Me: Elton John Official Autobiography

In the early 70s, probably on a summer day, I was hanging out with my cousin, who is 2 years older and he put an album called Honky Chateau on his turntable. This was my introduction to Elton John and it blew me away. I don't think I had ever heard anything quite like it. It was so fresh and inventive, at least to my young ears. I followed John faithfully, through the next several years, as he piled on the hits and became one of the biggest rock stars on earth.
With this wonderful and engaging memoir, it brought all those fond memories back. It begins with his childhood and his difficult parents, (both are real stinkers, to put it mildly) but it did make him the artist that he became. His fateful meet up with his song-writing partner, show more Bernie Taupin, is one the great “happy” accidents in rock n' roll history. He shares incredible anecdotes about the rock hierarchy, of those times, becoming close friends with John Lennon and Freddy Mercury. Of course, his intense drug addiction and recovery are also examined, along with his sexuality and his involvement with the AIDs crisis. In the later chapters he talks about his marriage and his children, all beautifully rendered, like the rest of the book, in an easy narrative style filled with humor, honesty and warmth. I think this one will go down as one of the best rock memoirs...period.

**This was awesome on audiobook, narrated by the actor who played John in the biopic "Rocketman". show less

I have been an Elton John fan all my life after borrowing the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album from my sister and never giving it back. I had a major crush on Elton John, and I fell in love with the music, the collaboration of Elton John and Bernie Taupin. Their songs told stories with often tragic characters.

I have seen Rocketman, the biopic that came out around the time of Me, the memoir I just finished, so I was somewhat aware of the sex, drugs and rock and roll aspect of Elton's life. What I wasn't prepared for, perhaps, was the gossipy, b****y side of Elton; he can be downright mean. But he is also funny and often self-deprecating as well as completely honest about his addictions from drugs to sex to shopping as well as his terrible show more temper.

And, if he did brag a bit, he IS Elton John after all. He chose a variety of stories that showed him at both his best and worst. Besides getting behind the scenes looks at his concerts over the years, we learn about his relationships with family, friends, and the famous and *very* famous including an odd frenemy kind of thing with Rod Stewart. We follow his struggles with substance abuse and his success in getting clean. And, we see him finally get what he never thought he could have: a real family.

I enjoyed the book, learning more about Elton and feeling nostalgic for the times he describes, especially the creation of the early albums I adore. show less

This was a book that I really wanted to read, yet stalled on reading for years. Elton and I have had...a long and strange relationship.

More than fifty years ago, right around the time I was in Grade Six, a scrawny, shy, insecure kid, I somehow got my hands first on a badly recorded cassette tape that I could only play on one of those really crappy cassette recorder. It was Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, and I literally couldn't get enough of the album. Within a few weeks, I'd saved up enough allowance to go out and pay the outrageous $10 for the double album. I'd listen to that album from first song to last, over and over and over again. To this day, almost 52 years later, I know every note, every beat, every lyric.

In fact, I was so show more fascinated with this album, I completely missed his follow-up, Caribou, released nine months later. I was young. I didn't realize artists would continue to release albums.

Flash forward to the end of Grade Seven, and a buddy of mine had literally pulled out a two-page spread that showed the cover for the new Elton John album, the evocatively titled Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. That cover was magnificent, better than the Yellow Brick Road cover. I hadn't heard a note of it, but I had to have it.

To this day, fifty years and two months later (as I write this), I still believe it's the best album of Elton John's career. So good that, quite honestly, though I'd heard all of his subsequent releases, I never bought another album by him. Why bother? I had his two best.

But along the way, Elton John became my first "favourite" musical personality. I had posters on my wall of him, as the Pinball Wizard, a bigger print of that Captain Fantastic cover. I read the cheesy biographies of him. I worshipped him. When I spent the entire summer three hours from home with my stepbrother, I brought exactly one album: Captain Fantastic.

I lost interest in his late 70s and 80s output, and the next time I saw him was in the truly awful Tantrums and Tiaras. Quite frankly, it completely turned me off him for years (though I still played the hell out of those early albums).

My interest was piqued once again when I watched the fresh-from-rehab Robert Downey Jr lipsync to I Want Love in the video. It was a good song. Then the brilliant This Train Don't Stop There Anymore. Not long after that came the follow up to Captain Fantastic... The Captain and the Kid. And suddenly I was buying Elton John albums again.

Which is a ridiculously long introduction into why I wanted to read this book, but also didn't want to. I'd absolutely adored Elton John, and then I'd seen him, warts and all, in the Tantrums documentary and was utterly disappointed in him. What would this book do?

Turns out, it details the rise of a shy, insecure, slightly overweight, mentally abused musical prodigy into not just a household name, but also into one-half of one of the most important and well-loved music-writing teams in the world. Elton John and Bernie Taupin are a force.

Yes, Elton is still the spoiled, rich guy who has the most ridiculous tantrums over the most inane things, but now I see that he relates these both with all the chagrin and wry humility and shakes of his head that each deserves. They're stupid. He knows they're stupid. And yet, on he goes...until he comes to his senses. It's not enough for him to learn from them, but at least there's the acknowledgement that he knows they're ridiculous.

Once again, due to his stratospheric stardom, he can get away with it, which is sad in its own way. But, credit where credit's due, he's also experienced a life most of us can't even conceive of...and he acknowledges that most of the more insane situations he's found himself in, he was the one digging his own hole and then pulling the soil down on top of himself.

He's an interesting character, and where I once adored and revered him (and even did a school essay on his life entitled "Elton John: Superstar"), and then learned to be both disappointed and disgusted at his apparent immaturity, it seems we've both mellowed into old age where we can appreciate the highs and forgive (if not forget) the lows.

And through it all, I still regularly bust out both Yellow Brick Road and, more often, Captain Fantastic, and find just as much enjoyment of them in my sixties as I did when I was in my very early teens.

And I'm thankful that I am still able to enjoy the hell out of them when the come from the end of the world to my town. show less

I'm not saying this because I've been a fan of Elton John for at least 45 years but as a reader who enjoys an honest, open and heartfelt memoir.
This book is certainly the best I've read in a long time. Even if you've seen the movie Rocketman, you've only seen half of the story. Elton reveals much more in his book.
His life and career is not all fun and feathers. Multiple addictions created decades of decadence, debauchery and overindulgence. Death of friends and acquaintances due to drugs, alcohol and AIDS could have made a victim of Elton John too. It is amazing he survived to tell his story.
Yet, the beauty of this book can be found in his odyssey from high living self-centeredness to breaking down and discovering self love, self care, show more and real, lasting love. A catharsis which is downright inspirational.
Me is also a story of the music industry as it was in the 70's & 80's, its hedonistic lifestyle and of a serendipitous partnership with lyricist Bernie Taupin that has survived through the years and continues to this day.
Absolutely recommend this book with the highest regards. show less

From the reverent to the sublimely bitchy - I enjoyed Andrew Ridgeley's biography of Wham! but Elton John's no holds barred approach to setting his life and career in print knocks most memoirs into a cocked hat. He made me laugh, cry and even shocked me in places, but there is never a dull moment. Like his biopic Rocketman, which I also loved, this is a 'gritty but fantastical, surreal and over the top' account of what Elton's life 'felt like to him'. Some facts may be debatable by the other parties involved, and he admits that he couldn't remember certain events, like trashing his PA's hotel room and stamping on his hat in a drug-fuelled tantrum, but Elton is nothing but painfully honest.

Elton's story starts at the beginning, like most show more traditional biographies. He was born Reg Dwight, which most people know, to a mercurial mother and an absent father, living in his grandmother's house in Pinner. When I saw the biopic, I was startled by his portrayal of his mother, Sheila, and remember some reviews questioning if she was really that bad. She was. Young Reggie and adult Elton loved her anyway, but she would fly into rages when he was little, beat him, and - he claims - once shoved carbolic soap up his backside to cure constipation. When he was older and became successful, Sheila remarried to Elton's stepfather 'Derf' and seemed to be more accepting, but remained critical of every life choice her son made - and made a concerted effort to ruin Elton's civil partnership with David Furnish. So yes, Bryce Dallas Howard's portrayal in the film seems spot on!

Elton met his songwriting partner Bernie Taupin in 'an incredible twist of fate', as he describes being handed Bernie's lyrics by Ray Williams at Liberty Records. He doesn't know how they work so well together, being completely different personalities, 'they just do'. The other close friends in Elton's life read like a who's who of pop and rock since the 1960s - Long John Baldry ('Let The Heartaches Begin') gave Elton half of his new name and publicly outed him in the Bag O' Nails Club (Elton was about to stumble into marriage with Linda Woodrow), he and Rod Stewart have a running battle of trying to deflate each other's professional egos, Freddie Mercury was 'incredibly smart and adventurous, kind and generous and thoughtful, but outrageously funny', and Elton once watched Sly Stallone and Richard Gere squaring up over Princess Diana in his home.

Not so good friends but equally famous names like David Bowie, George Michael, Michael Jackson and Tina Turner also make cameo appearances, which might rattle a few fandoms. Elton is open about not getting on with David Bowie, trying to persuade George Michael into rehab, and thinking that Michael Jackson - who invited himself to a dinner with David Furnish's parents but left to go and play video games with the housekeeper's eleven year old son - might have had a few mental health issues. But he's humble about their talent and doesn't hold grudges.

Elton's brutal honesty is most alarming when he's talking about himself, however - his sexuality ('Not being that interested in having sex is the reason I never got HIV'), his drug/alcohol/shopping addictions, bulimia, and his famous temper, which is the only negative trait he tries to blame on outside influences (his parents). 'I wasn't afraid about people seeing the monstrous, unreasonable side of me,' he admits. 'I'm just more honest about it than a lot of people, especially these days'.

There is a chapter on Ryan White and Elton's AIDS charity which is worded almost exactly the same as his book Love Is The Cure, but worth reading about twice. And I had absolutely no idea that Elton had suffered a cancer scare in 2017, which lead to a near-fatal infection, so that jolted me out of my feeling of familiarity.

Everyone should read this book, whether you're a fan of Elton's music or not - he's absolutely hilarious, in the tried and tested self-deprecating, sarcastic style of English humour. Yes, he had a ghostwriter - Guardian columnist Alex Petridis - but the voice is 100% Elton John. Buy, buy, buy! show less

This was one of the juiciest, name-dropping memoirs I've encountered. It's packed with celebrities doing exactly the wild things you hope they would. There's no one like Elton: impulsive and self-centered, yet also extremely talented, loving, and charismatic. Most of the audiobook is narrated by Taron Egerton, who played Elton in the Rocketman biopic, with the prologue and epilogue by Elton himself. It's extraordinary and over the top, but also has so much heart. Elton doesn't hold back from addressing his failings and insecurities and remains hopeful about his future with his family. It's so candid that I fell in love with his relationship with Rod Stewart, and the number of friends he lost and remembers fondly is bittersweet. I'd say show more the main theme is to stay away from cocaine, although I'm glad we got to hear from the Elton John who didn't. This was a great listen, though maybe not with young ears around. show less

I was 17 when I saw Elton John perform in Chicago, opening with "Funeral For A Friend", wearing bright yellow feathers. I have always loved his music, loved watching him play the piano. I have seen him in concert three times total. And now I feel like I know him as a person. I listened to the audio version, read by Elton himself. What a lovely ability to make himself vulnerable, to poke fun at himself, and to share his strengths and foibles with the public. I could hardly put this down! He shares his ups and downs, his playfulness and his temper, his impulsive loves and his sorrows. I highly recommend listening to this book!