Elton John, Rocketman and Me

A memoir and a movie can't convey all of Elton John's compelling contradictions.

Modesty is a stranger to Elton John, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that he couldn't limit himself to one glance back at his past. On the heels of his purported final tour Farewell Yellow Brick Road—the first concert happened back in the fall of 2018 and it's already been extended to run through a series of shows at London's O2 Arena at the end of this year—Elton John offered two autobiographical projects: the cinematic fantasia of the Dexter Fletcher-directed Rocketman and the memoir Me, which was written with music journalist Alexis Petridis. 

Such self-reflection suits a man settling into his seventies, plus John never could resist a chance to invent and reinvent himself. This flash and dash calcified into an archetype by the middle of the 1970s, when the hits piled up so quickly that Elton could lay claim to two percent of all record sales worldwide—a staggering number that goes a long way to explain how he dominated that decade without quite conveying what he meant to his times. For a while there, Elton John managed to roam the ground separating the British prog underground and rock's ruling class, eventually swapping Fotheringay for John Lennon as peers because who wouldn't want to run around with a Beatle. Besides, Elton always had a weakness for royalty, befriending Princess Margaret early in his career and spending enough time in Queen Elizabeth's orbit to be able to recognize her ever-changing moods. 

This enduring attraction to status and shiny things manifested onstage through Elton's devotion to garish costumes and spectacular flair. John's sense of show undeniably built his audience but by 1975, the year that brought Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy—a commercial and creative peak that not so coincidentally also mythologized the early years of John's partnership with lyricist Bernie Taupin—it became old hat to grouse that Elton's thirst for spectacle overshadowed the meaning of his music, a complaint uttered not merely by early adopters but by some of John's collaborators. Notably, Bernie himself counted himself among the ranks of fans who believed Elton favored style over substance. 

Those criticisms dogged John throughout the years and they resurfaced in 2019 thanks to Rocketman, a film that treated hard facts as mere suggestions for its narrative. Blurring the lines of when songs were written—"I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues," a Top Five hit in 1983, is heard during Elton's early audition for the publisher Dick James—is the least of it: everything from the origin of Reginald Dwight's stage name to the timing of his entry into rehab is fudged or fabricated. Such brazen disregard for history bothered viewers who expected a biopic to be a docudrama, irritations that mirrored how advocates of Elton's hushed early albums—a collection of excellent LPs that include his eponymous 1970 platter, its countrified companion Tumbleweed Connection and the languid Madman Across The Water—bristled at John's increasing reliance on gaudy getups, electrified eyewear and gleeful clowning, the very things that helped turn him into a megastar. 

The tension between art and showbiz lies at the heart of Elton John's music. He spent his early years plugging away on Britain's R&B circuit and he was enough of a purist to get huffy when his employer, mentor, and namesake Long John Baldry finally had a hit with a mawkish ballad designed to soundtrack a supper club. Elton swore he'd never take the middle of the road, yet he saw no problem moonlighting as a covers singer for hire during the days when success seemed elusive and once he had some hits to his name, he jumped at the chance to sing for the Royal Family or befriend stars of the golden age of the silver screen. The old razzle-dazzle was in his blood, but he wouldn't have reached this level of stardom if he hadn't initially he tapped into the ruminative twilight of the hippie era, writing songs inspired by the Band and Leon Russell but dressed in majestic orchestrations that felt distinctly British. 

This incarnation of Elton John was unveiled on his eponymous 1970 album, a stiff in his homeland but the seed of his spectacular, sudden breakthrough at the Troubadour in West Hollywood. Few concerts in rock history are as storied as this one, thanks to Robert Hilburn's rapturous review spreading across the country thanks to the wonders of syndication. Years of onstage spectacle from John, not to mention the kinetic 11-17-70 live document, help frame this concert as a rager, but it was an intimate affair, featuring Elton supported by nothing more than bass and drums—a fact ignored in Rocketman, which has him backed by a full band and playing so hard, he causes the crowd to levitate. Poetic license seldom comes as explicit as this but it feels emotionally true: this is the place where the former Reginald Dwight became Elton John. As it happens, this was a watershed day in more than one way. The night of the Troubadour show ended with Elton having sex with John Reid, who would become his closeted lover, public manager and the eventual villain of Rocketman. At the very moment his career finally achieved lift off, John began to embrace his homosexuality, and his creative purple patch is inextricably intertwined with his coming to terms sexuality; the freedoms fueled each other.

Looking for autobiographical clues within the albums Elton John released between 1970 and 1975 isn't necessarily a fruitful endeavor, though. Much of that is due to how he sang the words of Bernie Taupin, who at best offered an interpretation of John's journey but usually chased his own muse. The great exception to this rule is Captain Fantastic, an exercise in self-mythology delivered when the duo was popular enough to believe that the world wanted an album that portrayed them as superheroes. At the center of Captain Fantastic lay "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," Taupin's retelling of John's tepid 1968 suicide attempt—a barely-veiled cry for help heard by Long John Baldry, who urged John to accept his own homosexuality. Prior to Baldry's suggestion, Elton didn't quite realize he was gay. It took him years to embrace his sexuality but the reckoning began back in 1968, in an event Taupin portrayed as John being rescued from a doomed marriage at the last minute. Rocketman has a different spin on John coming to terms with his homosexuality. A soul singer tells John he's gay, Elton tries to hit on Bernie, who in turn kindly rebuffs him and then they head back home to find the singer being thrown out of the domicile he shares with a woman he doesn't love. Just like in "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," details are conveniently changed but the emotional gist remains, a sentiment that applies to Rocketman at large.

Emotions are the main thing Rocketman gets right. A jukebox musical by any other name, Rocketman plays fast with facts because it recasts John's life as a recovery story. Scenes at a rehab facility bookend the film and the arc concentrates on Elton finding peace within himself, a serenity that leads to happiness and, ultimately, the loving family he never had. The latter part is covered quickly during the closing credit, leaving the nitty-gritty to Me. To John's credit, he does disclose in his autobiography that his happily ever after hasn't been entirely tranquil. His mother stayed at Elton's side through his tumultuous '70s and '80s, never expressing disapproval of his homosexuality, but when he could finally marry his longtime partner David Furnish, she grew cold, distant and vindictive. Furnish also had a period where he fell into the bottle, a situation handled with matter-of-fact clarity from John, whose years in recovery are well apparent throughout Me. 

Me also lays the groundwork for the salvation Elton finds in recovery by chronicling the rewards he found as the owner of the Watford Football Club between 1976 and 1987, a period that not so coincidentally marked his high point for personal excess and was among his patchiest artistically. As John tried to figure out a way to live with himself after ridiculous stardom, he was grounded in his interactions with Watford, whose players, management and fans refused to grant him the perks of fame. It's a situation mirrored by his contemporary comfort in the confines in parenthood, enjoying everyday rituals he scorned throughout the 1970s. 

Notably, both Rocketman and Me don't delve deeply into the artistic process that fueled that stardom. Rocketman can be excused by the fact that it's exceedingly difficult to dramatize something as tedious as a recording session—Bohemian Rhapsody admirably attempted this, but it was bettered by the 2014 Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy did it better, along with parts of the 2015 NWA saga Straight Outta Compton—but Me also has a tendency to condense and compress the specifics of John's remarkable hot streak of the early 1970s. This is pretty much out of necessity.. The contract he signed with Dick James's DJM Records required Elton and Bernie to deliver two albums a year, so whenever they weren't touring, partying or discovering themselves, they were knocking out songs and records. It's the kind of dogged hard work that can result in rapid artistic progression but also a haze for the creators themselves since their treadmill never stops. While none of the big albums are ignored in Me, John keeps returning to Leather Jackets, since that stiff, synthesized 1986 LP opened his eyes to the fact that all the booze and drugs could lead him to make what he believes to be a singularly irredeemable album. 

It took some time, but Elton John bounced back from this self-perceived nadir, roping in a whole new generation of fans with his music for The Lion King in 1994 and cementing his position as the Royals' favorite rock star by eulogizing Princess Diana in song. Ultimately, he and Taupin did what so many of their fans did: they found refuge in the pair's work of the early '70s. Starting with 2001's Songs From The West Coast, the pair began writing and recording albums like they did in the old days, creating a series of albums that played like virtual answers to their previous work (or, in the case of The Captain & The Kid, an explicit sequel). As admirable as many of these records were, they helped reinforce the notion that all of Elton John's best work happened in those furious six or seven years, a theory that holds some water while also diminishing John's cultural impact. There's no denying that John and Taupin wrote the core of their catalog during these years and the albums they made at that time still crackle. Take another listen to Rock Of The Westies, commonly thought of as a record made when he was on fumes and recorded when his classic supporting band is beginning to fray—it's a cracking good pop record. 

The two and a half decades after Blue Moves—the dark, sprawling double-album that brought Elton and Bernie's collaboration to a temporary close in 1976—were filled with enough hits to make John the most consistent chart presence since Elvis Presley, and they also saw him dabble in disco and new wave before settling into the adult contemporary he previously saw as anathema. In his terrific radio format study Top 40 Democracy: The Rival Mainstreams Of American Music, Eric Weisbard posited that this period accentuated how Elton John wound up "queering" the Top 40, reshaping mainstream pop by how he continually changed musical styles and identities. Weisbard writes, "John pledged glittery allegiance ot Top 40 because as a secretly gay man his rock authenticity was very much in doubt," kicking off a process where John rejected the musical ideals he held at the start of his career in favor of a pop subtly shaped by shifting fashions. Some of this evolution can be ascribed to Elton's lifelong obsession with the pop charts, but as the decades piled up, it often appeared as if John conflated chart positions with social status, a philosophy that lifted him from the ranks of mere rock star and into the rarified air of international celebrity where he's famous for being famous. Such stardom is commonplace now but back in the '70s and '80s, it was at the vanguard of pop stardom. 

In many ways, Rocketman is the culmination of John's superstar storyline, celebrating his celebrity and personal journey in equal measure. Upon the point he reaches a stable recovery, Elton John is able to have it all: inner serenity, a loving family, a world who loves him for his image as well as his music. Authenticity is utterly rejected in the film but not in Me. As the book draws to its conclusion, John stresses that he views his own art through the prism of his earliest work, favoring his recent records over the albums he made during his waning years as a charting pop star. As he made these albums, John maintained his stardom through residencies in Las Vegas, tours with Billy Joel, Broadway productions, charity work—the very things that seem to contradict the rock authenticity that characterized his original '70s LPs and his 21st Century emulation of this sound. Far from a paradox, though, this blend of glitz and grit is the constant in Elton John's career; the style and substance are inextricably intertwined, each feeding and adding complexity to the other. A deep dive into his body of work, assisted by Rocketman, Me, Top 40 Democracy and Tom Doyle's Captain Fantastic: Elton John's Stellar Trip Through the '70s—a useful 2017 chronicle of John's dazzling '70s—makes it plain that far from being in conflict, the haunted balladeer and absurd showman are the same person. The fact that Elton John continues to compartmentalize these two sides even after years of therapy, recover and self-reflection are the key to why he remains such a compelling musician and celebrity: life and art turns out to be messier than any single narrative can convey.