Sir Elton: The Definitive Biography

He was born Reginald Kenneth White in 1947, and he began his career in his teens pounding the piano in a pub. The world, though, would know him as Elton John, the name that for the past three decades has epitomized rock-music superstardom. From blockbuster albums like Friends and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road in the 1970s to award-winning scores in the nineties for the film and Broadway show The Lion King and the current stage hit Aida, Elton John has never failed to dazzle his audiences—and never more so than at the funeral of his close friend Diana, Princess of Wales, when he moved an entire nation with his poignant and powerful performance of “Candle in the Wind 1997” (“Goodbye England’s Rose”). Epically conceived and masterfully told, Philip Norman’s biography of the inimitable, legendary Elton John searches out the man behind the performer in glittering costumes and sky-high boots. Norman explores the draining addictions, the failed marriage, attempted suicides, a multimillionaire’s supposed money troubles. He examines Elton’s compulsions and coming out; he illuminates the creative drive that continues prodigiously and brilliantly to produce new music. What emerges is a frank, sympathetic portrait so truthful that Elton himself has said, “He’s got me spot on.”