Elton John reveals he almost married a woman who “told me that I was rubbish”
In a newly aired 1975 interview, Sir Elton John revealed that his career almost ended before it began, as he almost married a woman who hated his music.
In ‘David Frost Vs Elton John’, part five of MSNBC’s six-episode series, John chats with the esteemed British journalist at different stages of his lengthy career. In a clip from 1975, taken from their first interview, John bares his soul.
Asked by Frost what “the most meaningful, emotional song,” he’s ever done was, a 27-year-old John replies with two. “They are also two very autobiographical songs. One’s called ‘Someone Saved My Life Tonight.’”
At Frost’s encouragement, John expanded on this. He recounted, “Well, I was living with a lady for about six months who didn’t really like my music. I really liked her, but she didn’t like my music and kept telling me that I was rubbish and I’d never make it.”
The ‘Rocketman’ singer continued painting the melancholic picture of his youthful love. He said, “She was always saying, ‘You’d be better off being a bank manager or something like that.’ And I was due to marry her. I got the cake and everything and the flat and the furniture.”
It was a meeting with English musician Long John Baldry at a nightclub that pulled him out of the unrequited spiral. Baldry told the musician, “You’re mad to get married, because she doesn’t appreciate your music,” John recalled.
It took very little to stop John from seeing the marriage through: “And he knew I was totally wrapped up in music. So I went home and said, ‘That’s it. It’s off.’ And that more or less saved my life because if I’d have got married at that particular point in time, I think it would have been goodbye, Elton John.”
John has recently been in the news for his fight against AI in the creative industries. Paul McCartney, Coldplay, and Dua Lipa were among over 400 artists who signed an open letter shepherded by John, calling for the government to update copyright laws publicly.
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