Elton John Through the Years: From ‘Tiny Dancer’ and ‘Rocket Man’ to His Farewell Tour

Elton John established himself as a legend in the music industry with his talent in composition and songwriting.

Born as Reginald Dwight, the British musician learned piano at an early age and earned a junior scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music at 11 years old. John studied at the school for five years before forming his own band, Bluesology, in 1962. While working at a music publishing company, John took solo gigs at a London hotel bar and played with his band. By the mid-1960s, Bluesology backed musicians like the Isley Brothers and Major Lance and became the supporting band for singer Long John Baldry.

John left Bluesology and met lyricist Bernie Taupin in 1967. Shortly after recording their first song, “Scarecrow,” John began going by the name Elton John in homage to Baldry and the saxophonist of Bluesology, Elton Dean. John and Taupin formed one of the most prolific and successful songwriting partnerships in music history, collaborating on albums Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1973), Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy (1975), 21 At 33 (1980), Songs From the West Coast (2001) and The Diving Board (2013). They were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1992.

After finding success with 1973 albums Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, John and Taupin founded the Rocket Record Company. By 1975, the pressures of stardom took a toll on John, and he developed a drug and alcohol addiction along with bulimia. John shared more about his battle with addiction and his sobriety journey in a 2002 CNN interview with the late Larry King.

“It took me 16 years to say those three words — I need help,” John said at the time. “My pride was killing me. It’s — you think you don’t have a problem.”

Despite the AIDS epidemic surfacing in the 1980s, John still couldn’t bring himself to change his lifestyle. It wasn’t until he met Ryan White, an American teenager who contracted HIV through a contaminated blood transfusion, that John decided to embark on the path to sobriety. Upon White’s death in 1990, John entered recovery and created the Elton John AIDS Foundation in 1992.

“I had the luck to meet Ryan White and his family. I wanted to help them, but they ended up helping me much more,” John said during a Harvard University talk in 2017. “Ryan was the spark that helped me recover from my addictions and start the AIDS Foundation. Within six months [of White’s death], I became sober and clean, and have been for 27 years.”

John continued his career sober, and has toured around the world and performed at Madison Square Garden over 70 times. He announced his retirement in 2018 and embarked on a three-year farewell tour in September of that year. The tour took a two-year pause because of the coronavirus pandemic but concluded in 2023 in Stockholm.

Keep scrolling to see the singer’s life in photos: