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Category: Elton John

  • How Elton John Helped Robbie Williams Get Sober

    How Elton John Helped Robbie Williams Get Sober

    “Elton is the most loving, generous man you could imagine and he has helped so many people over the years.”

    On an upcoming episode of The Jonathan Ross Show, pop star Robbie Williams revealed how his friend Sir Elton John helped him get sober 19 years ago. 

    “He really tried to help. In the early days when I was first getting sober, there was a week until I had to go to Rehab and I had two vocals to do on my first album, one of them was ‘Angels’ and one of them was ‘Let Me Entertain You,’ Williams explained, according to the Times Herald.

    He continues, “I was going to do these vocals then go to rehab. Elton invited me to his house to listen to the work that I’d done so far.”

    Drinking Game Gone Awry

    On the morning of his visit to John’s house, Williams decided to play a “game” where he visited every pub he passed and drank a half-pint of beer.

    “I’d had ten half pints before I’d got to the studio. I ended up under the mixing desk, had a bit of red wine and then I knew I had to get to Elton’s for three o’clock.”

    He was wasted by the time he arrived at the “Rocketman” singer’s house. When Elton saw the state of Williams he jumped into action, trying to arrange help for his friend.

    Williams says he explained that he was set to go to rehab the following week but Elton wasn’t having it and demanded that the singer go to rehab immediately.

    Robbie resisted, until he couldn’t. 

    Sobering Up In Elton’s Kitchen

    “It was a big moment being in Elton John’s kitchen sobering up over some carrots thinking ‘How am I going to get myself out of this mess?” Williams recalled.

    John then took Williams to his house in Windsor while he and his husband David Furnish figured out to how to get Williams help as soon as possible. 

    “I wake up but I haven’t opened my eyes and there’s a knock on my shoulder and I look and there’s Elton and David Furnish and a doctor and a psychiatrist and they are here to take me away.”

    Now, Williams is grateful for everything that his 19 years of sobriety has afforded him.  

    “It’s nice when you realize how far you’ve come and who you are now as opposed to the person you were and all those thoughts and fears about losing yourself and becoming a non person are really untrue. It was just a beautiful moment,” Williams said.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Elton John: Sobriety Lit The "Pilot Light In My Soul"

    Elton John: Sobriety Lit The "Pilot Light In My Soul"

    “I so wish I’d never taken a drug. But in the end, unless I’d have got sober, I wouldn’t be the person I am today,” John told CBS News. 

    Legendary singer/songwriter Sir Elton John told CBS News that he wished he’d never taken drugs, but also acknowledged that he would never have achieved the personal happiness he has attained since gaining sobriety 29 years ago, including marriage, children, Academy and Tony Awards, and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

    New Autobiography

    John, who was promoting his recent autobiography Me, said that his dependency on drugs and alcohol at the height of his fame in the 1970s and 1980s “nearly destroyed his soul,” but discovered by admitting that he needed help, he was able to reignite the “pilot light in [his] soul.” 

    Speaking with CBS correspondent Tracy Smith, John recalled the first time he used cocaine, which took place in 1974. The experience made him physically sick, but as John noted, “I wanted to join in so much and be part of the gang, [so] I went back and asked for another line.”

    “Isn’t that crazy?” he said. “But that’s what being a drug addict is – crazy.”

    His Friendship With Ryan White

    Drug dependency – one of several addictions that John battled, including alcoholism, eating disorders and sex addiction – left John with a spiritual center that felt “black, like a charred piece of steak,” as he told CBS News. But his friendship with Indiana teenager Ryan White, who contracted AIDS via a blood transfusion in 1984, helped him find the strength to regain direction for his life.

    “I had the luck to meet Ryan White and his family,” John said at Harvard University in 2017, where he was honored with the Peter J. Gomes Humanitarian Award for his work with the Elton John AIDS Foundation. “I wanted to help them, but they ended up helping me much more. Ryan was the spark that helped me recover from my addictions and start the AIDS foundation. Within six months, I became sober, and clean.”

    “I said, ‘I need help,’” John recalled to CBS News. “And suddenly, a little pilot light in my soul came along, going, ‘Yes, I’m still here. I’m still here. I’m still here. I can be rescued.”

    John’s career in the nearly three decades since that date has been as remarkable as the height of his pop stardom, which included worldwide sales of 300 million albums, 27 Top 10 hits and nine No. 1 singles. Knighted in 1998 for his charitable work – which has raised more than $450 million – John also netted three Oscar nominations, including a 1995 win, a Tony Award for “Aida” in 2000, and joined the ranks of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Songwriters Hall of Fame (with Bernie Taupin), Grammy Hall of Fame, and received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2004.

    “I so wish I’d never taken a drug,” said John to CBS News. “But in the end, unless I’d have got sober, I wouldn’t be the person I am today.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Elton John Crashed A Rolling Stones Concert While High On Cocaine

    Elton John Crashed A Rolling Stones Concert While High On Cocaine

    In his new memoir, the sober icon recalls some of the shenanigans he got into in the midst of his cocaine addiction.

    Most people in recovery have embarrassing stories about what they did while high or drunk, and Elton John is no different.

    The legendary singer, who has been sober for 29 years, recalled in his new memoir the time he crashed a Rolling Stones concert because he was high on cocaine. It was 1975, and John was joining the Stones on stage to sing one song — “Honkey Tonk Women.”

    However, when that ended, John was convinced that he should stay put for the rest of the set.

    “If I hadn’t been coked out of my head when the Rolling Stones turned up in Colorado and asked me to come onstage with them, I might have just performed “Honky Tonk Women,” waved to the crowd and made my exit,” John wrote in Me, which is out later this month. The Daily Mail published an excerpt of the book.

    A Keyboardist Named Elton

    John continued, “Instead, I decided it was going so well, I’d stay on and jam along to the rest of their set, without first taking the precaution of asking the Stones if they wanted an auxiliary keyboard player. For a while, I thought Keith Richards kept staring at me because he was awestruck by the brilliance of my improvised contributions to their oeuvre. After a few songs, it finally penetrated my brain that the expression on his face wasn’t really suggestive of profound musical appreciation.”

    It was then that John realized his mistake. “I quickly scuttled off, noting as I went that Keith was still staring at me in a manner that suggested we’d be discussing this later, and decided it might be best if I didn’t hang around for the after-show party,” he wrote.

    His Relationship With Cocaine

    John then went on to explain his fascination with cocaine.

    “There was something more to cocaine than the way it made me feel,” he wrote. “Cocaine had a certain cachet about it. It was fashionable and exclusive. Doing it was like becoming a member of an elite little clique, that secretly indulged in something edgy, dangerous and illicit. Pathetically enough, that really appealed to me. I’d become successful and popular, but I never felt cool.”

    In the late ’80s, John said that his partner at the time, Hugh Williams, prompted him to get help.

    “I noticed he was shaking. ‘You’re a drug addict,’ he said. ‘You’re an alcoholic. You’re a food addict and a bulimic. You’re a sex addict. You’re co-dependent.’” John wrote.

    At that point, he decided to seek treatment for all his addictions: ”Getting help wasn’t straightforward, as I needed to be treated for three addictions at once: cocaine, alcohol and food,” he wrote. 

    Nearly three decades later, John has maintained his sobriety, and still stays away from people who are doing cocaine.

    “I never felt like having a line, and I still can’t bear being anywhere near people who are doing it,” he writes. “The second I walk into a room, I know. I can just sense people are on it — from the way they’re talking, their voices pitched slightly louder than they need to be, not really listening — and how they’re behaving. I just leave — because, quite frankly, it’s a drug that makes people act like assholes. I wish I’d realized that 45 years ago.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Elton John Celebrates 29 Years Of Sobriety

    Elton John Celebrates 29 Years Of Sobriety

    The icon shared a pic of his sobriety coin on social media to mark the occasion.

    Sir Elton John has reached another sober milestone. On Monday (July 29) the iconic singer-songwriter celebrated 29 years of sobriety.

    Sharing a photo of his sobriety coin on social media, he said in the caption, “29 years ago today, I was a broken man. I finally summoned up the courage to say 3 words that would change my life: ‘I need help.’ Thank you to all the selfless people who have helped me on my journey through sobriety. I am eternally grateful.”

    The music and style icon struggled with drugs and alcohol as a young rising star. He described being in a “drug-fueled haze in the ‘80s” before he realized it was time to stop.

    “I always said cocaine was the drug that made me open up. I could talk to people,” said John in a 2012 interview with NPR. “But then it became the drug that closed me down.” Ultimately cocaine would cause the musician to isolate himself, “which is the end of the world, really.”

    Meeting Ryan White

    In his memoir Love Is the Cure, John detailed how meeting Ryan White, a young man who contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion, encouraged him to quit using drugs and alcohol.

    “It got me to realize how out of whack my life was,” said John. “I knew that I had to change. And after he died, I realized that I only had two choices: I was either going to die or I was going to live, and which one did I want to do? And then I said those words, ‘I’ll get help’… And my life turned around. Ridiculous for a human being to take 16 years to say, ‘I need help.’”

    John acknowledged how his mindset has transformed in recovery.

    “What I couldn’t do when I was an addict was communicate, except when I was on cocaine I thought I could but I talked rubbish,” he said, according to Variety. “I have a confrontation problem which I don’t have anymore because I learned if you don’t communicate and you don’t talk about things then you’re never going to find a solution.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Sobbing with Sir Elton While Watching “Rocketman”

    Sobbing with Sir Elton While Watching “Rocketman”

    John’s seeking earned him fame and financial success and love from millions of fans, but it wasn’t enough for his emotionally starved heart.

    To me, a sign of a good movie is one that makes me cry at least three or four times. I sobbed during Rocketman. And apparently Sir Elton did the same. 

    In a piece he wrote the week before the movie came out, he said, “I was in the cinema for about 15 minutes before I started crying…really sobbing, in that loud unguarded emotionally destroyed way that makes people turn around and look at you with alarmed expressions.” 

    I never realized how much I connected with Elton John until now.

    The movie opens with John (played by Taron Egerton) decked out in an orange sequined satanic-like costume with magnificent horns and wings, striding down the hall of a treatment center. He barges into an AA meeting, the same 12-step group that helped get me sober. He then spouts the familiar introduction, “I’m Elton Hercules John and I’m an alcoholic,” followed by a list of his other addictions: cocaine, weed, sex, prescription drugs, bulimia, and shopping. 

    I’ve seen lots of movies about addicted personalities, but this is my new favorite. It just so happens that Elton and I not only belong to that same addiction club, but we also got sober the same year. 

    As vastly different as our lives have been—and I sense I’ll get some heat for this—we seem to have a lot in common, as many addicts do. We both came from an era rife with emotionally stilted fathers and discontented mothers. His dad was a quiet, reserved man, as was mine, while his mom was more outgoing. His mother seemed to despise his dad for his uncommunicative ways; their unhappy relationship was replicated in my own damaged family. 

    The scene at his Middlesex dinner table was painfully familiar and often the same one we had at my home in New Jersey. Angry parents and their innocent children, all who just wanted love. Unfortunately, the baggage that occupied the table was never addressed in a reasonable way. This was one part of the film that resonated deeply with me, making me (and Elton) sob. While my parents stayed miserably together, his split up, with a poignant scene of his father leaving the family without giving his son a hug. It’s an image many of us who grew up with addiction can relate to. 

    In a 2011 interview, John said of his dad, “He left us, remarried and had another family, and by all accounts was a great Dad to them. It wasn’t children, it was me.”

    My mom once told me, in the heat of an argument we had when I was 12, that my dad never liked me. She said he never picked me up as a baby and didn’t come home at night until I was in bed. This type of emotional abuse plays unconsciously on a still-developing brain and leaves lasting psychic wounds. When I finally found the numbing qualities of booze and drugs, I searched for a father figure in the men I pursued. I sensed it was the same for Elton. 

    As children, we all seek attention and validation, and when we don’t receive it from our parents, we’ll find other—frequently destructive—ways to get it. John’s seeking earned him fame and financial success and love from millions of fans, but it wasn’t enough for his emotionally starved heart.

    After the scene of young Reginald (Elton John was born Reginald Dwight) dancing with an ensemble in the cul-de-sac where he lived, he’s mostly portrayed as a shy, somewhat lonely child. Though extremely gifted, he doubted himself at every turn. As a child, I was so shy I’d hide in corners at family gatherings. And I still tend to doubt myself today. Our parents knew little of propping their children up and confidence was hard to come by, which made the insecurity-relieving properties of drugs and alcohol even more appealing. Like Elton, I discovered the buffering effects of substances as I forged my way into a terrifying world. 

    The movie’s use of the 12-step meeting as a story-telling vehicle was effective, with Elton gradually losing bits of the devil costume and the persona he used as a mask as he rambles on about family, revealing more of his wounded self each time, which I also did in early meetings. One of the ways we heal is by telling our stories, by venting and listening to others tell theirs. Identifying with someone else’s pain helps us to heal our own, releasing some of the shame that comes with things we did to ourselves and others while we were using. 

    Aside from the sad childhood memories, the part that brought the most tears for me was hearing still-Reggie Dwight play the beginnings of what became “Your Song,” the first Taupin and John hit and the piece that my Almost Cher impersonator friend, Helene, sang to me on my birthday while kneeling at my feet. She sang just for me, and for those moments provided some of the love I missed as a child.

    As the movie ends, we find out recovery’s been good to Sir Elton, as it has been for me. 

    We’ve both forgiven our parents and have been sober for 29 years. And yes, we’re both still standing.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Elton John Biopic "Rocketman" Gets Childhood Trauma and Addiction Right

    Elton John Biopic "Rocketman" Gets Childhood Trauma and Addiction Right

    Vice’s Ryan Bassil writes that the movie understands how childhood trauma and addiction right.

    The minds behind Rocketman, the new Elton John biopic, understand how childhood trauma can lead to addiction, writes Vice’s Ryan Bassil.

    Rocketman’s narrative is anchored in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting where Taron Egerton’s fictional Elton John shares his experiences with addiction.

    “I’m Elton Hercules John and I’m an alcoholic, cocaine addict, sex addict, bulimic, shopaholic…” Egerton says in the movie.

    The film has Egerton’s Elton John reflect on major events in his life in the AA meeting, providing audiences with insight into how traumatic events, especially in childhood, can ripple into substance abuse problems later down the line.

    In Bassil’s take on the film, he notes how well the film’s narrative, and Elton John’s real life, is reflected in the writings of Dr. Gabor Maté, author of In The Realm Of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction.

    Maté defines addiction as “any behavior that a person craves, finds temporary relief or pleasure in but suffers negative consequences as a result of, and yet has difficulty giving up.”

    This is apparent in the movie and real-life Elton John, who spoke on his addictive behaviors in an interview with Variety earlier this month.

    “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,” John said in the interview.

    Maté points to childhood trauma as a major factor in addiction.

    “Childhood trauma is the template for addiction—any addiction,” Maté writes. “All addictions are attempts to escape the deep pain of the hurt child, attempts temporarily soothing but ultimately futile.”

    Bassil points out that this narrative is present in the film, shown to the audience in the form of a young Elton John dealing with abuse at the hands of his father and his parents’ divorce. The real-life Elton also reflected on his childhood trauma in the Variety interview.

    “I’ve come to understand—as you get older you understand—the circumstances they went through. I’m not angry or bitter about that whatsoever, but it did leave a scar and that scar took a long time to heal—and maybe it will never heal totally,” he said.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Elton John Reflects On Sobriety As “Rocketman” Movie Makes Its Debut

    Elton John Reflects On Sobriety As “Rocketman” Movie Makes Its Debut

    “Life is full of pitfalls, even when you’re sober. I can deal with them now because I don’t have to run away and hide,” John said.

    The new film Rocketman details singer Elton John’s life, including his drug, sex, and shopping addictions that hounded him earlier in his career. Despite his stature as an artist and musician, John says he still finds himself in the throes of self doubt.

    “I think every artist does [have self-doubt],” John said in an interview with Variety. “Every creative artist does have doubt and has moments of, ‘Am I doing the right thing? Am I good enough?’ And that’s what turns us into monsters as well because I think you become unreasonable and of course the chemical substances and the alcohol doesn’t help anything, and you lose touch with reality.”

    John admitted that his life spiraled out of control as he began to settle into a lifestyle of fame and fortune.

    “The life I was leading, flying on the Starship [his legendary private plane], living in beautiful houses, buying things left, right and center — it was not a normal life, not the sort of life I came from anyway,” said John. “I lost complete touch with that. I vowed when I did change my life that that would never happen again.”

    The “Tiny Dancer” singer also revealed that some days, he wasn’t sure whether he’d make it to tomorrow.

    “There were times I was having chest pains or staying up for three days at a time,” said John. “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.”

    These days, the musician is married to David Furnish, with whom he is raising two sons. He’s only made it this far because he fought to live.

    “I am a survivor,” he said. “I’ve survived a lot of things. Life is full of pitfalls, even when you’re sober. I can deal with them now because I don’t have to run away and hide.”

    John says that the most valuable ability he’s learned from sobriety is communication.

    “What I couldn’t do when I was an addict was communicate, except when I was on cocaine I thought I could but I talked rubbish,” John recounted. “I have a confrontation problem which I don’t have any more because I learned if you don’t communicate and you don’t talk about things then you’re never going to find a solution.”

    The origin of his troubles may be traced back to his complicated relationship with his parents, who split when he was a child.

    “I’ve come to understand — as you get older you understand — the circumstances they went through,” said John. “I’m not angry or bitter about that whatsoever, but it did leave a scar and that scar took a long time to heal — and maybe it will never heal totally.” 

    View the original article at thefix.com