A sad fact is that most musicians of a certain era have had to face up to death again and again. Obviously, age comes into it. Unfortunately, all the 1960s and ‘70s icons are getting on a bit now, meaning we’re losing more and more stars as they lose more and more friends. But even back in their younger days, music was always rife with tragedy, and Elton John knows that well.
John knows that exceptionally well in the way that anyone who has at some point suffered from addiction likely does. The music world has had so many lives stolen in this way, lost to the misadventure of the sex, drugs and rock and roll lifestyle or to the mental strain that the ‘tortured artist’ trope puts on people. Too many artists have been left struggling under the weight of the pressure and have, in the end, lost the fight.
But even beyond that, given how social John is and always has been, consistently being keen to mix with his fellow artists and seemingly able to make friends with anyone, it’s meant that he’s always had a lot of people in his life to lose. The loss of Freddie Mercury was devastating. When he lost his friend, and the people’s princess, Diana, he wrote ‘Candle In The Wind’ to honour her as both the public figure and the private person he had come to know well.
However, while it’s wrong to rank tragedies or ever put the weight of one loss against another, nothing quite impacted John like the loss of John Lennon.
He wasn’t alone in that. The assassination of the Beatle reverberated around the world, devastating fans. But it also absolutely shook the core of music makers. Stevie Nicks felt the same, stating, “That was a very scary and sad moment for all of us in the rock and roll business, it scared us all to death that some idiot could be so deranged that he would wait outside your apartment building, never having known you, and shoot you dead.”
It wasn’t just that it was a tragic death and the loss of an incredible talent so young, because obviously it was. But it was also the absolute fear that struck into people that suddenly, rock stars were on the hit list.
For John, though, it was personal. By the time of Lennon’s death, the two had become incredibly dear friends, with Lennon even making John the godfather to his second child, Sean. “Your dad had that edge that none of the other Beatles had kind of because he wasn’t afraid to say what he thought,” John reflected in an interview with Sean years later, thinking fondly on memories of his father and the times they laughed, bonding over music and likely getting up to all kinds of hedonism.
So when the news came through about Lennon’s death, John was grief-stricken. “That was one of the hardest things that I had to go through,” John recalled as the world was mourning the star, but he was mourning his friend.
