Elton John reveals his biggest regret: “You are the most ungrateful little bastard”
Elton John‘s life has quieted down significantly. While he still has one foot in the music industry and no plans to stop creating new albums, John prefers spending time alongside his young family rather than working tirelessly.
However, for decades, John’s life was firmly moving at a million miles per hour, and he barely had a spare second to gather his thoughts. While a series of perks came with the job that allowed John to live a life of luxury, it also arrived with immense pressure.
As the biggest pop star in the world during the 1970s, John absorbed himself into the role. The singer needed to ensure he could follow up on his success with more hit singles and platinum-selling albums and play in sold-out arenas for 100 nights per year. Nevertheless, the ways that John dealt with the pressure were unhealthy and put his life in danger. Drugs are intrinsically linked to the world of music, and Elton became particularly familiar with substance abuse, which he’d later come to regret.
Fortunately, John is still here to tell the tale, but nobody is more acutely aware of how close he came to becoming another rock ‘n’ roll tragedy. It’s nothing short of a miracle that John survived the punishment that he put his body through.
For almost two decades of his life, Elton was dependent on cocaine, and the substance made him lose sight of his true self. Although it began as a frivolous endeavour, before John knew it, his drug use had transformed from a recreational activity to the most crucial facet of his life. At first, John saw the drug as a positive as it allowed him to escape from his social anxieties and become this unstoppable party animal. The stress of maintaining his lofty position in the music industry meant John needed to escape temporarily. Still, it eventually spiralled out of control, and his life was in a perilous position.
“I thought, ‘This is the drug that has opened me up. I can converse, I can be verbose,'” Elton once explained on Today. “I would have an epileptic seizure and turn blue, and people would find me on the floor and put me to bed, and then 40 minutes later, I’d be snorting another line,” he continued.
While he has made albums in the past that he’d rather wouldn’t exist, John’s creative regrets are dwarfed in comparison to the shame he feels from his historic drug use.
During a conversation with Charlie Puth for LadBible, Elton expressed his immense regret at ever dabbling with drugs. The singer reflected on the first time he “saw a line of cocaine” and said he only “joined in for the sake of it and it became an addiction”.
He then stated that it was the biggest regret of his career, revealing, “Yeah, I wouldn’t have taken as many drugs. Definitely not, although, I continued to work when I took drugs, [but] I didn’t make my best work some of the time.”
For several decades, John has been clean. It took many years after he admitted he had a problem before entering recovery, and one significant event made John’s issues seem like a drop in the ocean, forcing him to re-evaluate his lifestyle choices. Heartbreakingly, a close friend passed away after contracting HIV. Yet, while he was ill, the friend never complained. Meanwhile, John, by his own admission, would let the most minor inconvenience ruin his day, which was largely due to his drug addiction.
“Coming back to the hotel and complaining about the wallpaper, the décor in the room, and thinking, ‘You are the most ungrateful little bastard. You complain about everything,” he remembered to Today. “This boy has never complained about contracting HIV and AIDS from a blood transfusion. He’s never complained, he’s only encouraged people…You are a piece of shit.’ And that’s what I felt about myself.”
Thankfully, John no longer thinks about himself through this negative lens, which is due to getting sober. It was the best life decision he ever made, allowing him to sort out his priorities and be his true self without hiding behind the mask that substances provided.
