Pop sensation Elton John wrapped up his farewell tour in 2023, only to pop up in a surprise concert at the October 2024 New York City premiere of the new documentary, "Elton John: Never Too Late." Still, as John reduces his public output — and as that documentary drops on the Disney+ streaming platform — we thought our listeners might like to hear again from the British music legend himself. Weekly bonus episodes like this, curated from our vast archive, are usually only available for our Fresh Air+ supporters. But today, in the spirit of giving, we're making this episode available to all. Not a Fresh Air+ supporter yet? Find out more, and join for yourself, at https://plus.npr.org/freshair. Listen to Elton John in 2013: https://n.pr/3BoEEYT| Listen to Elton John in 2019: https://n.pr/49ssSJG | Listen to 40+ years of Fresh Air's archives at https://FreshAirArchive.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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Hi, it's Terry Gross here with a special bonus episode. It's the season of giving, and in that spirit, we thought we'd give all our podcast listeners something extra. Bonus episodes like this one, curated selections from our archive, are usually only available for our Fresh Air Plus supporters. Today, we're giving everyone a chance to hear it.
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Today we have two interviews I recorded with Elton John. After a career of more than 50 years of extravagance and extraordinary popularity, Elton John finished his farewell tour last year. But he performed at Lincoln Center in October of this year at the premiere of the documentary Elton John, Never Too Late. That documentary just started streaming on Disney+.
Elton John's music spans genres and generations, from Rocketman to the soundtrack for Disney's animated feature The Lion King. In 2019, he executive produced a biopic of his own life called Rocketman. It was a box office hit and won John and his longtime collaborator, lyricist Bernie Taupin, the Academy Award for Best Original Song. I spoke with Elton John twice on Fresh Air.
We listened to excerpts from both interviews, starting with the more recent one recorded in 2019 when he'd just written his memoir titled Me. We talked about an early lesson John learned about handling stardom, his difficult childhood, how he became addicted to shopping and collecting, and his early musical influences. So the book has a very candid description of your life.
Before we get into some of the candid details that you write about in the book, you were in the band early in your career as the keyboard player in Long John Baldry's band. The band was called Bluesology. You tell this really funny story at the beginning of the book where he had just had a big hit.
So now he was famous and, you know, young women were coming to the concert and kind of like really getting getting excited and screaming. And he says on mic, he says, why don't you say what he said?
Well, he said, they were grabbing the microphone. He said, if you break my microphone, you'll pay me 50 pounds. And I'm going, oh, John, that's not the way to handle this situation.
What did that teach you about stardom and how to handle it?
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