Like everything Elton John, his book’s a hit
Sir Elton John, a talent extraordinaire, a rockstar in every sense of the word’s trappings, has come out with his autobiography, Me.
Remember all those ‘scandalous’ things, the big scoops, and the incredulous stories we heard or read about the pop icon? The music legend retells all those (and then some) with a wit and humour.
The book is replete with anecdotes not just about Elton but also people from his social circle. The name- dropping is not ostentatious, it is organic to incidents and accidents in his life. Like once, when he was often under the influence of dangerous amounts of an addictive stimulant drug, he threw a party. And he recalls, “I was flying... When a scruffy-looking guy I didn’t recognize wandered into the party... I loudly demanded to know what the gardener was doing helping himself to a drink. There was a moment’s shocked silence, broken by the sound of Bob Halley’s voice: ‘Elton, that’s not the f*&@ing gardener. It’s Bob Dylan’.”
He even gave the iconic Andy Warhol the snub. Elton was hanging out with John Lennon doing drugs, when Warhold knocked at their hotel suite. They decided against opening the door as they didn’t want to be clicked. So Warhol kept knocking and finally left.
Elton recalls, after he debuted with his new hairdo at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, a writer noted, “that I looked like I had a dead squirrel on my head. He was mean, but I was forced to concede, he also had a point.”
The honesty, through which he looks at himself makes it different from the regular celebrity memoirs. It’s a firecracker of a gift this Diwali. He owns it.