Sir Elton John, 78, ‘broke down for 45 minutes’ during new recording as ‘mortality’ fears mount: ‘How much time have I got?’
Sir Elton John has admitted he became inconsolable while recording a song that reminded him of his own mortality.
The 78-year-old music legend wept for “45 minutes” during a session for his upcoming record Who Believes in Angels? with Brandi Carlile.
The new album, slated to release in early April, also features contributions with John’s long-timer collaborator Bernie Taupin.
While speaking on the Smartless podcast, the pop icon revealed it was lyrics penned by Taupin that made him emotional.
“I wrote a song at the end of the album and I just get the lyrics, Bernie Taupin’s lyrics called When This Old World Is Done With Me,” he began.
Initially, the Rocket Man hitmaker remarked, “this is pretty” as he looked over the verses.
However, he became emotional when he arrived at his co-writer’s contribution.
“And then I get to the chorus and of course it’s about my death,” he reflected gravely.
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John despaired: “When you get to my age, which is near 100, you think, ‘How much time have I got left? And you’ve got children, you’ve got a wonderful husband, you just think about mortality.”
“And so when I got to the chorus, I just broke down for 45 minutes and it’s all on film,” he revealed.
Recalling the candid moment, Carlile said: “I want everybody to see it because it’s really human, like deeply flawed and embarrassing. And the kind of s**t that you do when you forget that there is a camera on is what’s really interesting.”
“He got to the end of that chorus and his voice started to shake and I thought, ‘Oh, he’s going, like he’s going to really go’. And he went into a real moment,” she explained.
The moment, shared on social media ahead of his new documentary, in which John was seen slamming his headphones to the ground and shouting “f*****g nightmare!”
“I was not in a good space when I went in, I was tired, I was grumpy and I was nervous,” he admitted while speaking with Magic FM’s Mellow Magic show with Nicki Chapman.
The news comes as John admitted music “nearly killed me, but it also kept me alive, and it keeps me alive today,” to Rolling Stone amid mounting health concerns.
John continues to struggle with severe vision problems that have left him virtually unable to see, The Sun has reported.
The 78-year-old has overcome a string of other health issues in recent years, with the music icon undergoing knee and hip replacements as well as prostate cancer surgery.