Barbara Walters Special

Transcibed by: Bev Vincent

Here is the first part of the Barbara Walters interview with Elton John, televised on March 21, 1994. The first several minutes were a recap of Elton's career, with occasional Q&A interspersed. This was followed by the main interview.

The home is near London and has a name: Woodside. These days, Elton John divides his time between a condominium in Atlanta and here. The vintage art, the collectables, they paint the picture of a proper English gentleman, not the world's most flamboyant rock star. But everything changes.

BW: You sat down at the age of four to play the piano and just played? Boom?

EJ: Yeah, my grandmother -- I lived at my grandmother's house with my mother -- and my auntie and my grandmother used to sit me on their knees and I used to play the piano.

BW: What did you play?

EJ: I think The Skater's Waltz was probably the first thing I ever played.

BW: Can you still play it?

EJ: It was kind of ... (plays with the conscious determination of a child)

Reginald Kenneth Dwight was born 46 years ago in Middlesex, England, to a mother who loved rock and roll, and a father who hated it. Dad wanted Elton to be a banker. Instead, young Reg studied piano at the Royal Academy while picking up spending money playing in the local pubs.

BW: And you played Jolson songs?

EJ: Yup, ummm (plays and sings) Those April showers, that bloom in May...

By 1967 he'd changed his name to Elton John and teamed up with another starving artist, a poet named Bernie Taupin. Bernie wrote the words, Elton the music.

BW: When you and Bernie Taupin wrote the songs, they were his emotions and your music...

EJ: Yeah.

BW: ...are they not touched by your emotions?

EJ: The melodies are my emotions, yeah.

In 1970, Andy Williams introduced Elton to America, playing a simple composition with ageless appeal: Your Song. Success set him free. Normally mild mannered and a bit of an introvert, Elton quickly discovered the joys of wardrobe. The music was different, too. Elton delivered hit after hit of intelligent poetry backed by a piano melody that you couldn't shake.

But by the late 70's, Elton's life began hitting a few dissonant chords. In a 1976 interview in Rolling Stone, he revealed that he was bisexual. The confession was good for his soul, but not for his career. Then, in 1984, he married a pretty recording engineer named Renate Blauel. It lasted only a few years after which Elton seemed to slip away. There were rumors of substance abuse, the hits became less frequent. Goodbye yellow brick road.

Elton checked himself into a rehab center to deal with his bulimia, drug and alcohol addictions. A new man emerged. He sold off much of the massive collection of various items he'd accumulated over the years, shed the costumes, got down to business and back on top of the charts.

The result has been a quiet, melodic rebirth. This year at his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Elton gave the award and the glory to the man who put the words in his mouth, Bernie Taupin. He's just completed work with another lyricist, Tim Rice, on The Lion King. Disney's first animated feature since Aladdin is stunningly beautiful, with songs to match.

Tonight, Elton is hosting an Oscar party in Los Angeles to benefit the enormously successful Elton John Aids Foundation. Only one year old, the foundation, through a variety of events, has already raised over two million dollars for the treatment of AIDS.

As for his rejuvenated career, there's another album in the works as well as an upcoming tour with American piano man, Billy Joel. Things look good.

BW: Looking at you, for people who perhaps have not seen you in a few years, you're wearing this nice attractive suede outfit, nothing outrageous. Is the outrageousness part of it over?

EJ: I'm 47 on the next birthday...

BW: Yeah, now you can be eccentric, you can move on to the next stage...

EJ: I think I'm more eccentric than outrageous. I mean, I just went through those costumes and I had fun doing it. The costumes used to hide a lot, you know. They used to cover up because I was quite large, too. I used to just think, "Well, I'll wear a big outfit and people won't notice how large I am." Of course it accentuated the size and people looked at you more because you looked kind of outrageous.

BW: Were you outrageous as a child?

EJ: No, I was a very shy child. Very timid.

BW: It may just be a coincidence, but all three of the people we're talking with tonight are children of divorce and have been seriously affected by the divorce. Do you think it's an accident that so many performers -- it seems -- are children of divorce?

EJ: Probably not. It's that craving for attention, that wanting to be accepted by both parties. It's a traumatic thing, divorce, for kids. I actually wanted my parents to get divorced because I couldn't stand all of the rows going on. Oh for God's sake! But their rows affected me and then the atmosphere in the house affected me. I thought that I had a lot of resentment against my father. I was frightened of my father as a kid. And all that fear and intimidation - I used to tremble when he came home. The only thing I seemed to get accepted for was playing the piano and singing. I mean, I would go out and it was easy for me to get recognition in front of 20,000 people. I loved it. But then I used to come home and I was left with me again and that wasn't enough. That wasn't enough.

BW: Then in the 80's when everything -- at least superficially -- fell apart, in the 80's you got married. Did you get married to prove that you were not gay?

EJ: No. I got married because I didn't confront the real problem in my life, that I was a drug addict. I thought getting married would change all the unhappiness the drug addiction brought me. And of course I got married to a wonderful woman who loved me...very much. And I loved her but not, obviously, in the physical sense. And I thought it would change it. I thought, "This will change it. I'll now become happy." But the problem was that when I got married I still stuck cocaine up my nose, I still drunk a bottle of scotch a day. Nothing changed.

BW: Cocaine, and scotch. And I heard, like, 10 martinis a day. Is that possible?

EJ: Ten martinis in half an hour!

BW: How could you get out on that stage? Why didn't you walk out and flop over that piano or electric keyboard? How did you walk out?

EJ: I don't know. I have a very strong constitution...

BW: Boy, you must!

EJ: Yeah, I have a very strong constitution and a very stubborn streak.

BW: So you were really "stoned" is the mildest word one could use.

EJ: Yeah, I mean I was on the planet... whatever, I was on my own planet, I think. In fact, the only tangible thing I had left was in my life was my career. It was the only thing I hadn't destroyed. I destroyed my relationship with my family, with my friends and the only thing I hadn't destroyed was my career. And it was still there and I hated the fact that it was still there.

BW: Did you cancel engagements?

EJ: I cancelled Christmas... I cancelled everything. I cancelled... you know... if you'd have done this... you said when you walked into this room that we were supposed to do this nine years ago.

BW: Yes.

EJ: You'd have come all the way over here. You'd have set up in this room. I'd have been upstairs in the bedroom and I'd've said, "No, I'm not coming down."

BW: You talked about the day it changed with someone you cared about. It's an awful big change in one day.

EJ: Somebody that I was in a relationship with, from America, he said that I was a drug addict, that I was an alcoholic, I was bulimic, I was a liar. That I was totally... he didn't leave anything... I mean, it was the whole works. And I sat there and I was trembling and I cried and he cried because he thought that I would just walk out... storm out of the room, which was my normal behavior for someone saying that to me. And I was so relieved. And I said, "Yeah, you're right. I'll go, I'll get help." And since then my life has gotten back... I've started living again.

BW: Are you comfortable now with your sexuality? With your homosexuality?

EJ: Yes.

BW: Do you consider yourself bisexual?

EJ: No.

BW: You consider yourself homosexual?

EJ. Yeah. I've tried it all and I have a lot of great female friends, but if I'm to be totally truthful with you I am a homosexual man.

BW: Are you in love now?

EJ: Yeah, I am.

BW: Can you tell us anything about him?

EJ: Uh...well...only that he is fantastic and has a career of his own, which is very important. I've made a lot of mistakes before...

BW: This is not... the person now is not the person who confronted you and changed you.

EJ: No...I'm being secretive about it because I want to protect him, I want to protect us. But I am exceedingly happy with him and I've found somebody who wants to be with me forever, who is committed and I never really found that before.

BW: What do you think of the whole business with Michael Jackson?

EJ: God. Well, I was kind of involved when Michael came to Britain. I put him in touch with the therapist that he was seeing, when he came to England. Michael came here. Michael sat in this very room, came for lunch.

BW: How is he?

EJ: He was... uh... he was fragile. I know for a fact that he'd been... about the amount of pain killers that people had been giving him and stuff like that. And I know that he had a true... it wasn't a case of running out of the country for an excuse. He had a real problem.

BW: And you gave him to a therapist who would help with the drugs.

EJ: Yeah, I put him in touch. And the wonderful thing, they said, was that the press never found him the whole time over here, which I thought was great.

BW: Here he is, Michael Jackson -- I find this amazing! Michael Jackson's in the home of Elton John and the press can't find him!

EJ: Strange, isn't it?

BW: Did you give him advice?

EJ: Ah... I just tried to give him encouragement. He was non compos mentis. Absolutely. He was like a zombie. And that's how he arrived in this country, a zombie. And it takes a while to get over that. And he's gone right back into that mayhem situation over there. I fear for him.

BW: Do you think he should have settled?

EJ: I wouldn't have settled. I wouldn't care if I had to sell my last thing in life just to clear my name. I don't know anything about Michael Jackson's case whatsoever. I don't know any of the facts, I mean. All I know is that if I'd been innocent of those things, I'd've said, "I'm going for it".

BW: What is your own greatest fear?

EJ: I think it's, my greatest fear used to be never to be loved. I have someone who does that now so that's kind of gotten rid of that one.

BW: Greatest achievement?

EJ: Getting sober, without a question.

BW: Bigger than the success?

EJ: Oh, yeah.

BW: Do you think your music will have a lasting impact?

EJ: Well, it's still played on the radio. The music I wrote in 1970 still gets a good old bashing on the radio. And that's the greatest compliment you can have. I don't like muzak. Muzak's one of the things I hate in my life the most. You get on the plane and there's this loud music. But if it's one of my songs... "Oh, there's one of mine!"

BW: You get into that elevator and they play the elevator music... but it's yours!

EJ: "I'm not getting paid for this!" No, I think my music -- our music, because it's Bernie and myself, it's a combination -- I think we'll last.
[plays Your Song]

"It's a little bit funny, this feeling inside
I'm not one of those who can easily hide"

I get to this next line and I almost burst...I secretly laugh inside!

"I don't have much money" (Times have changed!)
"but boy if I did,
I'd buy a big house where we both could live."

It just was such an innocent, beautiful lyric.

BW: If we go back over your life. If a song indeed represents a person or a stage of life, can we just pick some times and see what comes into your mind. Like, Elton John as a young man, the 70's, the good years, the years of innocence.

EJ: (sings)

"She packed my bags last night, preflight.Zero hour, 9 a.m."

Prophetic words!

"And I'm gonna be high as a kite by then"

I wasn't when I wrote it, but I soon was afterwards.

BW: Early 80's, the beginning of the end. The beginning of the bad.

EJ: (thinks, plays a few lines of Sad Songs, then sings:)

"Sad songs say so much"

And now, what, you're going to say the 90's, right?

BW: Okay, the 90's. The good years again.

EJ: (sings)

"All I ever needed was the one
Like freedom fields when wild horses run
When stars collide like you and I
No shadows block the sun
Your all I ever needed
Baby, you're the one."

Return to show details.