How Elton John’s cocaine binge resulted in a buying a tram from Australia
We’ve all been there. You have a few too many the night before; maybe you didn’t line your stomach well enough or mixed your spirits too frivolously. But whatever the cause, your head is pounding the next day. Perhaps you’ve even woken up with that sinking feeling in your stomach and deep anxiety settling in over your bank balance. But at least you can rest assured that you will never have done as much damage as Elton John did after one huge night.
Wealth is an interesting thing. It seems that the more money you have, the more your view on what counts as expensive or frivolous needs to change. With each zero added to your bank balance, the decimal point moves along with your perspective on money. £100 probably feels like £10, £1,000 probably feels like £100 and so on. But even with that logic, John’s spending in the past has been absolutely mindblowing.
He once admitted that in 20 months alone, he spent £40million. During that time, he blew £293,000 on flowers alone, stating simply, “I like flowers”. His housing portfolio and wardrobe alone rack up to eyewatering sums, but during his life, he’s regularly been more than silly with his spending.
I’m sure we all know the feeling of waking up the morning after a night out and cursing yourself for spending so much. Maybe you dropped £50 on cocktails when you shouldn’t have or find yourself cursing the cost of the Uber you got home rather than slumming it on the night bus. But in the grand scheme of things, they’re drops in the ocean. To put it into perspective, at least you didn’t do like John did once and wake up to find that you’ve purchased yourself a piece of public transport.
No, not just a taxi. Elton John came out of a three-day bender and found himself to be the owner of a tram.
In his memoir, John reflects on his younger days, back when he was at the whim of drugs and alcohol. Obviously, those two vices brought about all kinds of issues, but for the singer, they had a hefty cost. “I don’t really recommend going shopping in the depressing aftermath of a three-day cocaine binge unless you want to wake up the next day confronted by bags and bags of absolute crap you don’t remember buying,” he wrote in his memoir.
But one night, it wasn’t just clothes or glasses he bought. “Or, in my case, you wake up the next morning to a phone call informing you that you’ve bought a tram,” he continued. “Not a model tram. An actual tram,” he added, just in case you doubted him.
It’s nightmare fuel. Imagine waking up with a headache and nausea, and then the phone rings. As John remembers it, “The voice on the end of the phone is now informing you has to be shipped from Australia to Britain, where it can only be delivered to your house by hanging it from two Chinook helicopters.” It’s a sobering thought.
There is no further information on how the musician sorted that logistical nightmare out, what happened to the tram or what other pieces of transportation he acquired on the heavy nights before he got clean. Either way, John’s story is a reminder that Saturday night is not alright (for shopping).
