And yet here we are, singing the songs five decades later.īorn Reginald Dwight in Pinner, England, in 1947, John took to the piano young, studying on a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music while obsessively listening to Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard.

This was pop music, John argued: You weren’t supposed to think about it too much, and god help you if you did.

By 1973’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, John said they were writing a couple of songs at breakfast and recording them before lunch.

Even if you didn’t know exactly what it meant-who is the dancer, and why are they so tiny?-the feeling was immediate, universal. But beneath the feathers, John’s music-written with the lyricist Bernie Taupin-was direct and unpretentious, the kind of rock ’n’ roll storytelling that met you where you were. The excess was always apparent: the rhinestones, the costumery, the old Hollywood glamour retrofitted for a new, gender-bending world. But John had a show to put on, and wouldn’t that be something to talk about? Adjusted for inflation, you’re talking about something more like $25,000. At the height of the fever dream that was Elton John’s life in the ’70s, the singer-songwriter had the optician Dennis Roberts design a pair of giant, sculptural glasses studded with 57 battery-powered lights in the shape of the name Elton-to the tune of about $5,000.

Download elton john lion king