When was elton john born

He's basically a nice guy. What happened? Is it because power does that thing to you, that you isolate yourself? It enrages me that people can just smirk their way through it. I like Tony Blair a lot, I think he's a good man. One government all the time isn't great for a country. I think it's very hard to be in power for a long time, I think you lose touch. Every artist who makes it goes through a period where it seems they're invincible. It just seems like they can't fail.

And then suddenly everything levels off. I knew it when it started happening to me. I was really tired, I knew I was peaking. I knew it was time for someone else to take over. You have to be realistic about these things. I want to bring my songs and melodies to hip-hop beats. It may be a disaster, it could be fantastic, but you don't know until you try.

I've dodged so many bullets. Not just because of unsafe sex, but because of the amount of drugs I did, the amount of alcohol, the amount of work I was doing. I think religion has always tried to turn hatred towards gay people.

Religion promotes the hatred and spite against gays. But there are so many people I know who are gay and love their religion. From my point of view I would ban religion completely. Organised religion doesn't seem to work.

It turns people into really hateful lemmings and it's not really compassionate The world is near escalating to World War Three and where are the leaders of each religion? Why aren't they having a conclave? Why aren't they coming together? Instead of more violence why isn't there a meeting of religious leaders? It's like the peace movement in the Sixties.

Musicians got through to people by getting out there and doing peace concerts but we don't seem to do them any more. If John Lennon were alive today he'd be leading it with a vengeance. They seem to do their protesting on-line and that's not good enough.

You have to get out there and be seen to be vocal, and you've got to do it time and time again. There was a big march in London when Britain decided to join the war against Iraq and Tony Blair is on the record as saying 'the people who march today will have blood on their hands'. That's returned to bite him on the ass. People come to me and I'm a bit like the Queen Mother. I never get those problems. I don't know what it is with me, people treat me very reverently.

It was the same when Dave and I had our civil union - I was expecting the odd flour bomb and there wasn't. Dave and I as a couple seem to be the acceptable face of gayness, and that's great. I'm going to fight for them whether I do it silently behind the scenes or so vocally that I get locked up. I can't just sit back - it's not in my nature any more. I'm nearly sixty years old after all. I can't sit back and blindly ignore it and I won't.

I had pictures of Dusty all over my walls. I have no one to leave the money to. I'm a single man. I like spending my money. Now you're lucky to find ten albums a year of that quality. And there are more albums released each week now than there were then. I am such a Luddite when it comes to making music. All I can do is write at the piano. Instead, they sit at home and make their own records, which is sometimes okay but it doesn't bode well for long-term artistic vision.

It's just a means to an end. We're talking about things that are going to change the world and change the way people listen to music and that's not going to happen with people blogging on the Internet. I mean, get out there - communicate. Hopefully, the next movement in music will tear down the Internet. Let's get out in the streets and march and protest instead of sitting at home and blogging.

I do think it would be an incredible experiment to shut down the whole Internet for five years and see what sort of art is produced over that span. There's too much technology available. I'm sure, as far as music goes, it would be much more interesting than it is today. I didn't have sex until I was 23 and that was with a man.

I made up for lost time after that in a hurry. I wish I could have had sex when I was, like, 14, 15 or 16 because that's such an exciting age to have sex. There's a lot of Liberace in me and as a gay artist as such, but I am an openly gay man. A lot of my audience is the same kind of audience that Liberace would have had and they didn't seem to give a shit.

I think that's so great. I'm amazed by the misogynistic attitudes of some of the people in this country, and I say to hell with them.

I love you Hillary, I'll be there for you. Some people don't get hyped enough, people like David Ackles , who could well be hyped as much as I've been. But once you're successful, they're going to try to get as much hype going as possible. The X Factor UK is a cruise ship show. I've got nothing against the people who go on - good luck to them.

But I hate how they're treated. They're given an awful sense of stardom and pressure straight away but they're only successful until the next series.

The record companies sell a lot of records and those people are gone. It's cruel. Will Young is the best thing that's ever come out of those shows. He has proved himself. But it's no way to find talent. I want to hear new songwriters, people who are creating their own stuff, not just singing my songs every week. I tried to commit suicide one day. It was a very Woody Allen-type suicide.

I turned on the gas and left all the windows open. An overview of my career is usually Watford Football Club But the music was pretty phenomenal, you know.

Fame attracts lunatics. Two of them shot outside their houses. None of this would have happened if they hadn't been famous. I never had a bodyguard, ever, until Gianni died. I'm at that stage where I don't think I can write pop music anymore. I can't sit down and do a proper rock song. It was okay when I was 25 or 26, but not anymore.

I like to do my little side projects like Scissor Sisters and have fun, but I don't think Elton John will be putting any pop singles out. Lennon John Lennon and McCartney Paul McCartney - there's no question of it, no one will ever equal the quality of the songs they wrote.

Forget Rodgers Richard Rodgers and Hammerstein Oscar Hammerstein II , people will probably say 'Well, come on', but for the amount of songs they wrote, those two people were the finest songwriters of this century by far. Everyone makes all the money off The X Factor UK and sells the records but it's the cart before the horse.

What's the psychological damage going to be when you've humped and dumped them, and the next one comes along? They're a bit like products, to be honest with you.

They're products, and the record comes out at Christmas, and it's always No. Why aren't they touring? Who's managing these people? It's phenomenal and will be absolutely huge. You can't stop her - she's a freight train, she's a great writer and a great performer. This woman was the queen of disco and so much more.

Her records sound as good today as they ever did. That she has never been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a total disgrace, especially when I see the second-rate talent that has been inducted. I should be dead, six feet under, in a wooden box. I should have contracted HIV in the s and died in the s, just like Freddie Mercury , Rock Hudson and many friends and loved ones. Freddie told me he had AIDS soon after he was diagnosed in I was devastated.

I'd seen what the disease had done to so many of my other friends. I knew exactly what it was going to do to Freddie. As did he. He knew death, agonizing death, was coming. Alicia Keys , Dave Grohl and Sam Smith were among the artists who performed from their homes for the benefit.

John met his longtime partner David Furnish at a dinner party in The pair got married in a civil ceremony on December 21, — the same day the Civil Partnership Act went into effect. With the help of a surrogate, the couple welcomed their first son, Zachary Furnish-John, in December , and welcomed their second child, Elijah Joseph Daniel Furnish-John, in January Nine years after their civil ceremony, on December 21, , the couple wed after laws allowing gay marriage took effect the same year in Britain.

John was previously married to Renate Blauel from to We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!

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By John and Taupin had shifted to a more rock-and-roll mode. Critics lauded the album, and by the summer of , with the album's touching ballad "Your Song" from the album climbing the charts in England and the United States, John was on his way to stardom. John's fame accelerated rapidly after he began performing in the United States in , starting with a gig at the Troubadour Club in Los Angeles.

He hid his shyness on stage by assuming an outrageous stage personality, wearing outlandish clothes and leaping around as he played the piano. The result was electric, and he became a pop sensation as he performed in other rock halls across the United States. His increasing visibility also helped his album move up the charts on the American hit parade.

By the time John returned to England, he was a major star there as well. John reached the top ten with Madman Across the Water.

Meanwhile, his concert attire grew more and more outlandish, as he pranced onstage wearing everything from huge feather boas to simulated astronaut suits. One of the most endearing melodies of the album, and perhaps of his career, was the number-two hit "Daniel. His next album, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, sold two million copies in the United States within six months of its release in the fall of That album produced another number-one hit with "Bennie and the Jets.

Davey Johnstone came on board as guitarist in John's albums also became known for elaborate packaging, which included photography and lyric booklets as well as expensively produced gatefold cover artwork.

In John once again proved his skill at shifting between gentle and raucous with Caribou, whose melodies ranged from the sensitive "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" to the foot-stomping "The Bitch is Back.

John's string of hits in also included his rollicking version of the Who's "Pinball Wizard. The album yielded two moderately successful hit singles, "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," which recounted a suicide attempt by John after the breakup of an affair, and "Meal Ticket," which may be the hardest-rocking song John ever recorded. After the release of Captain Fantastic, there was a change in personnel in John's band, with Johnston remaining, and the addition of Quaye, Roger Pope, and bassist Kenny Pasarelli for his album Rock of the Westies.

That year also proved to be pivotal on a personal level, as John admitted to his own bisexuality in an interview in Rolling Stone magazine. Citing exhaustion as a factor, John curtailed his busy concert schedule as well as his composing after Strains in the John-Taupin partnership developed following the release of the double album Blue Moves in , and Taupin began working with other musicians, including Alice Cooper and Jefferson Starhip. John worked with lyricist Gary Osborne for his release A Single Man, and in he realized his dream of recording with legendary Philadelphia soul producer Thom Bell.

The next few years were quiet by John standards and short on hits, but he still drew big crowds to his concert appearances. He had an operation to remove nodes from his vocal cords in early , but it seemed to have a minimal effect on his singing career. John revealed that he had been abusing alcohol and other drugs for many years, and he sought treatment for his addictions at the Parkside Lutheran Hospital starting in A more restrained John still captivated his fans, as he proved with his number-eight charting album The One in The next year he embarked on a concert world tour, seeming to have found a renewed source of performance energy.

In he began work on a musical with Tim Rice, and showed no signs of retiring. In August of , after Diana, Princess of Wales was fatally injured in a car crash in Paris, her sister, Lady Sarah McCorquodale, invited John to perform at the funeral, and he again teamed with Taupin, who quickly revised the lyrics to "Candle in the Wind" for Elton to sing at the funeral. The advent of the third millennium found John continuing with his career and his philanthropic endeavors. He contributed compositions and soundtrack to the DreamWorks animated feature Road to El Dorado, which was released in Additionally, John was heard on Earl Scruggs and Friends which marked Scruggs's first recorded release in 17 years.

He again teamed with Taupin and earned his 35th gold record certification for the album Songs from the West Coast. The latter is yet another collaboration with Taupin. An honest assessment of John's career would place him among the top talents in pop music of the contemporary era.