ROCKET MAN
Elton John bares all
Elton John was a shy boy with Buddy Holly glasses who grew up in a London suburb and dreamt of being a pop star. But with fame and fortune came despair and darkness. In this extract from his autobiography, ‘Me’, the Rocket Man reveals his nightmare in the depths of hell and the long road to recovery …
Back in Atlanta, Hugh had some news for me. He was sick of drinking and taking drugs. He knew he couldn’t stop without help. So he was going into rehab. He had booked into a residential treatment programme at Sierra Tucson, the same rehab centre that had treated Ringo Starr for alcoholism a couple of years before. He was leaving that day. I was furious. Hugh was my latest partner-in-crime: if he was admitting he had a problem, that meant I had a problem. By implication, he was accusing me of being a drug addict.
He wasn’t the first person to suggest I needed help. After he’d stopped working for me, my valet, Mike Hewitson, had written me a very sane, level-headed letter — “you’ve really got to stop this nonsense, stop putting that bloody stuff up your nose” — and I’d responded by refusing to speak to him for a year and a half. Tony King had tried to talk to me. He had visited me with Freddie Mercury, and afterwards Freddie had told him that I looked like I was in trouble and that Tony should get involved: “You need to look after your friend.”
Coming from Freddie, no saint when it came to booze and drugs himself, that judgment should have carried a lot of weight. Instead, I dismissed what Tony had to say as sanctimonious preaching from an alcoholic in recovery. And a couple of years before, George Harrison had tried to talk to me at an insane party I’d held at a house I was renting in LA. I’d had the garden strung with lights, got Bob Halley to fire up the barbecue and invited everyone I knew that was in town. By the middle of the evening, I was flying, absolutely out of my mind, when a scruffy-looking guy I didn’t recognize wandered into the party. Who the hell was he? It must be one of the staff, a gardener. 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.”
Coked out of my brain and keen to make amends, I rushed over and grabbed him, and started steering him towards the house.
“Bob! Bob! We can’t have you in those terrible clothes, darling. Come upstairs and I’ll fit you out with some of mine at once. Come on, dear!”
Bob stared at me, horrified. His expression suggested he was trying hard to think of something he wanted to do less than get dressed up like Elton John, and drawing a blank. This was the late ’80s, and one of my recent looks had involved teaming a pink suit and a straw boater with a scale model of the Eiffel Tower on top of it, so you couldn’t really blame him. But full of cokey confidence, I wasn’t deterred. As I continued propelling him out of the garden, I heard the unmistakable sound of George’s mordant, Scouse-accented voice calling out to me. “Elton,” he said. “I really think you need to go steady on the old marching powder.”
Bob somehow managed to talk his way out of being dressed in my clothes, but it didn’t change the fact that one of The Beatles was publicly telling me to do something about my cocaine habit. I just laughed it off.
This time, however, I didn’t laugh it off. The full force of the Dwight Family Temper was unleashed. The ensuing row was terrible. I screamed and shouted. I said the most hurtful, wounding things I could think of to Hugh, the kind of stuff so horrible it literally comes back to haunt you — you suddenly remember having said it years later, completely out of the blue, and still clench your teeth and wince. None of it made any difference. Hugh’s mind was made up. He left for Arizona that afternoon.
Incredibly, given the way we had parted, Hugh later asked me to visit him at the treatment centre. Big mistake. I arrived and was gone within 20 minutes, which was long enough for me to cause a huge scene. I exploded again — this place was a total sh*thole, the therapists were a bunch of creeps, he was being brainwashed, he had to leave at once. When he wouldn’t, I stormed out and got on a plane back to London.
On arrival, I went straight to my rented house and locked myself in. I holed up in the bedroom for two weeks, alone, snorting cocaine and drinking whisky. On the rare occasions when I ate, I made myself sick immediately afterwards. I was up for days on end, watching porn, taking drugs. I wouldn’t answer the phone. I wouldn’t answer the door. If anyone knocked, I’d sit for hours afterwards in complete silence, rigid with paranoia and fear, terrified to move in case they were still outside, spying on me.
Sometimes I never wanted to see Hugh again. Sometimes I was desperate to speak to him, but I couldn’t get hold of him. He had moved into a halfway house, and after the scene I’d created at the rehab
centre, no one would tell me where he was.
Eventually, I made myself so ill that I realised this was it. I couldn’t take it anymore. If I carried on for a couple more days I genuinely would be dead: I’d either overdose or have a heart attack. Was that really what I wanted? I knew it wasn’t. Despite my selfdestructive behaviour, I didn’t actually want to selfdestruct. I had no idea how to live, but I didn’t want to die. I’d managed to track down Hugh’s ex-boyfriend, Barron Segar, who told me that he was in a halfway house in Prescott, a city four hours north of Tucson. I called Hugh. He sounded nervous. He said we could meet, but that there were conditions. I had to speak to his counsellor first. He wanted to see me, because there were things he wanted to say to me, but he wouldn’t say them unless I had a counsellor present too. He didn’t spell it out, but I suspected some kind of intervention was on the cards. I hesitated for a moment, but I was past convincing myself that, although things were bad, I was intelligent enough, successful enough and wealthy enough to sort them out on my own. I was too miserable and too ashamed of myself to even try. So I agreed: whatever it took.
I phoned Hugh’s counsellor. He told me that the meeting had to form part of Hugh’s therapy. We would both make a list of things we didn’t like about each other and read it out. I was terrified, but I did it.
The next day, I was in a tiny hotel room in Prescott, facing Hugh. We sat so close that our knees were touching, holding our lists. I went first. I said that I didn’t like the fact that Hugh was untidy. He left his clothes everywhere. He didn’t put CDs back in their cases after he had played them. He forgot to turn the lights off after he left a room at night. Stupid, niggly little irritations, the kind of things that get on your nerves about your partner every day.
Then it was Hugh’s turn. I noticed that he was shaking. He was more terrified than me. “You’re a drug addict,” he said. “You’re an alcoholic. You’re a food addict and a bulimic. You’re a sex addict. You’re co-dependent.”
That was it. There was a long pause. Hugh was still shaking.
He couldn’t look at me. He thought I was going to explode again and storm out.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I am.”
Both Hugh and his counsellor looked at me. “Well, do you want to get help?” his counsellor asked. “Do you want to get better?”
I started to cry. “Yes,” I said. “I need help. I want to get better.”
The moment the words “I need help” came out of my mouth, I felt different. It was like something had been switched back on inside me, like a pilot light that had gone out. I somehow knew that I was going to get well. But it wasn’t as straightforward as that. First of all, they couldn’t find a clinic anywhere in America that would take me. Almost all of them specialised in treating one addiction at a time, and I had three: cocaine, alcohol and food. I didn’t want them treated consecutively, which would have meant spending something like four months going from one facility to another. I wanted them all treated at once.
Eventually they found somewhere. When I saw it, I nearly refused to go in. Hugh’s treatment centre — which, you may remember, I loudly declared to be a total sh*thole — was really luxurious. It was set in the countryside outside Tucson, with incredible views of the Santa Catalina mountains. It had a vast swimming pool, around which there were yoga classes. Mine was just an ordinary general hospital: the Lutheran, in a suburb of Chicago called Park Ridge. It was a big, grey, monolithic building, with mirrored glass windows. It didn’t seem much like a place that offered yoga classes by the pool. The only thing it had a view of was a shopping centre car park. I checked in, under the name George King, on July 29 1990. They told me I had to share a room, which didn’t go down very well, until I saw my roommate. His name was Greg, he was gay and very attractive. At least there was something nice to look at around here.
I checked out again six days later. It wasn’t just that it was tough in there, although it was. I couldn’t sleep: I would lie awake all night, waiting for the daily alarm call at 6.30am. I had panic attacks. I suffered from mood swings — not from high to low, but low to even lower, a fog of depression and anxiety that thickened and thinned but never cleared. I felt ill all the time. I felt weak. I was lonely.
And, most of all, I was embarrassed. Not because of my addictions, but because we were expected to do things for ourselves — clean our rooms, make our beds — and that was something I was completely unused to.
I’d allowed myself to get to the stage where I shaved and I wiped my arse, and paid other people to do everything else for me. I had no idea how to work a washing machine. I had to ask another patient, a woman called Peggy, to show me. After she realised that I wasn’t joking, she was kind and helpful, but that didn’t change the fact that I was a 43-year-old man who didn’t know how to clean his own clothes. When it came time to spend my $10-a-week allowance on stationery or chewing gum, I realized I had no idea how much things cost. It was years since I’d done any shopping myself that didn’t involve an auction house or a high-end designer boutique. It was shameful: the completely unnecessary bubble that fame and wealth lets you build up around yourself, if you’re stupid enough to allow it. I see it all the time now, especially with rappers: they turn up everywhere with huge, pointless entourages, far bigger than the one I saw around Elvis that so shocked me at the time.
But the real problem was that the treatment was
If I carried on I would be dead. Was that really what I wanted? I knew it wasn’t. Despite my self-destructive behaviour, I didn’t actually want to self-destruct. I had no idea how to live, but I didn’t want to die
based around the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step programme, and as soon as my counsellor started talking to me about God, I flipped out. I didn’t want to know about religion: religion was dogma, it was bigotry, it was the Moral Majority and people like Jerry Falwell saying that Aids was God’s judgment on homosexuals. It’s a stumbling block for a lot of people. Years later, when I tried to convince George Michael to go into rehab, he dismissed it out of hand for the same reason: “I don’t want to know about God, I don’t want to join some cult.” I tried to explain that I had thought exactly the same thing too, but that just made things worse: he thought I was being patronising and smug. But I really had been there too. That afternoon in Chicago, I stormed out of the meeting, went back to my room, packed my bag and left.
I got as far as the pavement outside. I sat down on a bench with my suitcase and burst into tears. I could easily make some phone calls and get out of here, but where was I going to go? Back to London? To do what? Sit around in a dressing gown covered in puke, doing coke and watching porn all day? It wasn’t a very appealing prospect. I lugged my suitcase sheepishly back into the hospital. A couple of days later, I nearly walked out again.
My counsellor suggested that I wasn’t taking rehab seriously: “You’re not working hard enough, you’re just here for the ride.” I really lost my temper. I told him that if I hadn’t been taking rehab seriously, I would have left long ago. I said he was picking on me because I was famous. He dismissed my arguments — it was like he wasn’t listening. So I called him a c*nt. That seemed to get his attention. I was hauled up before a disciplinary board and warned about my language and behaviour.
But it was also agreed I would get a different counsellor, a woman called Debbie, who seemed less concerned about making an example of me because of who I was, and I started to make progress. I liked the routine. I liked doing things for myself. I got to grips, if not with the idea of God, then of a higher power. It made sense.
After six weeks, I was ready to leave. I flew back to London where I called in at the Rocket office and told everyone I was taking some time off. No gigs, no new songs, no recording sessions for at least a year, maybe 18 months. That was unheard of — I hadn’t taken more than a few weeks off a year since 1965 — but everyone accepted it.
So for most of the next 18 months I was in London, where I settled into a quiet routine. I bought the house I’d been renting, where I had holed up on my final binge. I lived alone. I didn’t bother with employing staff; I liked doing things myself. I bought myself a Mini and I got a dog from Battersea Dogs Home, a little mutt called Thomas. Every day, I would get up at 6.30am and take Thomas for a walk. I adored it. It’s a real recovering addict’s cliché to say that you notice things about your surroundings that you never saw while you were using — oh, the beauty of the flowers, the wonders of nature, all that crap — but it’s only a cliché because it’s true.
After the dog was walked, I would get in my Mini and drive to see a psychiatrist. I’d never visited one before, and it turned out to involve a steep learning curve.
I spent most of my time at meetings. I had left Chicago with strict instructions from my sponsor to go to an AA meeting the moment I cleared customs in London. Starved of football after weeks in America, I went to see a Watford game instead. That night, my sponsor rang. When I told him what I’d done, he yelled at me. A man who worked as a driver for the city of Chicago’s sanitation department and spent most of his life communicating with his colleagues over the noise of his garbage truck, he could really yell.
So I followed his advice. I became very strict about attending meetings: Alcoholics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, Anorexics and Bulimics Anonymous. I went to meetings in Pimlico, on Shaftesbury Avenue, in Marylebone, on Portobello Road. Sometimes I went to three or four meetings a day. I went to a hundred in a month. Some of my friends began expressing the opinion that I was now addicted to going to meetings about addiction. They were probably right, but it was a substantial improvement on the things I’d been addicted to previously. Perhaps there was a meeting I could attend to deal with it.
At the very first meeting I went to, a photographer leapt out and got a shot of me leaving. Someone must have recognised me there and tipped them off, which was obviously against the rules. It was on the front page of the Sun the next day: ELTON IN ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS. As, this time, they neglected to suggest that I attended in leather shorts or twirling a dildo, I let it pass. I didn’t mind who knew. I was taking a positive step. I kept going to the meetings because I enjoyed them. I liked the people I met. I always volunteered to make the tea, and I made lasting friends, people I’m still in touch with today: ordinary people, who saw me as a recovering addict first and Elton John second.
You heard the most extraordinary things. Women in the Anorexics and Bulimics meetings would talk about taking a single pea, cutting it into four and eating a quarter for lunch and a quarter for dinner. I would think, “that’s insane”, but then I’d remember how I’d been a few months before — unwashed and pissed out of my mind at 10am, literally doing a line of coke every five minutes — and realised they must have thought exactly the same about me.
This is an edited extract from Me by Elton John, published by Macmillan, R385