Me - Elton John - 2019

 

This book is 12 hours audio and read by Taron Egerton (who i am told played Elton in “Rocket Man” and I think he also played Johnny in Sing). He did a fabulous job reading this book. This is one of the best audio book productions I have listened to. He did really well with the emotion of the text and various accents. I highly recommend listening to the music mentioned in the book as you read. I did this and it was great! I have always liked Elton John music but now I like it more. Reading this book is like having a private discussion with Elton. 

This book is probably top ten. I would say it is basically the gay version of Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis so we can swap it into the 2 spot if we want. Elton John may be even more crazy than Kiedis and probably knows more famous people, has done more charity work, and has collaborated with more artists, and sold more records. His life is probably more crazy than Kiedis’s life. 

I do not know where to begin but without giving away too much, here is a little bit from this book. Elton was a big coke head (coke like cocaine). He eventually had to go to rehab and thousands of na and aa meetings. He was bulimic for a while. He is Eminem’s aa sponsor. He is good friends with Lady Gaga. He was engaged to a woman and also married to a different one for four years (jajaja and he has been gay since the 70s so explain that to me jajaja although for the engagement he did not know he was gay). He has kids (i dont understand gay people at all; as far as i can tell when lesbians have sex it is the same as having sex with a man and now gay people want kids and have to pay a surrogate and donate their sperm). I guess people are actually born gay but it seems like such a roundabout way to accomplish the same thing that straight people are accomplishing.

Anyways I am an ally to the gays. If mason ends up gay that’s cool as long as he is happy and takes precaution against aids. What else? Elton’s dad told him masturbation will make you blind jajajaja. Elton’s mom (rip) and apparently Tina Turner are apparently real witches. Once again we have a famous person with a weird home life. Based on this book his mom was just straight up mean (especially later in her life). She was not terrible during his childhood. His dad was basically not involved in his life after his youth. 

But in all seriousness Elton really worked hard over many years and paved the way for reality tv and residencies at Vegas apparently (besides selling millions of records and constantly touring). He wrote a lot of the music for the original Lion King which I did not know and found really impressive. He was friends with Princess Diana (who Rocky apparently had a big crush on). It seems like all famous people know each other. It also seems like it sucks to be famous. After reading this book I am content with my normal nobody life. 

I also did not realize how many famous people are gay. George Michael was gay and died of aids (chat says George Michael died of natural causes so maybe I read this part of the book wrong). Freddy Mercury was gay and died of aids. I cannot imagine being gay in the 70s/80s. It is like being something that does not exist lol. Based on this book I have no clue how Elton never got aids. He truly was the gay Kiedis.     

I could go on but anyways read this book and laugh out loud. Elton is super funny and tells it super straight (lol). He is deadly honest. He is also a musical genius. I almost forgot to write that because so many other crazy things happened in his life. 

Enjoy! One of the best books I have read this year! Now I am going to put on giant sunglasses and a diamond crucifix and do a handstand on a piano!!! jajaja

***Again in fairness Elton drank a lot (vodka martinis were his favorite and there is a funny story in the book about these) and smoked a lot (or snorted a lot is that what you do with cocaine?) so who knows how good his memory is. He was also over 65 while writing this. The text is really well written and researched. When people are mentioned it is almost always their full name. However as stated in previous reviews it is hard for me to totally believe all of these “perfect” memoirs.