From Reginald Dwight to the biggest farewell tour of its day

Elton John was born Reginald Kenneth Dwight on 25 March 1947 in Pinner, Middlesex. He learned to play piano at an early age and won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music. In the 1960s he formed the blues band Bluesology, worked as a session musician and wrote songs for other artists together with the lyricist Bernie Taupin, the partnership that would define his career. His debut album, Empty Sky, appeared in 1969.

Over the next six decades there were 32 studio albums, among them Honky Château, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Songs from the West Coast. “Your Song”, “Rocket Man” and “Tiny Dancer” are only part of the picture. He also composed for the stage and screen, with The Lion King, Aida and Billy Elliot the Musical, and his life was dramatised in the 2019 film Rocketman. He has nine number-one singles on both the UK chart and the Billboard Hot 100, and he was the first solo artist with UK top 10 singles across six decades.

Outside the music he has been a fundraiser. Since the late 1980s he has been involved in the fight against AIDS, and in 1992 he set up the Elton John AIDS Foundation, which has raised over £300 million. From the late 1970s to the late 1980s he developed a severe addiction to drugs and alcohol, but he has been clean and sober since 1990. In 2005 he entered a civil partnership with the Canadian filmmaker David Furnish, and they married in 2014.

His tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales, “Candle in the Wind 1997”, a rewritten version of his 1974 single, is the best-selling chart single of all time. He was knighted in 1998 and made a Companion of Honour in 2020,. His farewell tour, Farewell Yellow Brick Road, ran from 2018 to 2023 and became the highest-grossing tour ever at the time. With over 300 million records sold, he is one of the best-selling artists of all time.