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Elton John’s credentials as a True Superhero are impeccable; not just because of Rocketman, the glitzy 2019 Hollywood biopic of his many superheroic exploits, but also the trail that he has blazed through the entertainment industry since the 1970s, clearing a path for countless other gay entertainers following in his wake. It’s been a rocky road, along which Elton has had to battle his own personal demons as well as those of a deeply homophobic culture, but like all True Superheroes he has not just prevailed, but done so with tremendous style, and even taken the role a bit further than most with some extraordinary costume work!

From Reginald to Elton

Elton John was born in the London suburb of Pinner in 1947 and given the less superhero-worthy name of Reginald Dwight by his parents. His family were musical but poor, and as a small child he was raised in his grandmother’s council house. It was here that he first learned how to play the piano, displaying a prodigious talent for the instrument at an early age and winning a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music when he was just 11 years old, but his father, Stanley, did not approve of his desire to become a musician. Stanley was a strict disciplinarian who wanted to steer his son toward a more conventional career, but Stanley was rarely home and had little time for his son. Elton’s parents divorced when he was 14 and a year later he formed his first band, Bluesology, with help from his mother.

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Bluesology quickly outgrew sleepy Pinner. In 1963, they were hired as regular weekly performers at The Establishment, a fashionable nightclub and comedy venue in London’s West End. By 1965 they had turned professional and were traveling around Europe as a backing band for US soul stars such as Patti LaBelle, the Drifters and the Ink Spots. Bluesology were also recording their own material but, by John’s admission, his efforts as a solo songwriter were lacking. The music was great but he couldn’t write lyrics! Fortunately, this problem was remedied in 1967 when an A&R man called Ray Williams introduced Reginald Dwight to a young lyricist called Bernie Taupin, who would be his writing partner for the rest of his career. Soon after, Reginald Dwight jettisoned his clunky name for one more fitting of a True Superhero pop star - Elton Hercules John. 

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The origins of Rocket Man

Things didn’t immediately take off for the songwriting team of Elton and Bernie; they released their first single I’ve Been Loving You in 1968, but this was almost immediately withdrawn from sale after a poor start. An album, Empty Sky, followed in 1969, and while it was warmly received by critics it made little impression on the UK pop charts and would not see a US release for several years. The pair then teamed up with producer Gus Dudgeon to record their second album, Elton John. No singles were initially planned for this release, indeed the expectations for the album were so low that Dudgeon later admitted it “wasn’t really made to launch Elton as an artist; it was really made as a very glamorous series of demos for other people to record his songs.” One track in particular was earmarked for another band: the American rock group Three Dog Night recorded Your Song as an album track, but rather than release it as a single themselves they encouraged Elton to put it out. Your Song was originally released as a B-side but quickly became a radio hit and was eventually released as a single in its own right, reaching the Top 10 on both sides of the Atlantic and cementing Elton as a global star. John Lennon later told Rolling Stone: “I remember hearing Your Song' and remember thinking, 'Great, that's the first new thing that's happened since we happened.'” 

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Over the next few years John became one of the biggest stars on Earth, releasing seven consecutive Billboard number one albums, including the career-defining Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, which alone has sold over 30m copies worldwide. His flamboyant concerts and remarkable on-stage costumes earned him as much notoriety as his records and he helped define the look of the 1970s through his extravagant performances, but in the midst of all this success and largesse Elton was struggling with adversity. 

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Demons within and without

Elton’s battles with cocaine and alcohol are well documented. He first tried cocaine in 1974 and it quickly consumed him; he states in his autobiography Me: “My appetite for the stuff was unbelievable - enough to attract comment in the circles I was moving in. Given that I was a rock star spending a lot of time in 70s LA, this was a not inconsiderable feat.’" His dependence on drugs and alcohol lasted until he finally got sober in 1990 and these addictions took an enormous toll on his health. As he told Variety in 2019: “There were times I was having chest pains or staying up for three days at a time… I used to have spasms and be found on the floor and they’d put me back to bed and half an hour later I’d be doing the same. It’s crazy.”

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During this period, Elton was also struggling to manage public perceptions of his sexuality. It was all but impossible to be a publicly gay star in the deeply homphobic 1970s, but in 1976 Elton took the first steps toward coming out when he told Rolling Stone that he was bisexual. This did nothing to stop speculation about his private life and he was subjected to constant homphobic innuendo from the tabloid press, culminating in an infamous libel case against British tabloid The Sun in 1987 in which he was awarded record-breaking damages of over £1m ($1.2m). Five years later, he took the brave step - in what was still a deeply homophobic landscape - of publicly coming out as gay in another interview with Rolling Stone. 

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Coming out fighting

1992 was also the year that Elton founded the Elton John AIDS Foundation after losing two of his friends to the disease in the preceding year. Elton had been heavily involved in fundraising efforts to fight the virus from 1986 onward but after coming out it was easier for him to campaign publicly on the issue. Over the years the Foundation has provided enormous support to HIV relief projects around the globe, funded not only through John’s personal wealth but also extraordinarily successful fundraising efforts; for example, since 1993 the Foundation has run an Academy Awards’ party on the evening of the Oscars which has raised over $200m for the cause.

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Elton’s contribution to the fight against AIDS has not just been financial; by lending his enormous celebrity to the cause he has done a huge amount to help raise awareness of the syndrome. He was also in the forefront of the fight to have gay marraige legalized in the UK, marrying his long-term partner David Furnish on the first day after same-sex civil partnerships were made legal in 2005, and then campaigning for full equality in marriage rights under UK law. As had been the case throughout his career, Elton’s celebrity helped to break down homophobic barriers in UK society, and by 2014 the campaign for full marriage rights was finally successful. Elton and David once again tied the knot at the earliest opportunity, watched once more by the world’s media, but also now by their two sons, Zachary and Elijah.

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Even now, in relatively enlightened times, Sir Elton continues to push boundaries. For example, the 2019 biopic Rocketman was the first film produced by a major Hollywood studio to feature a gay sex scene; while it’s extraordinary that it took so long for that particular first to be achieved, it is fitting that it should be done in a biography of Sir Elton‘s life, given the way that he has consistently pushed boundaries and won acceptance for gay people over the 50 years of his glittering career.

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