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Elton John

“The Daily Telegraph” (October 25, 2010) (archived)

Michael Jackson is another case in point. Elton had known him since Jackson was 13. 'He used to come to my shows with Elizabeth Taylor.’ In 1993, having cancelled a tour in the Far East, Jackson was in London undergoing treatment for his addiction to the painkiller Demerol. Elton had only recently met Furnish.

'David was coming down to meet my mother, and he was frightened about that,’ Elton says. 'He arrived at 10 in the morning, and there was a message on my answerphone from my counsellor of the time saying, “Oh, by the way, I’m bringing Michael Jackson down to lunch.” And David was saying, “I can’t meet your mother and f***ing Michael Jackson in one day.” ’

Jackson, Elton says, was 'charming, sweet, lovely – but damaged. He came down here and we closed all the curtains and had lunch. He said it was the first time he’d sat down and had a meal with people for 10 years. He would always eat on his own.’ Fame, Elton says, infantilizes people. 'You don’t ever grow up. But thank God, I did.’

There was a time, he says, when he would judge himself by his chart positions. 'But I’m intelligent enough to have got over that now. I remember talking to Michael once when he did Thriller and I said, “How are you going to top that?” He said, “Oh, the next one’s going to do twice as much”, and I thought, Michael, it’s not. You can’t. You put so much pressure on yourself.

'It’s very clear to me now. I don’t have to compete in the charts. I can just be myself as a musician, a songwriter and play with the musicians that I really love. I just feel comfortable in my own skin as an artist – maybe for the first time in my life. That’s weird isn’t it?’