Reginald Kenneth Dwight:
“I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems. On the cross, he forgave the people who crucified him. Jesus wanted us to be loving and forgiving. I don’t know what makes people so cruel. Try being a gay woman in the Middle East … you’re as good as dead.“
Bill Donohue, the loony leader of the endlessly entertaining Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and a professional homophobe, noted:
“To call Jesus a homosexual is to label him a sexual deviant. But what else would we expect from a man who previously said, ‘From my point of view, I would ban religion completely’.“
A man who changes his name from Reginald Kenneth Dwight to Elton Hercules John cannot be anything but queer. John, with his flamboyant eye glasses, extreme shopping habits (he and his husband’s household expenses are said to be more than $2 million a month) and multiple platinum record sales, is certainly an out and proud gay guy.
John knew the path he needed to travel early in his life, when he a won a scholarship to Royal Academy of Music at just 11 years old. Before he began to do his songwriting with lyricist Bernie Taupin, the cowriter of the biggest hits of his career, John had many jobs: He ran errands for a London publishing house, he played piano in a hotel lobby, played backup for Patti LaBelle and The Bluebells, plus he had a gig recording cover versions of pop songs for records to be sold in supermarkets.
His first album was released in 1969, and between 1972 and 1976 there was simply no stopping the Taupin/John duo. They very much ruled the radio in the mid-1970s. John released an unbroken string of number-one albums, including his first classic, Honky Chateau (1972) and his masterpiece, the huge-selling two-record set Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1973), plus the autobiographical concept album Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy (1974). In the three-year span from 1972 to 1975, John had seven consecutive albums reach number-one in the USA, something that had not been accomplished before. In 1974, after he co-wrote John Lennon‘s much anticipated comeback single, Whatever Gets You Through The Night, the Captain Fantastic album became his first LP to enter the charts at number-one in the USA. Plus, John’s 1974 edition of his Greatest Hits collection remains one of the bestselling albums in history.
In the mid-1970s, John had seven albums at the top of the charts, with a combined total of 39 weeks, that means that there was an Elton John album in the number-one spot every fourth week or so during that time. This puts him in the same company as Elvis Presley, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra, and Bob Dylan.
Although his career took a big dip at the end of the 1970s, a crazy, new video oriented television network called MTV helped send the singles from his album Too Low For Zero (1983) back to the top of the charts. John has sold more than 400 million records in a career that is now in to its sixth decade. He has more than fifty Top 40 hits. According to Billboard magazine, in 2019, John was the top solo artist in USA chart history, and the top Adult Contemporary artist of all time. He has received six Grammy Awards, five Brit Awards; two Academy Awards, two Golden Globes, a Tony Award, and the Kennedy Center Honor. His special single Candle In The Wind 1997, which he sang at his friend Princess Diana‘s funeral, remains the bestselling single of all time. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.
John and his husband raise millions of dollars every year with his charity, The Elton John AIDS Foundation, hosting an annual party in Hollywood on Oscar night. It is way more popular than the awards show itself, attended by the great, the good, and the terminally glamorous. This year’s event, hosted by John and Furnish with special guest hosts Eric McCormack and Michaela Jaé Rodriguez raised over $9 million. Guests enjoyed a duet of Sawayama and John doing the gorgeous song Chosen Family.
His song Philadelphia Freedom is a tribute to his longtime friend Billie Jean King, who is chairperson for the foundation.
John came out as bisexual in a 1976 interview with Rolling Stone, and in 1992 he told the magazine that he was “quite comfortable about being gay”. He said that he took risks with unprotected sex during the 1980s and considers himself lucky to have avoided getting HIV. In 1986, he joined with Dionne Warwick, Gladys Knight, plus Stevie Wonder to record the single That’s What Friends Are For, written by Burt Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager. The profits from the sale of the single were donated to Elizabeth Taylor‘s American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR). The song won a Grammy Award.
In April 1990, John performed at the funeral of Ryan White. White was 13 when he was diagnosed with AIDS after a blood transfusion in 1984. Doctors gave him six months to live. When he tried to return to school, he faced discrimination in his Indiana community. He gained national attention.
White and John bonded quickly and deeply, and forged a relationship that had long-lasting cultural and political effects. John first became aware of White in 1985, after seeing a magazine article about the teenager’s struggle to have a normal adolescence after being diagnosed with AIDS. Surprising his doctors, Ryan lived five years longer than expected. He died in April 1990, one month before his high school graduation.
Russia, the country that gave the world gay composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky has a long history of hatred towards queer people. Most Russians are against the acceptance of homosexuality and have shown support for laws discriminating against LGBTQ citizens. Maybe Florida takes it cues from Russia, where they have enacted laws restricting the distribution of materials about LGBTQ relationships to minors. The law has resulted in the numerous arrests of Russian LGBTQ citizens publicly opposing and seeding a surge of anti-gay protests, violence, and hate crimes.
John seems to especially enjoy goading Vladimir Putin over Russia’s treatment of LGBTQ people. In a feckless stab at trying not to look like a rabid hater of all things queer, Putin said of John:
“Elton John… he’s an extraordinary person, a distinguished musician, and millions of our people sincerely love him, regardless of his sexual orientation.“
John responded by offering to introduce Putin to real Russians that were tortured because of Putin’s policies banning “homosexual propaganda”.
In May 1979, John played eight concerts in the USSR, four dates in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) and four in Moscow.
This month, John said of Putin:
“Some people are appalling aren’t they, absolutely appalling. There is no justification for this. Little bastard, I hate him, here we go.”
Earlier this month on Instagram, accompanied by a picture the Ukrainian flag, John said:
“For over 20 years, the Elton John AIDS Foundation has supported some of the most vulnerable people in Ukraine with access to HIV services and care, as part of our commitment to communities across Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
We are heartbroken and appalled to see this conflict unfold and our hearts are with the people of Ukraine who do not deserve to live through this nightmare.
During these devastating times, we stand for an end to the violence and suffering in Ukraine so that life-saving services and humanitarian aid can reach those desperately in need.”
The musical legend and gay icon is saying goodbye with his Goodbye Yellow Brick Road farewell tour which began in 2018. In January, John continued his farewell tour for the first time since the start of the pandemic. He had to postpone two shows after testing positive for COVID-19, experiencing mild symptoms, and he resumed the tour again after making a full recovery. John has tour dates for the rest of 2022 and 2023, when the tour will finally finish.
I appreciate John and his music, but to be honest, not that it really matters, but I am going to be honest with you anyway, I owned and totally loved those early albums, and then, for some reason, I got off the Elton John ride. I am not sure why. My CD collection now only contains four volumes of his Greatest Hits. But, lately, I have been streaming his channel. And, I love the very idea of him. My favorite Elton John album is his soundtrack for the lovely, but little seen film Friends (1971).
I guess things have come full circle, because 50 years later, my most listened to tune of winter 2022 is Cold Heart (Pnau remix), a song by John and Dua Lipa:
“People should be very free with sex. They should draw the line at goats.”
Elton John
