The 75-year-old musician punctuates on the tours through July in Sweden
A few days ago, Elton John returned to Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, from where he literally shot to the top of music 47 years ago. He was again in shiny outfits, enchanting the audience, but he also appeared in a dressing gown, more suitable for a man on the verge of retirement. Apparently, the 75-year-old star wanted to part ways with his audience in a playful way.
The concert in Los Angeles was a farewell to his American fans. After singing some of his biggest hits, Elton John said: “I’ve had enough applause, it’s time to be with my family.” He hugged and kissed his husband David Furnish as their sons Zachary, 11, and Elijah, 9, happily waved to cheering encore fans.
Already in September 2018, the musician started his farewell world tour. He had planned over 300 concerts, but the pandemic canceled most of them. After parting ways with America, he heads to Australia and New Zealand in January. In the spring, he returns for concerts in Europe, and the finale of his tour will be in July in Sweden.
“I’m not tired, but to be honest, I’m looking forward to July 8 when I get off the stage in Stockholm and go on holiday.
I won’t stop yes i make music and to record
with other people. I even hope to write a new album for myself as well, but I stop traveling for concerts because they take me away from my family”, said Elton John in one of his interviews with American media.
He describes the 1975 concert at Dodger Stadium as the highlight of his career at the time and one of the happiest moments of his life, which then went through a very difficult period marked by alcohol and opiate abuse. For 16 years, he took cocaine, which, in his words, “turned him into a monster.” He started sniffling in 1974 because, despite his success, he didn’t feel like “one of the cool ones”. At first, the drug helps him, but quickly everything collapses. “I started to fall in love with random things. I used to like someone and take them with me, almost hostage if I’m being honest. I bought him whatever he wanted. After a few months, everything ended in tears and I even had someone else drive him,” the musician admits in his memoirs.
In Atlanta, she fell in love with the American Hugh Williams, who during a scandal called him a “drug addict, alcoholic, bulimic and addicted to sex”. His words burn Elton and he agrees to therapy. He had a hard time finding a place to get treatment for so many addictions, but eventually he was admitted to Chicago Central Hospital. At first he is in shock. He realizes that although he is 43 years old, he cannot do anything alone. He doesn’t even know how to run a washing machine, someone has always taken care of him. He tries to run away, but doesn’t get far. He sits down on a bench and cries for a long time, realizing that if he doesn’t come back, he’s finished. Gradually, he liked the therapeutic group meetings so much that he attended 1,400 in 3 years and was eventually freed from his demons.
“If I hadn’t gotten sober, I wouldn’t be here and I wouldn’t have the wonderful things that have happened to me since then. I have a great family, friends, career. I have never been happier personally than I am now, at the age of 75,” explains Elton John.
He began a romantic relationship with Canadian director David Furnish in 1993. They married in 2014, being among the first to take advantage of the legalization of gay marriage in England to encourage people of different sexuality not to be ashamed of it. At the beginning of their relationship, Furnish often raised the topic of children, but the musician rejected. “I was too old and set in my ways. Too absent – always on tour. Too concerned with china, photographs and modern art, none of which respond well to being hit or dabbed with crayons,” admits Elton John. However, everything changes when the two of them go to an orphanage in Ukraine along with their charity fund to fight AIDS. There they see a 14-month-old boy whose mother is infected and struggling with alcoholism. His brother also tested positive and his father is in prison. The musician says that little Lev
it literally is “stole” his heart
He wants to adopt him, but Ukrainian legislation does not allow an age difference of more than 45 years between an adopted person and an adoptive parent, and Elton John was 62 years old at the time. However, he and David Furnish did not abandon him. They found his grandmother and convinced her to take Lev and his brother, and they help with money to raise them to this day.
In the meantime, they decide to have their own children through a surrogate mother in the US. “I got used to fatherhood much faster than I thought. I loved how the kids just connected me to where I live in old Windsor. Although I’ve been here since the mid-70s, I didn’t know anyone before they started school, and now we have a lot of friends among our neighbors,” admits the English singer.
He tries not to repeat the mistakes of his parents in raising Zachary and Elijah. “We never hit them or lose our temper with them. When they misbehave, they go without their pocket or electronic devices for a week, but there is no physical or psychological punishment,” explains Elton John. In his biography he tells that
his mother beat with a brush,
to learn to use the potty as a child, and his father would hit him if he didn’t take off his school uniform properly. According to him, they stopped fighting only when his father went on a business trip abroad. They did not support his music career and refused to go to his concerts. “Because most of the arguments were about how I was brought up, it affected my confidence. For years I couldn’t bear to look in the mirror. I really hated what I was seeing,” said Elton John.
Therefore, he does not make ambitious plans for his children, and he and David have agreed to fully support them, whatever their dreams are. Both boys play the piano and Elijah plays the trumpet, leading his parents to think he might follow in his star father’s footsteps. “I don’t know what Zachary will do – his passion is fishing. And the greatest thing in my life is that when we had these children, everything changed”, reflects the musician.
She and David trust the same woman in California to bear both of their sons, but have not yet revealed who their biological father is. However, many talk about the important role of their godmother, the singer Leyda Gaga. “She’s a great role model. When Zachary was born, she came to bathe him in Las Vegas. He was dressed for a party he was supposed to go to, but he arrived and bathed him and fed him,” Elton John shared.
He decided to give up the stage and devote himself to his family, after a few years ago he secretly battled prostate cancer and
almost dying of an infection that gets after made his surgery
Doctors told his husband, David, that he had 24 hours to live if he hadn’t been put in intensive care. “I have never felt so terrible. I stood in my hospital bed and prayed to God not to let me die so that I could see my children again,” admits Elton John.
He manages to heal, and just as he starts to think about when to resume his concerts, David surprises him with a very long list. In it he described important events related to the future of their sons until they came of age. “When he asked me how many of them I would be able to attend, I realized that I didn’t want to miss a single one and decided to stop touring,” says the musician. After so many concerts, albums and applause, he dreams of only one thing – to hear at the end of his earthly journey from his sons: “You were a good father”.
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