Elton John friend Lynn Wyatt is Houston’s rocket woman
Put aside, if you can, the images of Lynn Wyatt as a philanthropist, a sleepover pal of royals (including the movie-star and rock-star kind), a bestdressed hall-of-famer and a blond beauty, even in her 80s, with a klieg-light smile.
Now picture her sporting tight white jeans and a black leather jacket, making her way carefully (in 4-inch platform sandals) through a garish and loud multiplex lobby with its cacophony of video-game arcades. Then sitting in the middle of the crowd, balancing her purse and a bottle of water for a pre-release showing of “Rocketman.”
Lynn Wyatt loves movies. She is a founding member of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s film committee. The new theater being built within the institution’s Kinder Exhibition Building will be named for her and her husband, oilman Oscar Wyatt. (Where, at her insistence, there be popcorn.)
Yes, she’s an A-lister who regularly attends Vanity Fair’s Oscar Night party in Los Angeles and has swapped private telephone numbers with moguls and movie stars (including new confidante Lady Gaga). This gives her easy access to screeners, especially packaged DVDs of forthcoming features that motion-picture studios provide for members of the press, industry insiders and influencers.
But Lynn doesn’t like those DVDs. “I believe in going to the movies,” she says. “I don’t have them come to me.”
She goes for the epic scale of big-screen projection and the communal experience. “Movies are meant to be larger than life, and you can’t get that anywhere else than a theater,” she says. “And you’re not doing it alone. It’s such a fun thing to do with friends.”
Sometimes, those friends are on the screen as well as beside her. Which brings us back to “Rocketman.”.
Lynn was at Elton John’s side in 1994 when the rock star launched his Oscar-week AIDS fundraiser. She attended his wedding in 2014 to David Furnish, a historic date that marked the first day of legalized samesex marriage in the UK. To her, it was a “celebration of life and love — for everyone. And of red roses — rivers of red roses.”
They met in Houston, after a business associate of Elton invited her to meet him while he was in town to perform. She offered to have him over for lunch, or host a little or not-so-little party — whatever made him comfortable. Instead, he invited her to his dressing room before the show. From the getgo, they clicked.
“I said something and he said something, and we haven’t stopped talking since,” she says. She was wowed by his sweetness and his smarts, and by the setting.
Expecting a bare-bones dressing room, Lynn found herself surrounded by more than a few of Elton’s favorite things. Turns out he always sends trunkloads of personal possessions ahead, so his dressing rooms feel comfy and homey when he arrives. Bits of hearth, home and creature comforts to take edge off the touring life. The transformation struck her as complete.
“And all of it was meaningful to him: framed pictures, vases, pillows, curtains, lamps, you name it. The thing about Elton is that, yes, he wants to be greeted, stop after stop, by comfort — but he also wants to enjoy these things, too.”
Just beyond a seating area, something else grabbed Lynn’s eye: Elton’s costumes filled a rack that must have been 10 feet long. “I mean — the colors!” she says, in that excitable voice of hers. They were hung on the racks head to toe, with eyeglasses for each outfit on an upper shelf and matching shoes on a lower rack.
Taking in the blur of fabrics, ornament, flash and color, Lynn was incredulous: “All that for
one tour?”
“One tour?” Replied a joking, more incredulous Elton: “All that’s just for tonight!”
“This rack of costumes is very nice,” Lynn told him. “But I’d love to see your closet.”
To which Elton replied, “I’d love to see your closet …”
And so the friendship continued and grew, especially during summers in the South of
France, with only vineyards, fields of lavender and views of the Mediterranean separating their villas. (Hers was famous as the previous home of the English writer Somerset Maugham.) Delighted to be in same neck of les bois, they joked about their summer sojourns allowing them to have breakfast, lunch and dinner together every day.
The season’s parade of parties — impromptu or planned, for a few or for the many — always included a certain midsummer birthday bash: the one that Lynn threw for herself year after year. Elton brought rockstar glam to the mingling of movie stars, literary figures and other bold-face celebrities raising glasses to her.
She didn’t know Elton during the period “Rocketman” covers, but she knows all about his difficult childhood, his descent through addiction hell, and his still-ongoing recovery. He talks about it openly with her, she says.
The film may be presented as a kind of musical-fantasy, but it is also “completely, totally honest — about everything,” she says. If, publicly, Elton is open and refreshingly matter-of-fact when speaking about his demons, in private with Lynn he has shared specifics.
A few days after seeing “Rocketman,” Lynn called David Furnish — “perfect, perfect, perfect mate for Elton — his protector.” Furnish is also the film’s executive producer.
“He and Elton feel good about having made an honest film that captures the real person and real struggles. It’s all there on the screen — the good, the bad and the ugly. That’s how they wanted it. Because it’s true.”