(Credits: Raph Pour-Hashemi)
Mon 25 August 2025 20:30, UK
Elton John has always been candid about his struggles in the past. He has had his fair share of personal issues since his time in the spotlight began, but he is also proud to have seen the other side of sobriety and live a happy life at home, but that only makes it more tragic when he sees one of his friends pass away far too soon.
For a brief period, though, there came a time when John seemed to be dangerously close to becoming a walking rock and roll casualty. He had been an addict for years, but after finally cleaning up his act in the 1990s, he made it a priority to be one of the most empathetic recovering addicts in the business. Although he had seen the bottom, he wanted to make sure he was there for any of his friends before they reached the lows that he did. But for most stars, it’s not that simple.
If anything, the more attention that you get only makes things harder to handle any kind of interaction. The Beatles managed everything better than most would have been willing to go, but there were bound to be moments where someone like Elvis Presley felt like he was being treated like something in between a living deity and a circus sideshow whenever he went onstage to perform.
But for all of the idols that John had in the past, he also knew talent when he saw it out in the wild. He’s still keeping up with the latest trends by becoming a massive fan of people like Chappell Roan or even Eminem in the 2000s, but as he was starting his next career renaissance in the 1980s with tunes like ‘I’m Still Standing’, there was no one on Earth who had more attention on them than Michael Jackson.
His status as ‘The King of Pop’ had been solidified before the decade was even over, but a lot of the sensationalised parts of his life were never going to be easy to deal with. Some of them were clearly fabricated by the press, but Jackson had started to become a lot different from the little kid that John used to know singing Motown classics like ‘I’ll Be There’ when he invited him over for dinner.
The piano legend may have been trying to be friendly, but when Jackson entered the room, he saw a husk of the person he knew onstage, saying, “God knows what was going on in his head, and God knows what prescription drugs he was being pumped full of, but every time I saw him in his later years, I came away thinking the poor guy had totally lost his marbles. I don’t mean that in the light-hearted way. It was incredibly sad.”
While Jackson had good reason to have his guard up considering all of the lawsuits that had been levelled in his direction, it was also easy to see why he was a bit off to begin with. This was someone who hadn’t lived a normal life since he got started in show business, and with no real childhood to speak of, there were always going to be eccentric moments that had people calling him strange or made his fans genuinely worried about his health.
And when Jackson finally passed away, it was easy to think that he was yet another victim of the musical machine half the time. He may not have been the most respected pop star at the time of his death, but John would have greatly preferred to hear a few more songs from ‘The King of Pop’ than to have him leave this Earth so early.
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