IT is unlikely that I can write anything about flamboyant pop icon Elton John that hasn't been written many times before. With Me, Myself And I – broadcast on Saturday primetime, as if anything else could ever do – it was equally unlikely that ITV would show anything that hadn't already been beamed into our living rooms with car-crash abandon many times before.
Every grubby rock in Elton’s – hey, after the amount of money I’ve spent on his CDs I’m claiming first-name status – life has been turned and re-turned, and the dirt which lurked beneath dug and dished, time and time again, often before an incredulou
s global audience.
The former Reginald Dwight has truly shunted the notion of “fame” to a new high – or low, as many (including my mum, who “can’t stand him”) might say.
And let’s face it: he loves every second.
Me, Myself And I did the old queen proud. The revealing, 90-minute film took a look at an eventful life and mostly steered clear of previous, more sensational coverage.
The format was simple, if surreal. Whisked away from a live show, of which he still plays a hundred a year, the “Rocket Man” was secreted in a sparse studio. Here he talked us through archive footage of a tumultuous career, discussed the public and private events which have been making headlines ever since he first burst onto the music scene in the late Sixties and, with the aid of Forrest Gump-style greenscreen, was reacquainted with old friends including Freddie Mercury and Diana, Princess of Wales.
From Daniel to Your Song, from Renate to David, from Watford FC to the AIDS Foundation, it was all here. And Elton remained charming and candid throughout.
He spoke of his early career and that serendipitous meeting with Bernie Taupin, the lyrical genius who has been his writing partner since album number one.
He reminisced about his first American tour, and how its initial, bet-hedging six dates led to wild, unprecedented success.
He opened up about that bumpy love life, including a failed marriage to German music engineer Renate Blauel which perplexed associates certain of his homosexuality.
He cast a wry eye over the hedonistic Eighties and early Nineties, ably assisted by clips from long-time partner David Furnish’s infamous Tantrums And Tiaras.
And of course he rued his relationship with drink and drugs, which, in its darkest hour, had him chain-snorting cocaine and downing massive quantities of booze.
At the end of this long road the entertainer appears to have finally found some peace. His relationship with Furnish has brought some much-needed stability, the Canadian film-maker having been credited for helping turn John’s life around.
Professional success endures with the hugely successful soundtrack to Billy Elliot The Musical, and a week spent at the bedside of a boy dying from AIDS after receiving an infected blood transfusion revealed a caring, sharing Elton previously unfamiliar to television audiences.
But even as he enters his sixtieth year there is still plenty of time for him to mess it all up again. That is the nature of the beast that is rock ’n’ roll.
But let us pray that the tantrums, tiaras and temazepam are long behind him and that the good knight of pop spends his remaining years doing what he does best: pumping that piano and singing his Herculean heart out.
The full article contains 583 words and appears in News Letter newspaper.
