In April last year I received a call from an unfamiliar number in the Reading area. “Hi, it’s Elter,” the caller mumbled. Since I had no idea who Elter was, I decided to let them keep talking until I could work it out. It turned out to be Elton John, the international superstar whom I had never previously met. He wanted to chat about Wax Trax, a dusty second-hand record store on the outskirts of Las Vegas that he had heard I had visited.
“During my residency at Las Vegas, I was so bored each day that I would either play tennis or hang out at Wax Trax,” John says when I meet him almost a year later and ask why he called me out of the blue. “When I got sober in 1990 I sold my entire vinyl collection to raise money for the Aids foundation, but now the collection has returned and it’s bigger than ever. I love the ritual of putting the album on, looking at the sleeve notes, flipping it over. If all else fails, I’ll open a record store. I’ll be perfectly happy working behind the counter.”
John, 78, wearing large square blue glasses (one of his 15,000 pairs), likes objects: records, books, paintings, clothes, houses. “My dad was in the Royal Air Force and when he came home my parents always argued, often about me, which meant I was treading on eggshells my entire life,” he says. “When I went up to my bedroom my books, my Dinky toys, whatever I had, were in pristine condition. I loved LPs because they didn’t shout at me and make me feel bad. Now I ask, why do I collect these things? It must be embedded in me. Objects gave me solace and they still do.”
We’re at Woodside, a former hunting lodge built for Henry VIII on the edge of Windsor. John bought it in 1975 and shares it with his husband, David Furnish, their sons, Zachary, 14, and Elijah, 12, and various staff. There is a library of hardbacks and a table of awards on the ground floor, records on the mezzanine, and a games room filled with Lego and Star Wars toys, although the boys have since left behind such childish things for an all-consuming love of rap. In the living room we’re sitting in, wood panelling, Persian rugs and flowers everywhere give an air of luxurious warmth. As elegant as it is, Woodside feels like a family home.
“It used to be a rock star’s house,” John says from a sofa in the living room. Through the window you can see an oak tree, one of the ten oldest in Britain, next to a shimmering pond. “Then in 1989, I had a premonition and sold everything just before the financial crash: the art nouveau, the art deco, the gold discs, everything. Now it’s a home. It’s peaceful. I come through the gates and say, ‘Thank God.’”
Nonetheless, rumours of John’s retirement have been exaggerated. The night before we meet he was at the London Palladium with the American singer Brandi Carlile filming a televised special of the pair’s new album Who Believes in Angels? and playing a handful of Elton John classics along the way: Your Song, Bennie and the Jets, Tiny Dancer. And a handful is about as much as he can cope with now.
“Last night was exciting,” he says of the concert. “But to go back and do an Elton John set on tour, I would just kill myself. We went to New Orleans recently to film Spinal Tap 2. We drove into the back of a big arena and I turned to David and said, ‘You know, I’ve got hives.’ I couldn’t do a better show than Glastonbury 2023, so what would be the point? You have to know when to fold it.”
Still, John doesn’t seem like someone who would sit around and watch reruns of Emmerdale on the telly all day. “I can’t see the telly! I haven’t been able to see anything since last July.” In November, he announced that his new album would be delayed due to his losing the sight in his right eye after catching an infection in the south of France. I’m sitting right next to him on the sofa. Can he see me?
“I can see you, but I can’t see TV, I can’t read. I can’t see my boys playing rugby and soccer, and it has been a very stressful time because I’m used to soaking it all up. It’s distressing. You get emotional, but you have to get used to it because I’m lucky to have the life I have. I still have my wonderful family, and I can still see something out of here.” He points at his left eye. “So you say to yourself, just get on with it.”
Who Believes in Angels? is a triumph ripped from the jaws of disaster, an album with echoes of John’s Seventies golden age, but imbued with a spirit that is contemporary. In 2012 John was in the thick of his Las Vegas residency at Caesars Palace when he received a letter from Carlile saying he was her hero and inspiration. Would he consider playing on one of her albums?
“I knew her because I had bought her album and she’s the most remarkable singer, so I said, ‘Absolutely, but you’ll have to come to Vegas because I’m stuck here.’ We became friends and I took an interest in where she was going. I even bought her an electric guitar. People thought Who Believes in Angels? would be Americana, laid-back. No. It’s upbeat and rocking.”
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It wasn’t an easy album to make. John and Carlile teamed up with his old songwriting partner Bernie Taupin and the 34-year-old producer Andrew Watt, who gave such a dose of vigour to the Rolling Stones’ 2023 album Hackney Diamonds, and everyone had an opinion.
“We didn’t all agree,” John says, which is a bit of an understatement: on YouTube there is some behind-the-scenes footage from the recording sessions in which he is shown smashing his headphones in rage. “They stood up to me and I got frustrated, but it’s no good working with yes people. If I want to make a great album aged 76 or 77 I’ve got to be told and they put up with my little foibles, which were really about anxiety, self-doubt and not feeling very well at the time. I was tired so I thought, I’m going to abandon this. The problem was three other people were involved and I knew that if I walked away from it I would hate myself for the rest of my life.”
He says it all comes down to insecurity — a strange thing for an artist of John’s stature to admit to. “Oh God, yes. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t have fear and doubt. It’s good for artists. Every album I’ve done, good, bad or indifferent, I’ve had doubts about. And the most doubts I’ve ever had have been with this one.”
The real frustration was with himself. He felt he was coming up with unremarkable album tracks, while Watt wanted him to sound as energetic as he did in 1970. That’s why you can hear references to the past: here a snatch of Tiny Dancer, there the riff to Pinball Wizard by the Who, which he sang with such hysterical menace in Ken Russell’s 1975 film Tommy. “I can hear references to my old melodies because that’s the essence of who I am,” he says. “I can write Elton John songs until they’re coming out of my arse, but this is a new tint on what I did in the Seventies.”
Who Believes in Angels? does sound like a summation of John’s world. The Rose of Laura Nyro honours the New York songwriter of the title who forged a unique, jazz-inflected style that was a huge influence on him. Little Richard’s Bible is a rambunctious tale of how the flamboyant pioneer of rock’n’roll struggled with his sexuality.
“Little Richard was one of 12 children from a poor black family from Georgia. He didn’t want to be gay. He was the ultimate conundrum,” John says. “His career was all about being outrageous and successful, then finding God and disappearing, then the money ran out and he became outrageous and successful again. He was a huge influence on me because I had never seen anyone beat the shit out of a piano like that. These people are part of my education, my upbringing.”
Alongside the looks to the past is a constant interest in new music, from playing it on his Apple Music show to working with young artists. His last No 1 hit, in 2021, was a dance remix of Cold Heart with Dua Lipa. “We took the boys to see Chappell Roan at the Oscars party and my God, she’s brilliant,” he says of the 27-year-old singer who was the breakout star of 2025. At the party, they performed duets of John’s Your Song and Roan’s Pink Pony Club.
“It would be lazy of me to sit in classic Elton John songs for ever,” he says, also dismissing the laziness of people (like me) who are convinced the best music is whatever they discovered in adolescence. “I liked the Dua Lipa thing. I’ve done a new, banging dance tune and I want to do an album of pop songs because pop is so good at the moment with people like Chappell Roan and Charli XCX.
“At the same time, it’s a fatberg in the singles chart right now because they just sit there. Pink Pony Club by Chappell Roan went to No 1 recently and I played it in 2023. A Bar Song by Shaboozey spent 19 weeks at No 1 in America. I don’t like it at all, to be honest.”
John knows better than anyone that failure is as inevitable as success when you’re in it for the long haul. “We put out two musicals recently, one a huge flop in America and the other a huge hit in England,” he says, referring to Tammy Faye, a Broadway show based on the life of the televangelist of the title, and the West End transfer of The Devil Wears Prada. “Tammy Faye came out during the US election and it’s all about how the integration of church and state ruined America, which Ronald Reagan did. It was too political for America. They don’t really get irony.”
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Then there are the kids to think about. “My youngest can sing every rap lyric since it started,” he says with paternal pride. “At Glastonbury they went up to Central Cee and asked him for an autograph. Then the cheeky buggers went, ‘Do you mind if we sit on the side of the stage as well?’ Central Cee was so nice about it, thank God.”
There is a ballad on the new album sung by Carlile, who has two daughters, called You Without Me. It is about the realisation that children are not miniature versions of us, that they grow up and have their own characters, ambitions and lives. “It really hit home. The boys were Lego crazy, then one day it just stopped. They never used to care about what they wore, then Zachary googled to see what people were wearing to the Coachella festival and ordered his outfit accordingly.”
Even more difficult to cope with was secondary school. “We drove Zachary to senior school when he was 13, left him, he was perfectly fine, and I came back and burst into tears. David said, ‘What’s wrong?’ I replied, ‘I’ll never see my little boy again.’ I mourned the fact that I couldn’t pick him up any more because the kids have made all the difference to my life. David too — he’s the most brilliant man — but it’s about the boys now. We’re making sure they’re OK, making sure they’re appreciative and not spoiling them too much because, you know, I’m Elton John.”
John must realise, as most parents do or at least should, that he is no longer the most important person in the world. “Yes, that’s it,” he says, reflectively. “I always said I wanted to die on stage. Now I want my gravestone to read, ‘He was a great dad.’ My career has been wonderful, but the kids are what matters.”
Yet the drive is still there, the need to make music continues. The only thing that has really changed is the lack of touring. “I used to do 120 shows a year. No wonder these little fingers have had it,” he says, holding up fingers that are indeed little but still remarkably nimble on the evidence of his piano playing the night before. “I’m riddled with music. It is the greatest gift I have ever been given and here I am at 78, feeling better than I have ever been. This is a bastard” — he gestures at his eyes — “but we’ll get over it. There is a lot more to do.”
John gets up to give me a hug. “What can I tell you, Will? Life has been fantastic to me.”
Who Believes In Angels? by Elton John and Brandi Carlile (EMI) is out now
