Elton John’s Guide to Rock-Star Survival

A 1996 profile of the music icon. View in browser | Update your preferences Annals of Pop He’s a Little Bit Funny Elton John, or how to survive twenty-five years at the top. By Ian Parker If you’ve spent time on the Internet recently, you could be forgiven for thinking that the two biggest concert tours of the year belong to Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. But by some measures, even more momentous is Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour, which concludes in Sweden, on Saturday, as the highest-grossing tour of all time. (More than eight hundred and eighty million dollars racked up across more than three hundred shows, according to Billboard.) Even the pandemic and a hip surgery could only put the tour on pause. John, as one of his many hits declares, is still standing. In 1996, Ian Parker profiled the singer for The New Yorker, capturing the musician amid a series of triumphs after his “(relative) eighties slump.” Following the Oscar-winning success of his work on “The Lion King,” John was writing music for a stage production, “Aida,” for which he estimated he was earning a million dollars per day. His latest tour had included his forty-fourth show at Madison Square Garden, and his celebrity admirers ranged from Pavarotti and Bon Jovi to seemingly half the British Royal Family. The homophobia that had inspired John-themed obscenities at soccer games hadn’t disappeared, but the musician had found romantic stability with one partner, while keeping on another as his manager. Though the scale of John’s achievements was staggering, they were well earned: in candid interviews with Parker, the singer and his circle reflected on his battles with cocaine and alcohol, his troubled relationships, and his own “famously volatile temper.” Fans who are upset that they missed John’s latest round of shows can take heart; he hasn’t ruled out a concert residency in the future, and his pronouncements of endings aren’t necessarily true. “He has,” Parker writes, “always enjoyed standing in the light of an alleged new dawn, putting one thing or another—touring, say, or perilously high platform shoes—behind him.” Read the story Also from the Archive The Current Cinema “Rocketman” and the Art of the Acceptably Outrageous From 2019: Cut from the same gaudy cloth as “Bohemian Rhapsody,” this glam-rock bio-pic presents an Elton John marginally less sanitized than its predecessor’s Freddie Mercury. By Anthony Lane Daily Shouts I’m the Person “Your Song” by Elton John Was Written for, and I Would Like a Real Gift Instead From 2022: It’s a lovely tune, but it didn’t do me much good at a housewarming party where I was completely out of ice. By Tom Smyth More from The New Yorker Onward and Upward with the Arts After “Barbie,” Mattel Is Raiding Its Entire Toybox In an era when “pre-awareness” rules Hollywood, the company is ginning up plots for everything from Hot Wheels to UNO. By Alex Barasch Life and Letters On Killing Charles Dickens I did everything I could to avoid writing my historical novel. When I finally started “The Fraud,” one principle was clear: no Dickens. By Zadie Smith Today’s newsletter was written by Nathan Burstein. Thanks for Reading Let us know your thoughts about today’s edition. Plus, browse more newsletters and invite a friend to sign up for The Daily. You’re receiving this e-mail because you signed up for the New Yorker Classics newsletter. Manage your preferences | View our Privacy Policy | Unsubscribe The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from the products and services that are purchased through links in our newsletters as part of our affiliate partnerships with retailers. Copyright © Condé Nast 2023. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.