Elton John
speaker
119 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Mar 2025
Elton John’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
So that night, thank God, the epiphany came that night. And I went home and, you know, dodged the bullet, as it were. But I still didn't have sex for a couple of years, two or three years later.
Well, you know, a lot of rock musicians go into rock music to pull girls. That's one of the big attractions. Well, we can play on stage and we can flirt with the girls and then we can go backstage and then we can have them, we can take them home and we can have sex with them. That was never my motive. I was just wanting to play music. Sex wasn't anything I was thinking about.
I was just wanting to play music. I was so obsessed with music, nothing entered my head apart from that.
Well, I was getting fed up with Long John Baldy playing to cabaret people who were eating chicken and chips and not caring about the music. And I thought, I didn't become a musician for this. Maybe I'd written a couple of songs for Bluesology that were recorded, and the lyrics were awful, but I wrote the melody. And this audition for Liberty Records was just, I thought...
Maybe I can be a songwriter. I had no intentions of being an Elton John superstar or whatever. I just thought maybe I can write music. I went to the audition. I said, I do sing, but I don't sing much. But I can write songs, but I'm a terrible lyricist. And hence, he gave me the envelope, which was, you know, could have been any envelope.
And it was Bernie's lyrics, which I read on the train going home. I didn't have any... ambitions at that time to become someone who made their own records and became a star, I just thought, well, maybe if I leave the band, I can become a songwriter. And that would be fun. And I'm still in the music business. So it was just part of the process of the serendipity that happened to me that...
If I hadn't have gone to that meeting, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you now. And then you look back and think, how did I have the courage to go to that meeting when I was chubby, I had no self-esteem, I was shy, but anything was better than playing to people who were eating chicken and chips while you were playing.
It was because in my teenage years, I wasn't allowed to wear anything fashionable at all. No pointy-toed shoes, no chiseled-toed shoes, no fashionable coats. So when I actually left home… And started, you know, I think that was the leap, leaving home and beginning to earn my own wage and keeping myself and supporting myself. But I decided to live my teenage years in my 20s.
And, you know, I made up for lost time pretty quickly. And I just, I went hell for leather for it. And I just had such a great time because I was cocooned in boring clothes.
That was my mother who did that. My father and my mother should never have gotten married. They got married very quickly after the war, which a lot of people did. They were totally unsuited to each other. My dad was in the Air Force and was a way a lot. My mom worked very, very hard in shops and also later in life at the Royal Air Force as well.
And I was the product of – I don't know how many times they must have had sex. I don't think they must have had sex very often but I was the product of their marriage. The 50s was an incredibly tough time to grow up in. It was after the war. It was very conservative.
So if you were in a marriage and you wanted to get out of it, it was very tough to get out of it because divorce was frowned on socially. I can remember my Uncle Red coming when my parents were thinking of getting divorced saying, you can't get divorced. What will the next door neighbors say? That was what it was like. I knew nothing about sex, nothing. I was seen and not heard.
Children were seen and not heard. I loved – I had the – wonderful upbringing with my grandmother. And my mother could be so much fun, but she was mercurial. And they were like oil and water, the two of them. The nice thing about it is that they got, when they did get divorced and my mother found Fred and my dad found Edna, is that they found the love of their lives. And that I'm very happy about.
But the bit in between was hard to take because I dreaded my dad coming home because it would be a row immediately. And then I would retreat to my room You know, look at my books, look at my records, look at my toys. And funnily enough, I mean, I just I found love of inanimate objects because inanimate objects, which I kept in pristine condition, couldn't harm me or talk back to me.
So I always loved collecting things.
Books, records, toys, dinky toys. But mostly records and books, which I never lent out to anybody because I still have my books.
Yeah, I'm an addict. It was the instigation of being an addict. But it was because I felt safe with the objects and not with my parents. And so...
And it gave me a determination, you know, with my dad not wanting me to be anything to do with rock and roll when Elvis Presley came in, that I would be determined to prove to him that my mother who took my side and said, yeah, you should do what he does and let him do the music because he loves it. And was very supportive. My dad, of course, hated it.
And I've been trying to prove to my dad that it's been okay ever since. So it gave me the determination to make something of myself. And it's just prolonged in my life. He's been dead for over 30 years. And I'm still kind of doing that. It's like, well, dad, I hope you're proud now. And it's crazy.
He was a trumpet player in a band, yeah.
Showing 81–100 of 119 · page 5 of 6
← Previous
Next →