The Rocketman himself sat down exclusively with
etalk at a Toronto pop-up celebrating the release of his new memoir,
Me, which came out October 15 and has already generated a ton of headlines thanks to a peerless career spanning decades, credits ranging from Grammy-winning singer-songwriter to unofficial-but-undisputed best Oscar party host of all time, which means it would be rather hard to find something that he's never done. Until now."I've never had [a pop-up] before," John told
etalk. "There's always room for another first, isn't there?" Though, the singer admits it's going to be pretty hard to top the 2019 he's had."Where I am now is the happiest I've ever been," he revealed. "I'm 72 years of age; I've had the best year of my life professionally this year with the tour, the film [
Rocketman], the book and
The Lion King coming out so it's been an amazing year. I'm so grateful."
The best Elton you've ever seen
John has been absolutely adamant that his 236-show farewell tour is absolutely, positively his last but he wants it to be the best you've ever seen him, every single night. Fans in Toronto should be assured that those October 23rd and 24th shows are going to be EPIC."Just to go through the motions would not be enjoyable," John said. "I look forward to it every single night and we've been playing really, really well because this is
the last time. You want to leave people with the best—you know this is the best Elton John you're ever going to see. That's what I'm aiming for."
'You couldn't sugarcoat my life'
The music and
hot celeb goss are one thing, but the past year has also involved baring his soul (and not-so-PG past) to the entire world in both written and visual form thanks to
Taron Egerton's Elton-approved performance in
Rocketman."Taron was extraordinary," said John of the man who portrayed him onscreen. "Not only was he extraordinary at acting, his singing was amazing—he had to do both. But when I looked at this performance, I was never looking at Taron; I was looking at myself, which is the biggest compliment I could pay him. I wouldn't change one thing about the film."And that's saying a lot, since the movie, and John himself, haven't shied away from any of the darker moments of his story (including drug use and the wild behaviour it induced) and instead of giving us a sanitized version of his tale, he was happy to tell the whole unfiltered truth."You couldn't sugarcoat my life. People would have said, 'Don't believe it," John admitted. "This was how it was—the great behaviour, the bad behaviour, the lows, the highs, the redemption at the end."
What's next?
While fans may be sad to hear it, Elton did triple-confirm that this is the last hurrah and it seems the legendary singer has some pretty low-key ideas for what he wants to do when his
Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour comes to an end. While he's totally open to where life will take him—after all, who could have predicted the wild trajectory he's had thus far?—he's looking forward to putting his feet up for a moment and catch up on binge-worthy TV he's missed."I don't have any plans other than to finish this tour on the highest note possible and then go home and take a deep breath and enjoy myself," the icon said. "I want to catch up on lots of shows I haven't seen. I haven't seen
Breaking Bad for God's sake! I've seen
Succession and I've seen
The Crown but there are so many great shows I don't have time to watch."
