Elton John hero-worshipped Elvis Presley as a child growing up in suburban London, and The King’s music invited him into an exciting new world. However, decades later, when John’s fame allowed him to meet his idol, it was an excruciatingly disappointing affair.
During his youth, Elton’s mother would make regular trips to the record store and introduce her son to the latest sounds from the hit parade. The moment she brought back ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ by Elvis Presley, it had a transformative effect on John. “My mum always used to buy a record every Friday. She came home, and she had the 78 of Elvis Presley, and she said, ‘I heard this in the record shop, and I’ve never heard anything like it!’ She played it to me, and I’d never heard anything like it either,” he once told The Guardian.
Elton continued: “It was weird because, about ten days before, I’d had my hair cut in the local barbers, where I went as a little boy, and I’d noticed a Life magazine. I was reading this article on a man who looked like an alien but was so handsome – I’d never seen anything like him, and I put two and two together and said, ‘That was the man I saw in the magazine!’ So that was the record that really changed everything.”
In June 1976, Elton and his mother watched an Elvis concert in Maryland and were fortunate enough to meet his hero before the concert. Presley’s health was in dire straits at this time, and the one-time superstar was a shadow of his former greatness.
Seeing Elvis in the flesh was a warning sign about what could happen to Elton if he didn’t change his ways and turn away from the dark side of drugs. Elton opened up about the gruelling ordeal to Oprah Winfrey in 1996 and revealed: “It was so sad because he turned into this big man with no eyes. They had sunk into the back of his head, and it was pathetic.”
Elvis had succumbed to an addiction to painkillers, which utterly consumed him, and he was no longer reminiscent of the musician Elton once adored. It had a scarring effect on the British singer, who was overcome with sadness following the event.
John spoke about his experience of the evening to Tom Doyle in the book Captain Fantastic and painfully admitted, “It was sad.” Before Elvis took to the stage, the pair conversed, but according to Doyle, it was an awkward discussion. “Elton looked into the eyes of the King and felt there was ‘nothing there’,” he wrote.
Reportedly, Elton requested Presley to perform a rendition of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ during the concert, but unfortunately, Elvis was unable to alter his pre-determined set. Elton recalled: “It was someone who was in a complete drug haze giving nylon scarves away to these fans. And yet it was still, in a way, magical.”
