm off um and i could hardly blame her uh most of all i helped myself and um and i and then that shame you know when you when you're purging yourself with your fingers down your throat when you're eating when you're doing grams of coke and when you're doing two bowls of scotch a night you don't have much self-esteem and then you have to go on stage and pretend that you do and so that makes you even more ashamed of yourself saying what kind of life am i living here what am i doing i said i was bisexual in 1976 and most people knew that that involved going to bed with men as well as women more men than women then i got married and i changed my lifestyle um i thought i was going to change my lifestyle but when you're an addict and when you when you use drugs and alcohol i didn't really change anything i think i got married to try and make my life better and of course the whole root of the problem was the fact that i had an immense problem that i wouldn't deal with and i just shove that to the side and think thinking that the marriage would cure everything and unfortunately it didn't oh yeah i went through i went to hospital in chicago in in 1990 and i was stayed for six weeks i was a bulimic i was grossly overweight um i'm a what they call a compulsive overeater i i was eating food non-stop when i was when i wasn't using when i wasn't high on cocaine or alcohol and i saw i went in for like four things um and stayed for six weeks and actually it was an immense relief for me it was it was hard i tried to run away twice but you just took off i i had an incredible problem with authority figures i mean i've always have done in my life and that was the only problem i actually enjoyed once i i decided to actually do something about my health and my uh my addictions i felt better anyway just to say that i mean because i always thought that i could solve all my own problems because i was a successful man in my own field that um i didn't have to ask for any help as far as i thought i could solve i knew i had a problem i wasn't that stupid but i just thought i could maybe do it on my own and of course i couldn't and it got worse and worse when you look back at your life then the period of drugs and sex scandals and so on what was your lowest point do you think singing with rod stewart no uh [Laughter] match love son of the country i don't mean that um the lowest point i think when my mother i mean this but there were lots of low points um that i'm not too happy about um just looking at myself there there was a an unofficial biography by philip norman last year and there were some pictures in that book that are frightening and i look at them now and i look at myself now i think god i love 20 years older than i do now and and the only tangible thing left i had in my career was my career and i wanted to destroy that too and i didn't seem to be able to because at the end of the day i'm a loyal person and i wanted to go out and work for the people because i employ a lot of people so because i'm in a way it's so nice it kept me going now for everybody else or is this for you for elton no it's for me um i mean and i say that really honestly because um i've had two months off now between we've done one leg of this world tour and now we're coming down to the antiquities to new zealand and australia and to hong kong and singapore and i'm really looking forward to going back to work i'm 46 years old i do not um i do not behave on stage like i used to i just sit there and play and sing and i have a good time and we do a fairly long show and i enjoy singing and playing and that's really all i can hope to do um i got nervous about the first few shows of the tour well to be honest the first two or three weeks and when we started last may i was very very still hesitant and nervous it was like starting over again does that hurt a bit i mean but i mean i face bigger things than this in my life i mean once you get once you beat the or you stop using drugs and you try you get a hand on your addiction nothing that's thrown at you anymore can um can really hurt that much and gary uh i mean i'm surprised uh i mean gary was was always treated very well i i haven't read it and i don't i don't intend to read it um because it's um it's really not that much important i can't stop it and if people want to read it they can read it um and i don't mind i mean as far as as far as that goes i'm just going australia and new zealand to play and to to perform and i can't stop that sort of thing one of the rumors circulating down under us that you went to atlanta we know that you have a house there but in fact it was said that you were there for treatment for aids have you been tested are you hiv positive oh there were there was this program in america called um is it hard copy or something like that they they asked me to do an interview and i said no we've done all our interviews and they said well if you don't do an interview we're going to tell you that tell everybody that you went to um to atlanta for this there's a center for disease control in atlanta um and they threatened to come into my building that i live in and they threatened to pass me the helicopter which they did um and we said we sued them and they dropped it like a hot bricks i'm tested on a regular basis i am not hiv positive i have lots of friends who are and i intend to do something for them and do concerts and raise money for those people who are less fortunate myself but i'm not but you can't stop those rumors around um i had a hair transplant that worked okay and then i was just fed up with wearing hats and i thought i just picked up a magazine and saw this thing i thought i'm going to go for it um and it's like people have face lifts and people are very vain in my profession and i'm i'm vain too i mean i'm trying to get older and look as best as i can as i get older so would you ever have a face lift no i haven't had a facelift but i know plenty of people that do and it's kind of my version of having a facelift and i feel better for it and i mean a lot of people said he looks like a dead squirrel and you get all the dead squirrel jokes and the cat jokes and all that bit can i touch it yeah it's real so does it keep growing or is it i don't know no it's it's kind of it's weaved in with my own hair and then every four weeks or five weeks when my hair grows and my own hair grows i have to have it kind of tightened up again but it's you know you do everything in it you swim run i mean i play tennis every day i sweat in it i have it washed every day i don't take it off at night it doesn't sleep beside me it sleeps on me you're sharing your life with someone special now how do you think that's changed the way you are it's very it's it's changed me a lot because this person is very confrontational and they tell me the truth how they're feeling um when i've ever been in relationships before apart from my marriage um i've always been kind of like a school little school in a way i mean if everyone said i'm going out on my own i've always thought oh why are they going out there they don't want to be with me i know now it's okay to be away from someone if you love them you have to let them free and let them do you can't take over that person it's very hard to live with someone like me because i'm such a dominant personality in the fact that you have to deal with the elton john kind of business thing with all the people around and stuff like that so the other person who lives with you their self-esteem and their their worth is questioned yeah i mean it's like what do i do here you know um the person i live with has their own function they have their own they do their own they have their own things in life uh which before i wouldn't let people have because i i want them to be with me all the time that is unhealthy you cannot be with people all the time and expect to uh to it to last um so i didn't just learn i didn't just come to this conclusion it was pointed out to me by the other person who i share my life with then this was going to have to be the case and we talk and you know the greatest difference in my lifetime is i communicate i don't run away and hide behind the door petrified of the confrontation that that might follow you i have to get that get over that get through the fear of it and then get on with it and that that seems to be worth being a decent human being who gave something back or tried his best to give something back i i really want to be as philanthropic as possible to give things back um to enjoy to to be at peace with myself and to have had that balance which i seem to be finding between my personal life and my career and just to be a kind loving person is all anybody can hope to be remembered for

Channel: slydogmania

Views: 5,959

Rating: 4.9754601 out of 5

Keywords: Elton John, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Elton John interview, Elton John 1993, Rocket Man, rare Elton John interview

Id: tgks9ZC6bHM

Length: 10min 17sec (617 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 14 2020