"Me" by Elton John (2019)

High on the entertainment (read: gossip) and very low on any discussion about music or songwriting (“I can’t explain it and I don’t want to explain it.”) this might be THE ultimate celebrity autobiography - its compulsively readable, with almost every page bursting with anecdotes and hilariously self-deprecatory. Elton John was never a shrinking violet, in fact, if anything he was always a unapologetic extrovert and attention grabbing, scene-stealing, larger-than-life superstar so the book about his life is exactly what you expect it to be - and more.

Strangely enough - or perhaps not - I have always find him so ubiquitous that somehow I managed to go trough five decades without any desire to explore his music, besides of what was constantly playing on the radio. So I was aware of his biggest hits and thanks to tabloids, vaguely informed about the scandals but never dwelt on it because frankly there comes a point when we get overwhelmed with too much constant barrage - on a closer look he is a curious amalgam of sensitive singer-songwriter and exuberant old-fashioned flashy entertainer like Liberace (although he himself would point at another source of inspiration, 1950s pianist Winifred Atwell) - the point could be made that he created a stage persona of a showman to escape doom & gloom of reality, which was all explained in a very good biopic "Rocketman". In this, he was not so unusual because popular music is full of artificial characters created for the stage - almost everyone you could think of has done it and its interesting to analyse where one stops and another begins. 

It strikes me very interesting that biopic and the autobiography have two completely different angles - they are both authorised by its subject, by the way - although they discuss same person, its like completely different story. The movie focused exclusively on excess, while the book actually talks about his AIDS charity work that was not mentioned in a movie at all. "By then, I had started the Elton John AIDS Foundation. I had kept doing charity work, but the more I did, the more I realized I needed to do. The thing that shook me the most was volunteering for a charity called Operation Open Hand that delivered meals to AIDS patients all over Atlanta. I did it together with my new boyfriend John. At some houses we delivered to, the person inside would only open the door a crack when we knocked. They were covered in lesions and didn’t want to be seen, because the stigma attached to AIDS was so great. Sometimes they wouldn’t open the door at all. You would leave the meal on the step, and as you walked away you would hear the door open, the meal would be snatched in and the door would slam shut again. These people were dying horribly, but worse, it seemed as if they were dying in shame, alone, cut off from the world. It was horrendous, like something you read about happening in the Middle Ages – sick people being cast out of society because of fear and ignorance – but it was happening in the 1990s, in America."

What makes this autobiography so successful and different from others is that its subject had decided to write it while it still matters: he talks about contemporaries who are either still with us or closely remembered. This is not Gloria Swanson musing about some long-forgotten silent movie director that nobody remembers or cares for anymore, but a huge rock superstar disclosing his often hilarious memories about the top of rock aristocracy. Anybody who matters in included here and he is merciless in his vivisection - the stories are without exception incredibly funny, sharp and quite unforgettable but at one point I started to wonder does he actually have anything nice to say about anybody? Another thing is that he spent years on therapies so he is actually genuinely aware of himself and his own personality - if he is merciless towards others, he is also poking fun of himself. It is very enjoyable read (and how can it not be?) but than, it is also an incredible life that bears no resemblance to any normality so its quite impossible to judge him from our own perspective. None of us was sniffing Cocaine with John Lennon or having dinner with Michael Jackson or dancing the twist with Queen Elizabeth. It is quite miraculous not only that he is still alive but that he also remembers it all.