There's no denying that Sir Elton John is one of the most recognizable musicians alive,
and he's come a long way from Reginald Kenneth Dwight to Rocket Man.
Here's the story of this legendary rock star.
Elton John is not a person to shy away from conflict, and even his closest family members
aren't safe from the drama.
According to People Magazine, he even had a nasty eight-year feud with his own mother,
Sheila Farebrother.
Their relationship took a nasty bump in June 2008, when John fired two longtime employees
with close ties to his mother.
Farebrother wasn't too amused when her son proceeded to demand that she also cut all
ties with the men.
She refused, and tempers flared.
He accused her of favoring his former workers over her own son, and she shot back by insulting
his husband.
That was the last time they spoke for years, apart from occasional barbs traded in the
media.
Fortunately, their attitudes mellowed over time.
In 2015, John started mending fences by sending his mother a massive bouquet of flowers for
her 90th birthday.
Social media posts and kind public remarks suggest the two managed to fully reconcile
by the time of her passing in 2017.
If scores of hit songs and millions of album sales aren't enough proof that Sir Elton John
was something of a musical prodigy, there's also the fact that the Royal Academy of Music
in London once offered him a scholarship.
The school took notice of the young John, who had taught himself to play the piano when
he was just 4 years old, offering him a scholarship to attend their youth program when he was
11.
However, fate beckoned, and John ultimately found that rock 'n' roll was closer to his
artistic sensibilities.
At 17, he decided that formal education was no longer his jam, so he dropped out in order
to make his name in pop music.
While this was certainly an excellent career move, John didn't really intend to rebel against
his school, at least not in the long run.
He's very much a believer in higher musical education, to the point that he endows scholarship
funds at the Juilliard School of Music and his own alma mater.
In 1971, John managed to release no fewer than three different albums.
There was the live album called 17-11-70, a soundtrack to a little-known movie called
Friends, and finally Madman Across the Water, which includes the beloved "Tiny Dancer."
His album from 1970, Tumbleweed Connection, also charted during 1971.
After a year like that, most artists would've had the decency to at least pretend they were
slightly out of gas, if only to prevent every other musician from developing an inferiority
complex.
However, Elton John is not most artists, so he immediately followed his insane year with
1972's Honky Chateau, which included a little song called "Rocket Man."
When John honored the deceased Princess Diana with his 1997 mega-hit rendition of "Candle
In The Wind," it didn't come out of nowhere.
He'd been a friend of the royal family since the seventies, and he even met Princess Diana
in 1981 at Prince Andrew's birthday party.
The princess and the musician danced alone for 20 minutes and became fast friends.
Their relationship was friendly and warm until 1997, when John and fashion designer Gianni
Versace released a coffee table book called Rock and Royalty, which featured pictures
of the royal family alongside photos of semi-nude male models.
A shocked Diana refused to speak to John for months, and the two only reconciled when Versace
was murdered later that year.
Tragically, their rekindled relationship would only last for a few weeks before Diana herself
died in a car crash and John found himself playing at her funeral.
To this day, the musician considers the late princess "an angel" and has remained on friendly
terms with her family.
Despite the fact that his style is probably best suited for arenas and opulent Las Vegas
casino shows, John has been known to take the occasional smaller gig.
He played a particularly strange one in 2010, when he performed at the wedding of Rush Limbaugh,
the controversial right-wing radio host who's been accused of, among other things, homophobia
and AIDS denialism.
Since John is a gay man himself and a leading AIDS activist, it may seem weird that he agreed
to play at the wedding reception of a shock jock who's been known to downplay the disease.
However, there's a pretty good chance that the singer knew perfectly well what he was
doing and that he had the last laugh.
After all, he reportedly charged Limbaugh $1 million for the performance and sent every
last cent of the profits to the Elton John AIDS Foundation.
It's impossible to talk about Elton John's career without mentioning Bernie Taupin.
They've been songwriting partners since 1967, when the two men both answered a job advertisement
that Liberty Records had placed to find singer/songwriter talent.
John was a prodigious pianist and could write a mean tune, but he struggled with lyrics.
Since Taupin happened to be a prolific lyricist, Liberty decided to pair the two.
As a result, they wrote about 20 songs before they even met for the first time.
But John and Taupin collaborate in an unusual way.
Taupin writes the lyrics first, and John composes the song based on the text.
The whole process is remote; they've only ever worked on a song in the same room a couple
of times.
The different ways they've handled fame and fortune have been equally peculiar.
While John has embraced the limelight, Taupin has managed to dodge the kind of celebrity
that usually follows when you write dozens of iconic songs and sell millions of records.
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