Elton John Names Most Embarrassing Thing About His Rehab Stint

Elton John is still upset about the amount of hurt he caused while using drugs from the mid-’70s until 1990.

His longtime co-writer, lyricist Bernie Taupin, could only look on in horror as John’s downward spiral sabotaged their creative partnership. They were left making music he admitted was “not the best.”

Thankfully, John recovered following a stint in rehab – but not before having a particularly mortifying experience. “It was the most embarrassing thing in my life when I went into treatment that I couldn’t work a washing machine,” John, 77, tells Time magazine, which named John their icon of the year.

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“I thought, ‘Fuck. Here you are at 43 years of age, and you can’t work a washing machine. That shows you how you’re fucked up.’”

He added: “You make terrible decisions on drugs. I wanted love so badly, I’d just take hostages. I’d see someone I liked and spend three or four months together, and then they would resent me because they had nothing in their life apart from me. It really upsets me, thinking back on how many people I probably hurt.”

Taupin also dealt with his own addiction issues after seeing how bad John had become. “I was terrified for him,” he admitted. “It was absolutely horrible.

“A lot of the work that we did in the times when he was at his worst wasn’t the best of both of us. I wasn’t able to creatively invest any time in writing material that related to him until he actually found himself, and then it was easier for me to reflect upon it.”

Bernie Taupin On What People Missed About Elton John

“What people didn’t realize in the ’70s and ’80s and ’90s, but I think they realize now, is that he’s one of the best fucking piano players on the planet,” Taupin argued. “There are a lot of people that have great catalogs and great songs, but I don’t think anybody of our peers has songs that are so varied.”

Taupin also noted: “Do you know how many requests I get a day for the use of our songs on things like America’s Got Talent, The Voice or the silly show where they dress up as poodles?

“I don’t think Bob Dylan gets a lot of requests [from] The Masked Singer.”

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