Name: Elton John Talks About His Drug Use | David Letterman
Uploaded: 2024-12-03T16:00:29.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Elton John Talks About His Drug Use | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-12-03. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Elton John Talks About His Drug Use | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-12-03. Transcript available.

how are you doing good thank you you look like you're gonna come over here and
sit in my chair
well there you go be ambitious not at all you know uh you and i have something
in common i
had uh about a year and a half ago i had quintuple bypass surgery on my heart
right and you had some
kind of a deal on yours i had a pacemaker fitted yeah yeah oh so it wasn't it
wasn't like they
didn't open you up no they i'm just about i put a little coin thing up here and
uh means i can't
get frisked to airports but i do get frisked to airports very exciting and and
uh what was the
why do you have to have the what does the pacemaker do why did you have to have
it's just um i i i was
dizzy for a long while in the 70s and very much so in the 80s um i was in the
south of france and i've
i just keeled over at lunchtime um that chardonnay you know and uh i just i had
to be taken to the
doctors and they couldn't find anything wrong with me so i went back to england
and had three days of
rigorous tests and they put a kind of thing on you for 24 hours with a tape and
they record your heartbeat
and then they found out there was an irregularity and they just said solution
is a pacemaker well the
word pacemaker use i said it with my grandmother she had one it's like oh god i'm
really old now i've got
a pacemaker but it's quite a common thing and of course it's given me more
energy now than i did ever
did well that's good now but it doesn't it's not working at all times is it
only works it kicks in
when it's the top half of my heart the electrics weren't working sometimes with
the bottom so when
that happens it automatically kicks in like a computer it's amazing i mean if i
can get it checked out
over the phone if i'm in another country and they want to check me out i can
just put a digital phone
over it and they can print it out in england brilliant that's amazing i feel
like lindsay wagner
and and do you have the the model on cold mornings you can use it to start your
car or is that i think
yeah it i have it tied in with a viagra as well i mean yeah hello look out look
out now you mentioned
being dizzy in in the 70s now now you uh what kind of kind of stuff were you
doing stuff that you you've one
day you realized i better stop doing this kind of stuff what was going on then
for you well it was
toward the middle 70s uh 76 77 my drug abuse was from like there till like 1990s
now how did how did
you start why did you start just because i just wanted to join in is fun to do
yeah what's what is
that thing on there why what is that banknote for um and uh before you know it
i did the whole table yeah
hey that's good no i just wanted to join in i mean i didn't even know my band
smoked pot how naive was
that i mean by the end of it i had a shoe box full of uh joints behind someone
on the on the road with
me rolling joints especially english joints are different to american joints
american joints are
very thin and weedy and english ones have they're called spliffs and they have
um cardboard like a
filter in them wow yeah very advanced very advanced now was was there a was
there a moment as a some
a kind of a self-intervention there where you said what am i doing here i gotta
i'm you know i can't
be i can't live and do this i do remember being in a hotel in london uh the uh
one of the hotels in
london and i rang the office up at 11 o'clock in the morning after i'd still
been up all night and
was still going and complained that it was too windy and could they do
something about it and uh the guy
on the other phone's probably going she's finally lost it he's time to take him
away folks um yeah i
mean there were times yeah you realize it was just actually admitting you know
and saying right i'm
going to do it and did your family and friends they must everybody must have
been worried about yeah my
mother moved country she moved to spain yes um i live in england she moved to
spain um yes it
wasn't a particularly nice time for anybody um so you realize though this is
self-destructive and
you're finally able to get yes i did alter your behavior well good for you that's
great that's
wonderful i got these things here you see what i have here i have a list of uh
interesting biological
biographical facts seven inches when aroused yeah but that that's diameter yeah
but most of that is
the pacemaker so thank you very much now uh 1951 you remember you began playing
the piano at age four age
four actually three actually you were like a project a prodigy well i was yeah
i mean i just played by
ear and and you know my my grandmother i grew up in my grandmother's house
there was always music in
the house gramophone records the radio there was a piano my aunt played um my
parents always bought
gramophone records um that's what they were in those days they were 78s they
were either 10 inches or the
big 12-inch thing and uh i just you know picked tunes up and started to play hymns
and stuff like that
and and did your folks also play instruments my dad played the trumpet in a
dance band yeah okay
uh 1961 joined your first band you were 14 my god and you were playing hotels
and stuff is that right
what kind of music this is this is your life isn't it it's like yeah i'm gonna
have all the horrible
people in my life coming right out of here oh no your first teacher and what
kind of band were you
playing in then um just uh we were kind of like a soul band um it's called
bluesology and we started off
playing blues most english bands played blues um we loved american black music
and uh we played blues
jimmy witherspoon stuff of 14. i mean yeah but that's what we played as a kid
in england what records
from america did you really really cherish well all of them i mean all the good
records came from america
even before elvis presley's you know changed the world i mean i was listening i
grew up with nat king
cole um frank sinatra george shearing all those kind of people k star rosemary
cluny joe stafford
um you know johnny ray so i mean before the rock and roll bandwagon hit with elvis
i you know
my parents always all the best records came from america so you had exposure to
that great music
before yeah my favorite piano player when i grew up was george shearing wow and
then and then when
rock and roll and elvis presley and everything started i mean that must have
just turned you
upside down huh literally yeah i mean i remember elvis presley my mother
bringing it home saying i've got
this record cool heartbreak hotel listen to this you've never heard anything
like it she used to buy
records on a friday night when she got a paycheck and then i heard that and it
went i went oh my god
this is incredible and then about two weeks later i went to get my hair cut of
the local barbers and there
was a life magazine with a picture of elvis and i thought oh my god this guy's
from mars it was
incredible it just changed i mean elvis presley did to pop music what andy warhol
did to art in the 20th
century uh 1966 1968 it says here you met bernie taupin yeah yeah well how'd
that go
obviously very well we're still there yeah um uh 1969 first album empty sky
what became of that did
that do well your first not really um it came out in england um and it it did
in those days you had
to perform live on the road before you got a record contract and i had a band
together just a three
piece nigel olsen d murray myself and we made empty sky and then you know we
toured and it was you
didn't get a record contract in those days until you performed so we were just
doing gigs and you know
trying to get our name around and nothing really happened really until the elton
john album came out with
your song on it which was in 1970. yeah that's right second album melton john
right top ten single
of your song 1994 uh won an academy award for you can feel the love tonight can
you feel the love
tonight uh 1997 candle in the wind uh the tribute uh the song rewritten as the
tribute to princess diana
was the fastest selling hit not for you but ever in the history of recorded
music um and of course you wrote the broadway musical uh
uh aida won a tony award for that and uh on and on and on and on 30 years
straight with songs on the chart every year