Presumably already alive to the thought that I might go off the rails thanks to my inability to eat celery in the correct way, he resolutely believed… - Elton John

That record she did with Peter Gabriel saved my life. That record helped me get sober. So she played a big part in my actual downfall and kind of "rebirth'" as it were. That record helped me so much. I never told her that, but it did.

And thank God, because the world needed changing. I grew up in fifties Britain and, before Elvis, before rock and roll, fifties Britain was a pretty grim place. I didn’t mind living in Pinner – I’ve never been one of those rock stars who was motivated by a burning desire to escape the suburbs, I quite liked it there – but the whole country was in a bad place. It was furtive and fearful and judgemental. It was a world of people peeping around their curtains with sour expressions, of girls being sent away because they’d Got Into Trouble. When I think of fifties Britain, I think of sitting on the stairs of our house, listening to my mum’s brother, Uncle Reg, trying to talk her out of getting divorced from my dad: ‘You can’t get divorced! What will people think?’ At one point, I distinctly remember him using the phrase ‘what will the neighbours say?’ It

Don't let the sun go down on me.
Although I search myself, it's always someone else I see.
I'd just allow a fragment of your life to wander free.
But losing everything is like the sun going down on me.