Elton John says the end of his farewell tour next year won’t mean he’s stepping out of the spotlight.
“It’s not to say I’m going to stop doing things,” he said during an iHeartRadio Icons session on Wednesday night. “I’m going to make records, I’m going to write musicals and I will do the odd show, here and there, maybe a residency, but it won’t be traveling.”
The 72-year-old icon’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, which began in September 2018, is scheduled to wrap up with a three-night run in London in mid-December 2020.
John pointed out that he’s performed over 5,000 shows. “These poor little fingers,” he joked.
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What comes next is uncertain, said John, who has sons Zachary and Elijah with his Canadian husband David Furnish.
“Life changes. Life throws curveballs at you. My children were curveballs,” he said. “They were the best curveballs of my life, apart from David, and it’s just so wonderful to wake up in the morning and hear their voices.”
John spoke about realizing decades ago that he was living in a bubble of fame.
“There are times when you do lose touch and you have people who suddenly start to do everything for you and you lose the ability to do things for yourself and keep up a routine and suddenly you realize 'I can’t even function’ or do anything for myself – and that’s a very dangerous thing,” John said.
"It happens a lot to people who become famous. Suddenly you rely on people and you lose all sense of your own faculties and your own responsibilities and your self-esteem. I was so ashamed that I couldn’t work a washing machine when I went into treatment. I wasn’t ashamed that I [was an addict], I was ashamed I couldn’t operate a washing machine.”
John said he realized how important is to have a sense of normalcy.
“I lead an incredibly blessed and luxurious life, but at the end of the day I like to do the washing up, I like to put the plates away, I like to do the same thing everyone likes to do,” John said.
“I just like to do it in a grander way.”
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John was promoting his new autobiography Me, in which he shares intimate details about his family, early years, struggles with addiction – and working with late greats like John Lennon, Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson, Freddie Mercury and George Michael.
“I wanted it to be funny and honest,” he said. “This book is certainly not sugarcoated and I’ve had a wonderful life … and I’m grateful to still be alive after everything I put my body through … but I think you have to be honest. If you’re not honest, why bother?”
John brings his Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour back to Toronto on Oct. 23 and 24.