Elton John reveals furious row with Tina Turner in new autobiography
Sir Elton John has revealed in his new autobiography Me about the tough times he went through with singer Tina Turner.
The two legends united for a joint tour in 1997, but tensions quickly rose and eventually Elton told Tina to “shove her song up her f***ing a**e”.
In an extract from the book, which has been serialised in the Daily Mail, Elton revealed that he was particularly upset after some suggestions from Tina. The suggestions included swapping his Versace for Armani outfits so he would look “less fat” and that he should update his hairstyle.
“I got off the phone and burst into tears: ‘She sounded like my f***ing mother,’ I wailed at David.”
Things didn’t get better in rehearsals.
“The subsequent debate about whether I knew how to play Proud Mary became quite heated, before I brought it to a conclusion by telling Tina Turner to stick her f*****g song up her a**e and stormed off,” Elton added.
“I’ve thrown plenty of tantrums in my time, but there are limits: there’s an unspoken rule that musicians don’t treat their fellow musicians like s***.
However, Elton has had time to reflect on why Tina was acting like that.
“Maybe it was insecurity on her part. She’d been treated appallingly earlier in her career, suffered years and years of being ripped off, beaten up and pushed around. Maybe that had an effect on how she behaved towards people,” he said.
Later, once Elton had calmed down, he went to Tina’s dressing room to apologise.
The argument made the pair realise that they had different performance styles, as Elton preferred to improvise, and Tina wanted to rehearse every detail.