![]() ![]() In 2008 he donated 120 motorcycles to the African nation of Lesotho, to be used by doctors and nurses to visit patients in remote areas, and in 1997 he raised $40 million for charity through sales of Candle In The Wind, the single released following the death of Princess Diana.Ĭopyright © 2022 Look to the Stars, All rights reserved. In 2004 he donated over $43 million to organizations around the world, making him the most generous person in music for that year – a title he retains year after year. The singer also gives large amounts of his personal wealth to charity. Since its founding, EJAF has raised over $125 million to support programs in 55 countries around the globe through prevention and education, elimination of prejudice and discrimination, and providing services to people living with the disease. “In the mid-1980s, I began channeling my grief into efforts to help raise money for the pioneering charitable organizations that formed during those dark, grim years to fund AIDS research and provide vital services to people with HIV/ AIDS.” “I have lost many dear friends to this terrible disease,” he said on the EJAF website. The host of Apple Music 1’s Rocket Hour, Elton has been the recipient of countless awards (Grammys, Oscars, BRITs, Tonys, Ivors), has been knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, and, in 2020, was awarded the Companion of Honour.Sir Elton John has seen many of his close friends die from HIV/ AIDS over the years, and established the Elton John AIDS Foundation ( EJAF) in 1992 to try to stem the destruction the disease causes around the world.Įvery year the music legend opens his house to hundreds of celebrities and invited guests for a themed “White Tie and Tiara” ball to raise money for the foundation, and also holds post-Grammy and -Oscar parties as fundraisers. In 2018, nearly 50 years after his debut album, he embarked on a three-year farewell tour, and published his first autobiography, Me, in 2019. There were good years and bad ones, highs and lows-that handful of Valium before jumping into the swimming pool in 1975, for example, or the disco album, which John himself described as jumping on a dying bandwagon-but he has always endured, emerging from the debauchery of the ’70s and redefinitions of the ’80s bruised but never beaten, a gay icon, AIDS activist, philanthropist, Knight Bachelor, and father of two. ![]() He started playing in pubs at 15 and, around 20, met Taupin through a want ad in a music magazine. ![]() ![]() They were so physical, John marveled-they didn’t just play the piano, they beat it. The Elton John AIDS Foundation is a global HIV charity that funds frontline partners to prevent new cases of HIV, fight stigma and provide care for the most. And yet here we are, singing the songs five decades later.īorn Reginald Dwight in Pinner, England, in 1947, John took to the piano young, studying on a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music while obsessively listening to Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard. This was pop music, John argued: You weren’t supposed to think about it too much, and god help you if you did. By 1973’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, John said they were writing a couple of songs at breakfast and recording them before lunch. Even if you didn’t know exactly what it meant-who is the dancer, and why are they so tiny?-the feeling was immediate, universal. But beneath the feathers, John’s music-written with the lyricist Bernie Taupin-was direct and unpretentious, the kind of rock ’n’ roll storytelling that met you where you were. The excess was always apparent: the rhinestones, the costumery, the old Hollywood glamour retrofitted for a new, gender-bending world. But John had a show to put on, and wouldn’t that be something to talk about? He rose to international fame in 1970 after releasing his single Your Song. With lyricist Bernie Taupin, John has released. Adjusted for inflation, you’re talking about something more like $25,000. Elton John has had a successful career as a Singer-Songwriter since he first hit the music scene in the 1960s. At the height of the fever dream that was Elton John’s life in the ’70s, the singer-songwriter had the optician Dennis Roberts design a pair of giant, sculptural glasses studded with 57 battery-powered lights in the shape of the name Elton-to the tune of about $5,000. ![]()
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