Elton John once had a tram delivered from Australia after a cocaine binge
The child prodigy Reginald Dwight had no idea what was in store for him when he first discovered his talent on the ivories in a modest home in Middlesex. After honing his skills as a pianist over the late 1950s and ‘60s, Dwight changed his name to Elton John. He then joined the entertainment elite just as the hippie era collapsed and the sobering uncertainties of the 1970s, a decade without The Beatles, dawned.
If the hippie generation became associated with psychedelic drugs, cannabis and consciousness-expanding meditation, the next pushed things into fifth gear with a voracious embrace of cocaine. The stimulant had been around for centuries, but with the increased activity of cartels in Latin America, including that of Pablo Escobar in Colombia, it entered vogue in the 1970s.
While many, and maybe even most, of the entertainment industry dabbled with the Colombian marching powder during the 1970s and ‘80s, some entered into particularly damaging addictions. Among the famous names to experience the woes of addiction during this period were British icons David Bowie, who ended up moving to Berlin to escape his habit, and Elton John.
Elton and many of his peers found cocaine to be a stimulant more effective than coffee amid demanding tour schedules. Furthermore, the miracle cure could slice stage fright in two and provide a social lubricant to keep the parties pumping till the wee small hours. As Elton soon realised, the drug had disastrous impacts far beyond the immediate comedowns.
By the 1980s, Elton had enjoyed success beyond his wildest dreams and had several seminal albums under his belt. However, his hard-partying lifestyle had begun to take its toll. “This is how bleak it was: I’d stay up, I’d smoke joints, I’d drink a bottle of Johnnie Walker, and then I’d stay up for three days, and then I’d go to sleep for a day and half, get up, and because I was so hungry because I hadn’t eaten anything,” he told Piers Morgan in 2010. “I’d binge and have like three bacon sandwiches, a pot of ice cream and then I’d throw it up because I became bulimic and then go and do the whole thing all over again.”
From a sober perspective, Elton abhors his past behaviour but makes a point of facing his difficult past as a means of acceptance and recovery. “I’m not being flippant when I say that, when I look back, I shudder at the behaviour and what I was doing to myself,” he added. On several occasions, he remembers being “very close” to death. “I mean, 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.”
To the great relief of his global fanbase, John sought professional help after a wake-up call in the late ‘80s. He has been sober since 1990 and now devoted much of his time to supporting other artists through struggles with fame and addiction.
Although Elton remembers his hedonistic years with anxious palpitations, he had his fair share of fun, from the floors of Studio 54 to the sunkissed coast of California. His famous liaisons and state of near-constant intoxication provided a fertile breeding ground for comical anecdotes.
Once, he mistook Bob Dylan for a gardener and played a comical game of charades with Paul Simon. But today, we’re recalling one of Elton’s wildest impulse buys. When you mix a cocaine addiction with a disposable income, the results can be rather breathtaking. At the best of times, Elton liked to splash his cash on kitsch items and gaudy garden ornaments. So, after a go on the old devil’s dandruff, his shopping cart became a party in itself.
In his memoir Me: Elton John, Elton recalled how most of the items in his vast collection of junk are the result of the erratic highs and lows of cocaine addiction. The star recommended against “going shopping in the depressing aftermath of a three-day cocaine binge” unless you want to “wake up the next morning to a phone call informing you that you’ve bought a tram.”
Following a three-day binge, Elton admitted to purchasing “not a model tram—an actual tram” from Australia. This wasn’t just any old tram; it was a model with which Elton was particularly enamoured: the Melbourne W2 class drop-centre combination tram. Active between the 1920s and ‘50s, these trams are particularly quaint and characterful, and clearly, Elton had plans to renovate the item into a fetching outhouse of some description.
When a hungover Elton answered the phone, he was taken aback but decided to proceed with the purchase. He had the huge, heavy object shipped from Australia to Britain and lowered into his garden using two Chinook helicopters. It is unknown whether Elton still owns the tram, but I like to imagine he uses it as a luxury potting shed or art studio.
