Elton John is set to release his new memoir Me this week, and in the book, there is a certain selection concerning John’s perception of Michael Jackson that has particularly stood out.
In the excerpt, John expresses that he felt as though the King of Pop was “genuinely mentally ill” in his later life, detailing the time he was found playing video games with the 11-year-old son of John’s housekeeper at a dinner party.
“I’d known Michael since he was 13 or 14,” the legendary singer-songwriter wrote.
“Elizabeth Taylor had turned up on the Starship with him in tow. He was just the most adorable kid you could imagine. But at some point in the intervening years, he started sequestering himself away from the world, and away from reality the way Elvis Presley did.”
“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. He was genuinely mentally ill, a disturbing person to be around. It was incredibly sad, but he was someone you couldn’t help: he was just gone, off in a world of his own, surrounded by people who only told him what he wanted to hear.”
He would go on to add that at the party, which John had arranged for his future husband David Furnish to meet his mother, Jackson didn’t look well and refused to eat anything that was being served.
“After a while, he got up from the table without a word and disappeared. We finally found him, two hours later, in a cottage in the grounds of Woodside where my housekeeper lived: she was sitting there, watching Michael Jackson quietly playing video games with her 11-year-old son. For whatever reason, he couldn’t seem to cope with adult company at all.”
The memoir has included a number of other headline-worthy anecdotes, including throwing a dinner party where he says Sylvester Stallone and Richard Gere almost came to blows over Princess Diana, sharing a joke with the Queen, his row with Tina Turner, and his difficult relationship with his mother, saying he’s glad she never met his children.
Elton John’s Me biography will arrive on October 15th.
