John was a dominant commercial inflict in the rock globe in the 1970s, as evidenced by septet sequentially #1 records on the U.S. album stock & index charts and Xv hit singles, including sextuplet #1's & ternion #2's. His piano-depending healthy has helped keep that instrument relevant inside the guitar-oriented genre. He has maintained the heavy public presence in the fight against AIDS, and has got renewed moments of commercial message triumph, like his noncompliant hit "I'm Still Standing" and his award-winning function on the vastly popular alive film The Lion King.

Early life and career

Elton John was innate Reginald Kenneth Dwight in Pinner, England, the boy of Royal Air Force squadron leader, Stanley Dwight, and his married woman, Sheila Dwight. Reginald was raised primarily by his mother, grannie & auntie, & saw little of his father in the period of his childhood. Stanley & Sheila divorced around 1962, when Reginald was Fourteen. Reginald began swimming piano whilst he was quatern. Somewhat of the infant prodigy, he was a cappella to play in piano any melody he heard in radio or even record player. At age Eleven, he won the scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music. He antecedently attended Pinner County Grammar School. He stayed at the Academy for half a dozen years, allowing prior to graduation to begin a musical career.

Inside 1960, Reginald and a bit of of his friends, patch however within school, formed a band known as the Corvettes, which evolved into Bluesology. Per mid-1960s, Bluesology was backing touring Western soul & R&B musicians like the Isley Brothers, Major Lance, Doris Troy, and Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles. Around 1966, two years fallowing Reginald left school, a band became musician Long John Baldry's supporting band and began touring cabarets by having him throughout England. After Baldry's control all over a b& greatly increased, Reginald left and began wanting to find more elastic to join. When failing lead singer auditions for each King Crimson and Gentle Giant, Reginald answered an advertisement by Liberty Records. There he was given the fold of lyrics by lyrist Bernie Taupin. Reginald so wrote music for the lyrics, & had inside touch by owning Bernie through the mail. So began the partnership that continues to this day. Whenever it met sestet months late, Reginald experienced changed his title to Elton John, by deed poll, in court to Bluesology saxist Elton Dean and Long John Baldry. Inside 1967 the first Elton John/Bernie Taupin song, Scarer, was recorded.

Elton & Bernie, at present working together, joined Dick James's DJM Records as staff songwriters within 1968, and above a next both years, wrote songs for popular singers such as Roger Cook and Lulu, while likewise recording their have songs. Inside June 1969, Elton released his foremost album Empty Sky for DJM, forswearing any profits.

1970s success
Elton's self-titled second album was released in the spring of 1970, and began to sell swell in the U.S., in which it was freed on the MCA's Uni subsidiary. "Your Song", a single from either a album, helped a album greatly by reaching a Top Ten on the Billboard Hot 100, and it reached a Top Ten on the Billboard 200. Elton performed his 1st Western concert at a Troubadour in Los Angeles, California, around that period, & had mostly caring reviews.

Elton John was followed quickly by owning a conception album Tumbleweed Connection in October 1970. It reached a Top Ten on the Billboard 200 like its predecessor, and had heavily airplay in album-oriented radio stations in the U.S., which virtually all around all probability played the a portion in its profits. Tumbleweed Connection was followed by the survive album 11-17-70, an ambitious & largely underrated album showcasing Elton's considerable talent as a rock piano player, using peachy interaction between Elton & bassist Dee Murray. Extended versions of his early compositions clearly illustrate a gospel & boogie-boogie influences in Elton's piano swimming, when the lead instrument around a successful, however unusual (for Rock) trio format. A survive album was followed per soundtrack to the obscure film Friends & a album Madman Across the Water, both that equivalent month. Madman Across the Water reached a Top Ten, & produced the hit “Levon” when a soundtrack album produced a hit "Friends". Within 1972, Elton released Honky Chateau, which became his first Our contries first album, spending 5 weeks at a top of a stock & index charts, and spawned the hit singles "Rocket Man (I Think It's Going To Be A Long, Long Time)" and "Honky Cat".

Around 1973, Elton started his have label, Rocket Records. That month, Elton freed a popular album ''Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player which produced the hits "Crocodile Rock" and "Daniel", and the more thoughtful, album-oriented double LP Goodbye Yellow Brick Road which gained instant critical acclaim. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road'' topped a stock & index charts and is considered by numbers of, including John himself, to become his better album. It contains a number one hit "Bennie and the Jets", along by owning a popular title song, "Candle in the Wind" (which went in to be a better merchandising song of 100% period), & a FM radio favorite "Saturday Night's Alright (for Fighting)." It likewise contained gems like a track "Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding" & "Grey Seal".

Within 1974, Elton engaged in the noted collaboration by using John Lennon, resulting within Elton covering The Beatles's "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", Eltin existence featured on Lennon's "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night", & the surprise joint concert performance one ii There are no. One hits along by using a Beatles classic "I Saw Her Standing There". Elton had Lennon to perform these songs at Madison Square Garden in what would be his previous public performance. A concert was recorded & freed ii years late sustaining an additional survive concert recording on the album On this button & There. That season, he as well became director of a agent association football team, the Watford Football Club, and freed a albums Caribou and ''Elton John's Greatest Hits'', both #1 hits, like their predecessors. Greenland caribou was widely considered the lesser quality album however demonstrated John's rocking ability by owning "The Bitch Is Back" & his versatility inside orchestral songs sustaining "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me". Likewise inside 1974, Elton John was asked to play a character known as the "Pinball Wizard" & perform a song of the equivalent title per British band the World health organization for their rock opera Tommy. Drawing in power chords, Elton's version was recorded & utilized for a pic release within 1975 and the individual come call at 1976. A song following #7 around England. Numbers of however recognize Elton John's rocker version supplementary easy than A World health organization's original version

By having a release of the 1975 autobiographical album Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy Elton John revealed his previously ambiguous personality. within the album, Taupin & John describe their early times when struggling songster & musicians in London and its environs. the lyrics & incidental photograph leaflet come infused by using a specific feel of place & instance that would otherwise exist as uncommon inside John's music. "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" was a hit individual from either this album & captured an early turning point within John's life. His next album, a rock-oriented Rock of the Westies, entered the Billboard 200 chart at #1 like Captain Wow, the antecedently unattained effort.

Elton, within how else, owes his profits at that period to his concert performances. His flamboyant stage wardrobe that involved ostrich feathers, $5,000 spectacles that spelled his name inside lights, the Statue of Liberty costume & thomas more, & his dressing higher rather Donald Duck or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart among others at his concerts made the two the profits & created interest for his music.

Elton's career slowed down somewhat fallowing 1976. That season he stated within the locate by owning Rolling Stone that he was bisexual. This revelation contributed to a drop by record sales the resulting years. A decline within his record sales was besides probably due to his exhaustion. He cut his performance schedule when that season, & retired from either survive performances around 1977 and started recording sole a single album by the season.

Withal, Elton John totally dominated a rock globe in the 1970s, as evident by his sevener sequentially albums that topped a America album stock and index charts: Honky Château (1972, #1 for five weeks), ''Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player (1973, #1 for two weeks), Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1973, #1 for eight weeks), Caribou (1974, #1 for four weeks), Elton John's Greatest Hits (1974, #1 for ten weeks), Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy (1975, #1 for seven weeks) and Rock of the Westies'' (1975, #1 for three weeks), and 15 hit singles, including six that went to #1 ("Crocodile Rock," "Bennie and the Jets," "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds," "Philadelphia Freedom," "Island Girl," "Don’t Go Breaking My Heart") and three that reached #2 ("Daniel," "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," "Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me"), during that period.

1980s onwards
In 13 September 1980 Elton John played the loose concert to a vast audience on The Neat Lawn within Central Park in New York City, within hearing few feet away of his friend John Lennon's apartment house. Two or three months late Lennon would exist as murdered; Elton would mourn a loss within his 1982 hit "Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny)".

Elton John's biggest 1980s hits included, among others, "I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues", "I'm Still Standing", "Nikita" & the 1986 live recording of "Candle in the Wind" which he recorded during a concert by using the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra although the orchestra did non participate in the song. the song, which was a tribute to Marilyn Monroe, was originally recorded in 1973 in his Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album.

A 1991 film documentary Two Rooms described a unusual literary genre that John & Bernie Taupin have, which involves Taupin writing a lyrics in his have, & John so putting the babies to music, sustaining them never in the equivalent room in the period of the run.

Around 1991 John's "Basque" won the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition.

Around 1992 John performed "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "The Show Must Go On" sustaining Queen at the Freddie Mercury Tribute concert, an AIDS charity event held at Wembley Stadium, London.

Elton John was inducted into a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. He & Bernie Taupin got antecedently been inducted into a Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1992.

Elton John was processed the Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1995.

Inside September 1997, Taupin altered the lyrics of "Candle in the Wind" for a favorite version mourning the demise of Diana, Princess of Wales, and John performed it at her funeral in Westminster Abbey. The recorded version, "Candle in the Wind 1997", then became a fastest merchandising individual ever, at length running in to sell ended 30 million copies worldwide, using a take running to the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund. John would late win a Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for the single.

Elton John was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II on 24 February 1998.

He continues to release recently lesson to commercial profits, & tours extensively, despite existence fitted by owning the pacemaker in July 1999. His face-to-face tours by owning fellow piano player Billy Joel have been a fan favorite throughout a world since the mid-1990s. Elton likewise has the multi-month contract to perform at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. A indicate, entitled A Red Piano, occurs as multimedia system concert featuring massive props & videos collage created by David LaChappelle.

John's dueted by having Eminem on the rapper's "Stan" at the Grammy Awards of 2001. This went an extended way towards absolving Eminem of charges of homophobia and thus paving a way for Eminem's greater mainstream acceptance.

He achieved however an additional #1 only in the UK, existence featured in 2Pac's posthumous song "Ghetto Gospel" in 2005, from a rapper's album, Loyal to the Game. A song sampled "Indian Sunset" from either John's 1971 album, Madman Across the Water.

In 2 July 2005, John performed at the Live 8 concert at Hyde Park in London.

Within July of 2005, Madame Tussauds made a 227 pound. statue of Elton John, to his measure. It took to a higher degree 1,000 hours to complete. John is presently sandwiching the 2-biennial globe tour, reaching wharehouses he has never performed within prior to, sustaining his regular appearances at Caesar's Palace around Las Vegas.

Film work

He has likewise work two for & inside films. Within 1971, he wrote the soundtrack for the moving-picture show Friends.Within 1972 he appeared in the Marc Bolan's musical theater film 'Born to Boogie' Within 1975, he appeared as a Pinball Wizard inside Ken Russell's over-a-sinful motion-picture show version of the rock opera Tommy.

Inside 1994, along with Tim Rice, he wrote the songs for the Disney animated film The Lion King. (Rice was reportedly stunned per rapidness by using which John was a cappella to placed his words to music.) A Lion King went in to be the right-grossing traditionally-animated feature ever, by using a songs swimming a key a share. 3 of the 5 songs nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song that year were John & Rice songs from either A Lion King, sustaining "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" winning. Around versions sung by John, each that & "Circle of Life" became large hits, when a more songs like "Hakuna Matata" achieved popularity by owning a lot ages too. "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" would likewise win John a Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance.

5 years late, John wrote a score for The Muse, & a year late composed songs for a second alive film, DreamWorks' The Road to El Dorado. Inside 2001, his 1970s hit, "Tiny Dancer" was featured on the Almost Famous soundtrack, and his virtually all recent film song was "The Heart of Every Girl" (a prevent title song from either 2003's Mona Lisa Smile).

Musicals
Additionally to the 1998 adaptation of The Lion King for Broadway, John has also composed music for the Disney production of Aida (2000) with lyrist Tim Rice, for which it received a Tony Award for Best Original Score and the Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album.

John likewise composed music for the West End production of Billy Elliot (2005) with Lee Hall, and The Vampire Lestat with Bernie Taupin, based on a Anne Rice vampire novels.

Personal life
John has experienced the complicated portable history. Coming out 1st when bisexual in 1976, he married (1984) and quickly divorced (1988) Renate Blauel. He afterwards stated that he was gay and has lived with his partner David Furnish for a total of years. He plans to marry Furnish fallowing a British civil partnership law comes into result within December 2005. He has once in a while battled addictions to cocaine and financial difficulties from either his profligate disbursement.

Within 1976 Elton John became involved around Watford Football Club & fulfilled a childhood dream by becoming president and director. He resigned around 2002 when the club required the good-whale chairperson. He remains womb-to-tomb president.

John has yearn been associated by using AIDS charities after a demise of his friends Ryan White and Freddie Mercury, raising large numbers of money & utilizing his public profile to raise awareness of the disease. E.g., around 1986 he joined with Dionne Warwick, Gladys Knight, and Stevie Wonder to record the individual "That's What Friends Are For", with all profits being donated to the American Foundation for AIDS Research. A song won Elton & a others a Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal (when well as Song of the Year for its writers, Burt Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager).

John founded a Elton John AIDS Foundation in 1992 as a charity to fund programmes for even HIV/AIDS prevention, for the elimination of preconception & discrimination against HIV/AIDS-affected souls, & for providing services to humans dwelling using or at chance of catching HIV/AIDS.

Aside from either his independent zero around Windsor, Engl&, John splits his instance inside his various residences in Atlanta, Georgia, America; Nice, France; London, England; and Venice, Italy.

He occurs as noted art collector, & is believed to stand one of a big personal photography collections in the globe.

Musical style and voice
In the 1970s, Elton John's sound was immediately placed apart from either others by existence piano-depending around the rock globe dominated by guitars. An additional early characteristic was the placed of dynamic string arrangements by Paul Buckmaster. Coupled by owning Taupin's typically unintelligible however emotionally resonant lyrics, a outcomes were unique for their instance. Songs therein style involved "Sixty Years On", "Burn Down the Mission", "Take Me to the Pilot", "Levon", "Madman Across the Water", & a right-known one, "Tiny Dancer".

"Your Song", one of his earliest & virtually all popular hits, incorporates another features detected inside numbers of of his songs: These are inside binary form, with a verse repeated prior to a chorus begins; A soft accompaniment is large, though a song as well features an orchestra; It utilizes the slowly building crescendo that brings the song to a tutti climax. More songs that watch this pattern include "Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me" & "Rocket Man".

John besides has the distinctive vocal style. Particularly, his phrasing is typically the bit metronomic & another time has a curiously off-kilter, "rushed" quality especially at a prevent of lines (case: a sentence "like a puppy child" in the song Amoreena). He besides, at least inside his classic time period in the Seventies, would another time sweep higher from either his normal tenor into the Four Seasons-like falsetto.

Elton John underwent throat surgery to dislodge possibly cancerous cysts from either his vocal chords inside January 1987 when on a road, the necessity he originally said was due to an contagion, however late said was the symptom of excessive substance abuse. A problems by using his voice could clearly become heard within his gravel singing on the Infect Australia album (freed 1987). He mass produced the to the full recovery however continued to locate inside doses for two or three years however. the surgery inside 1987 too experienced a spectacular affect in John's voice, & he obtained that he may there is no protracted sing withinside falsetto also when he antecedently can & that he at present sang in the lower range.

A vary around Elton John's voice has been a single that he has largely played down, using Elton commenting 15 years when a surgery that he was "singing better than ever." A utilise of studio results were patently added to his voice in his foremost UK #1 Hit "Sacrifice" (1990). A release of Songs From either A West Coast, his 2001 album showed super clearly how else different his voice is to his prime. These are the matter of opinion which singing style is better however pack would deny that Elton John remains an fantabulous & operatic singer.

Quotations
"You can call me a fat, balding, talentless, old queen who can't sing--but you can't tell lies about me. (After successfully winning a libel case against the London 'Sun' in 1987 for alleged underage sex.

"We haven't manufactured a good album inside an extended patch. Non since 1976 & Blue Moves."

"Whenever there is a better singer around England than Craig David, so We are Margaret Thatcher."

(After being asked about his sexuality in the 1970s) "I personally believe population should become loose to locate in any sex it purchase; it should draw a line at goats, though."

"Now, record corporations need a fast buck from either a Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Travis Miscia, S Club Seven, Steps. It've universally been about, I personally'm non knocking a music possibly, however it's prefer packets of cereal. There come as well numbers of of the two, as well numbers of of the two are upright mediocre. & I personally believe it wrongs rattling population's risk, very talent, of sustaining airplay. It's merely fodder." "There's such that you're potential to wash & that you watch the pattern. Wise shoppers produce the record, busy people clean the videos. We personally such as to break a system a bit bit additional & I personally neutralize the 70s, I should try a trifle bit thomas more currently."

"Anyone world health organizatiin lip-synchs publically on stage when you pay £75 to view the two should become shot. That's pine tree state off her Christmas card listing. However clean We give the toss? There is no." (about Madonna)

"Whenever We got a single finger left, I personally'd play for wise shoppers." (After breaking his fingernails by playing too hard)

"I personally thought it was a trifle of an anti-climax, to exist as honorable. A thought behind it was wow, however Hyde Park occurs as charisma-yours free! zone. There was there are no feel of occasion & from either the musical point, I personally didn't believe there were as well several highlights. We was super proud of to become the a portion of it, however We didn't believe it wwhen anywhere close when adept as a number 1 of these. How else may it exist as?" (about Live 8)

Discography
For a complete discography, see Elton John discography.

Band
Current members
Elton John - piano, lead vocals Guy Babylon - keyboards Bob Birch - bass guitar, vocals Davey Johnstone - guitar, musical director, vocals John Mahon - percussion, vocals Nigel Olsson - drums, percussion, vocals

Previous band members
Curt Bisquera - drums Jack Bruno - touring drums Ray Cooper - percussion John Jorgenson - guitar, saxophone, mandolin, pedal steel, vocals Jody Linscott - percussion Jonathan Moffett - drums Charlie Morgan - drums Dee Murray - bass guitar, vocals James Newton Howard - conductor Pino Palladino - bass guitar Kenny Passarelli - bass guitar, vocals David Patton - bass guitar, vocals Roger Pope - drums Caleb Quaye - guitar Tim Renwick - guitar, vocals Ken Stacey - additional guitar, vocals Mark Taylor - keyboards Billy Trudel - vocals Romeo Williams- bass guitar, vocals Ritchie Zito - drums Gentry Pruett - keyboards