Daddies cool
To say the 63-year-old is on top of the world right now would be a gross understatement. The man is practically levitating. Dressed in a tight-fitting blue blazer and matching round blue shades, he is friendly and relaxed and eager to talk.
Forty one years since his first number one hit Your Song and with every major accolade that exists on his many mantelpieces, Elton Hercules John, nee Reginald Kenneth Dwight, is busier and more prolific than ever. With a resume which people half his age would be exhausted at even contemplating, Sir Elton seems more engaged with life than ever thanks in the main to the birth on Christmas day of Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish John via a surrogate mother in California. The father is his partner of 18 years and husband of five years Canadian film maker David Furnish (48).
“He’s something that has brightened our lives tremendously in the four weeks that we’ve had him,” he tells me, beaming. “I’ve had amazing things that have happened to me in my life, career wise and in my personal life, but this is the icing on the cake.
“This is some little soul who’ll be able to teach me far more than I’ll be able to teach him. I’ll be able to guide him with David and give him love and steer him in the right direction, but I know he’s going to teach me far more than I could teach him. People say I’m a little old, but I have thought this is just the right time for David and myself to have a child and so far, it’s been the most blissful four weeks of all time.”
Growing up in the Furnish John household, it’s hard to imagine that young Zachary will ever want for much. His father owns houses in several countries and is one of the highest-grossing performers of all time.
Given the range of his father’s interests, including soccer and his ongoing chairmanship of Watford Football Club (which he has also owned at different stages of his life), will the child be expected to be a fan too?
“That’s one of the great things about having a boy,” he says. “I cannot wait to take him to Watford. In fact I was talking to the Watford manager this morning and they’ve dropped off a kit for him at my house in London. Hopefully he’ll like soccer and he’ll become a Watford supporter as I’ve been my whole life. If he chooses Chelsea, I’m going to kill him.”
In the four weeks he’s had to practice, what kind of a father is he?
“David and I are very hands on. One day a week the nanny has the day off and we change nappies and feed him. Every night he has a bedtime story and we feed and change him and he has a bath and one of us will read to him. Last night it was The Best Nest and the night before that it was Dogs Don’t Wear Sneakers. 6.30pm is now sacrosanct in my life. I spend that time solely with my son. My parents gave me discipline and they gave me manners, but I grew up in that era in the early ’50s where there wasn’t that tactile love, especially from the father. I’ll be a very loving father.
“At the moment, all he’s doing is eating and burping and he’s just lying there with no mortgage worries, no worries about tomorrow, a blank canvas. My partner is the most loving partner you could possibly have and he’s very, very wise, so I think we’ll be fine with him. What the world need now, to quote Burt Bacharach or Hal David, is ‘love, love, love’.”
John met his partner David Furnish in 1993 when he was filming a documentary about him called Tantrums and Tiaras, and they’ve been a couple ever since. John had already been in long relationships with both men and women, including a four-year marriage to Renate Blauel, a German sound engineer. He was also engaged for a time to the heiress Linda Woodrow, but attempted suicide the night before the wedding. This inspired the song Someone Saved My Life Tonight.
His friendships with celebrities with profiles as big as his own go back a long way. The late Gianni Versace was a close friend and collaborator who designed many of his elaborate stage costumes. And of course his friendship and connection to the late Princess Diana was immortalised in the public consciousness when he re-purposed Candle in the Wind at her funeral in 1997.
John Lennon was also a friend and collaborated on his interpretations of Whatever Gets Your Through the Night and Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds. Lennon’s last public performance was with Elton John at Madison Square Garden in New York, a month before he was murdered.
Today, Elton is a huge fan of The Kings of Leon and Lady Gaga, the latter he sees as his modern day incarnation.
“She came and stayed at our house when we had a ball for AIDS last summer and she was wearing these shoes that made her too tall to get in the door. All I can say is they made mine look ridiculous and she’d come on a plane looking like that. I love her. I love her music, her spirit and the way she conducts herself. We’re both similar in our love of craziness.
“People laughed at Bjork for wearing that swan dress at the Oscars, but years later they’re still talking about the swan dress and not what anyone else wore. People need eccentrics like that and I adore her. She’s from the same kind of cut as I am.”
His long collaboration with songwriter Bernie Taupin is the stuff of legend now and John has had no difficulty in admitting that he doesn’t in fact write that often. Many of his greatest hits will feature in the upcoming animation, Gnomeo and Juliet.
“It’s always been the lyrics first. I write music when I have the written word in front of me — as a piano player, I tend not to carry a piano around with me.
“I don’t write very often, so when I do write, I feel very inspired. When I get a written lyric from Bernie Taupin or Lee Hall or Tim Rice, it really inspires me to write. I don’t run around with melodies in my head. I wait for the inspiration of the written word.
“My next project is going to be a musical of Animal Farm, which I will co-write with Tim Hall who wrote the book and screenplay for Billy Elliott.”
John admits he has been a very happy Luddite for many years and doesn’t own a mobile phone, an iPod, an iPad or even a computer.
“They’re coming out with a Skype iPad in April and I’m going to have to get one then, because I want to see my son when I’m not there, so I’m going to have to enter the world of technology. For us technophobes, it’s going to get very depressing, because I like the tangible feel of a CD, book, a record or whatever and that’s disappearing from the landscape.”
What if his son decides he wants to get into the biz in the future? Would he encourage him into the artistic life? His face colours with pleasure as he contemplates the question.
“He has his own iPod which I put together with David. He has Chopin, Carole King, he has The Carpenters, he has James Taylor, he has me, he has Linda Ronstadt and Led Zeppelin lullabies. So he has a nice mixture of things and he loves music. We have the most wonderful artistic friends, we live in beautiful places with great art, so that boy is going to be so visually and orally inspired his whole life.
“The thing I’ve noticed so far about fatherhood is how it’s relaxed me. I thought I was going to be very worried about him, but I’m just finding him so relaxed and I’m so chilled by the whole thing. Of course when he starts running and falling over, that’s going to be something else, but at the moment, I find it incredibly relaxing.
“I’m young at heart. I do more shows now than I ever did before. I will try to be young for him and play football or tennis. I play tennis most mornings. David is 15 years younger than me, so maybe I’ll leave some of the physical exercise to him. I have 10 godchildren and I know how children behave and I’m enchanted by them. I think I’ll do all right with Zak.”
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