The 1970s icon Elton John never got to reconcile with: “Not the best of friends”
Every artist who has gone through as much as Elton John has usually had some bridges that they never got to mend.
Even though he has managed to patch things up with Madonna in recent years, there are more than a few times when he’s had personal spats with someone and never been able to walk back a lot of his claims. But even though he’s turned into one of the most lovable legends in rock and roll at this point, John did have a few regrets about a few artists that he wasn’t able to reconcile with.
But it’s not like John ever got into the business to hurt people, either. He liked the idea of making some of the greatest music that he could, and most of what got his ire was normally about people who weren’t doing their job properly. He absolutely loathed the idea of lip-syncing live, and when Madonna came out making more risque dance moves and not focusing on the music, it didn’t take long for the English piano man to start hurling a few insults her way every single time he saw her.
Then again, a lot of the potshots that John took usually came from him defending himself. He wasn’t going to take any crap from Keith Richards when he called his music into question, but sometimes, when he was making more harsh critiques, a lot of them were said in jest. He was only too happy to make friends at the height of the glam scene, and even though he and Rod Stewart had a little bit of a spat, it was all in good fun, trying to one-up each other every time they made something new.
However, John didn’t seem to fit into the glam scene from a musical standpoint. A lot of the biggest names in the genre were going back to the stone age of rock and roll by playing more bluesy stuff, but John was more interested in being a singer-songwriter. He wanted to explore the craftsmanship of making a song with Bernie Taupin, but that wasn’t enough to get David Bowie’s approval.
‘The Thin White Duke’ had more than a few choice words to say about John’s music not being his thing, and he wasn’t going to take that lightly. No one in their right mind was going to fire back and say that Bowie didn’t have any good tunes or anything, but even up until his final album, Blackstar, John always had a tinge of sadness about not being able to mend the rift in his friendship with Bowie.
He never claimed to be one of Bowie’s very best friends or anything, but he felt that he could have done more to reach out to him before he passed, saying, “David and I were not the best of friends towards the end. We started out being really good friends. We used to hang out together with Marc Bolan, going to gay clubs, but I think we just drifted apart. He wasn’t my cup of tea. No, I wasn’t his cup of tea. But the dignified way he handled his death, I mean, thank God.”
And to say that Bowie wrapped things up on a high note would be underselling it slightly. A lot of Blackstar is about him grappling with the idea of dying, and even though he could have been doing anything else as he waited out his final days dealing with cancer, the fact that he was still thinking about his art all the way up until the end really showed everyone what a consummate performer he always was.
So while John didn’t have the time to have one last conversation with Bowie before he died or anything, he knew that he didn’t need to have his conscience weighing on him too much after hearing Bowie’s final tunes. He knew that ‘The Starman’ was finally content with going off to the other side, and there was nothing that could have stopped him from being true to his artistry all the way to the bitter end.
