Me by Elton John

Author:Elton John
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

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In December 1983 we went back to Montserrat. Too Low for Zero had been a huge hit, the biggest album I’d made for nearly a decade – platinum in Britain and America, five times platinum in Australia – so for the follow-up, we decided to repeat the formula: Bernie writing all the lyrics, the old Elton John Band providing the music, Chris Thomas producing. In fact the only real change to the team was that Renate Blauel was promoted from tape operator to engineer. She was conscientious and everyone liked her – the other musicians, the crew, Chris. She was quiet but tough and self-possessed. Recording studios in those days were a real boys’ club, you really didn’t find many women working in them, but she was making a career for herself just by being incredibly good at what she did; she’d stepped up and worked as an engineer for The Human League and The Jam.

I flew out on Boxing Day and arrived in a foul mood. My mum and Derf had come to Woodside for Christmas, and Mum had immediately slipped into her old role of managing the house and being foul to the staff. She’d had a huge row with one of the cleaners, which had turned into a huge row with me, and she and Derf had stormed out on Christmas Eve.

But I perked up on arrival. Tony King had flown in the day before me – he’d come out to stay over New Year. He was living in New York now, working for RCA with Diana Ross and Kenny Rogers. He’d given up drinking, joined AA and looked great, although he had some terrifying stories about what was happening in the gay community in Greenwich Village and on Fire Island as a result of a new disease called AIDS. We messed around in the studio, me inventing characters – an elderly aristocrat called Lady Choc Ice, a lugubrious, Nico-like singer called Gloria Doom – and Tony pretending to interview them. We both thoroughly approved of the boy who took Renate’s old tape operator job, Steve Jackson: he was blond and gorgeous.

After a few days, Tony left to go back to New York. I called him there a couple of weeks later, and told him I had some news.

‘I’m getting married,’ I said.

Tony laughed. ‘Oh yes? And who are you getting married to? That glamorous tape operator? Are you going to be Mrs Jackson?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m getting married to Renate.’

Tony kept laughing.

‘Tony,’ I said, ‘I’m serious. I’ve asked Renate to marry me and she’s said yes. The wedding’s in four days’ time. Can you get a plane to Sydney?’

The laughter at the other end of the phone stopped very abruptly.

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