Dad did love Elton, says half-brother

ELTON John’s brother has hit back at the singer for vilifying their father in his new autobiography.

The Your Song singer, 72, has claimed in his memoirs that his father, the late Stanley Dwight, failed to support his career choice, and never told him he loved or was proud of him.

But Elton’s half-brother Geoff, 53, claims the singer only chooses to ‘believe what he wants to believe’ and that he seems to have suffered ‘massive memory loss’.

‘I don’t understand because my mum, my dad and me, we all went to see him as his guests in Liverpool,’ Geoff told The Mirror.

‘That was definitely a concert, my dad was definitely there, he was definitely playing and we definitely watched it. I was five.

‘Either he has got massive memory loss and he genuinely thinks his dad hasn’t seen him in concert or maybe he wants to believe that.’

Elton writes in the book: ‘I don’t recall [my father] ever coming to see me play live, or talking about music with him.’ He also claims that he was afraid of him.

Geoff – who works as a carpenter and has a different mother to Elton, after Stanley split from first wife Sheila in 1962 and remarried second wife Edna – also insisted that Stanley was from a different generation, who were less generous with expressing their feelings.

‘[Elton] is playing the blame card. But our parents came from war, where men had to be men and women had to be women. It’s a different world,’ Geoff said.

Elton’s spokesman said: ‘Elton stands by what he said in the book about his dad never seeing him perform.’