A child prodigy on the piano, John was awarded a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music at 11. Gravitating toward pop after discovering rhythm and blues, he joined Bluesology, later John Baldry’s backing band, in the mid-1960s. He met his major songwriting collaborator, Bernie Taupin (b. May 22, 1950, Sleaford, Lincolnshire), after both responded to an advertisement in a trade magazine, and his first British recording success was with “Lady Samantha” in 1968. His first American album, Elton John, was released in 1970 and immediately established him as a major international star.
Throughout his career John demonstrated a supreme talent for assimilating and blending diverse pop and rock styles into a propulsive, streamlined sound that was extroverted, energetic, and somewhat impersonal. His recordings were among the first to homogenize electric guitar and acoustic piano with synthesized instrumentation. His vocal style, with its Southern accent and gospel inflections, was strongly American-influenced, as was his pianism, an ornate, gospel-flavoured elaboration of the stylings of Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. His first American hit, “Your Song,” in 1970, was a love ballad that combined the introspective mood of the era’s singer-songwriters with a more traditional pop craftsmanship. John’s early 1970s recordings paid homage to country rock and folk rock models such as the Band and Crosby, Stills and Nash.
By 1973 John was one of the world’s best-selling pop performers. His typical compositions, written with Taupin, were affectionate parodies and pastiches of everything from the Rolling Stones (“The Bitch Is Back” [1974]) to Frank Sinatra ballads (“Blue Eyes” [1982]) to 1950s rock and roll (“Crocodile Rock” [1972]) to Philadelphia soul (“Philadelphia Freedom” [1975]). He also demonstrated deeper musical ambitions in longer works such as “Burn Down the Mission” on Tumbleweed Connection (1971) and “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” on Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1973). Other notable songs from this period included “Rocket Man” on Honky Château (1972) and “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” on Caribou (1974).
Beginning in 1976 with the album Blue Moves, his rock influences became less pronounced, and a more churchlike English pop style emerged in ballads like “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word” (1976), which typified the staid declamatory aura of his mature ballads. In the late 1970s and ’80s, as he experimented with other collaborators, his music lost some of its freshness and his popularity dipped a bit, but he remained an extremely popular mainstream entertainer who brought into the pop arena an old-fashioned gaudily costumed flamboyance reminiscent of the Las Vegas piano legend Liberace. In the 1990s John was the first male pop star to declare his homosexuality, suffering no noticeable career damage. With lyricist Tim Rice he also wrote songs for the film The Lion King (1994), and “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” won the Academy Award for best original song; the movie was adapted into a Broadway musical in 1997. The same year, a new version of his 1973 song “Candle in the Wind,” revised by Taupin to mourn the death of Diana, princess of Wales, became the most successful pop single in history, selling more than 30 million copies.
