# The Gayness of Elton John, or Not Necessarilyness Thereof, and SSMLT **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 17, 2003, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gayness-of-elton-john-or-not-necessarilyness-thereof-and-ssmlt/162087 "2003-03-17T20:47:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2003, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gayness-of-elton-john-or-not-necessarilyness-thereof-and-ssmlt/162087/1 "2003-03-17T20:47:06Z")
So in the [Things you didn’t know but everyone else did]([http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=162695](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=162695) #post2986400) thread, **Soup\_du\_jour** admits that > [@](#): > > I just learned about a year ago that Elton John is gay. I guess it was just one of those things that everyone assumes everyone else knows, but nobody tells anyone else. Then, the other day, I’m buying a sandwich in the local deli and the radio plays “Someone Saved My Life Tonight”, and I’m listening and thinking, “Umm, doesn’t this song more or less suggest ‘bi’ as an alternative to ‘gay’? 'Course, that could be Bernie Taupin instead, although I always assumed there was a rather personal real-life story behind this song…” It just doesn’t sound like a song about a gay guy breaking up with his male partner. I’ll grant that one’s partner need not necessarily be female in order to have his/her “hooks in me”, but _altar-bound_? The lines about “clinging to your stocks and bonds and paying your H.P. demands forever” also resonate mainly with the conventional image of the golddigger and the support requirements of the institution of marriage. [auto-hijack] I never understood the reference about “my friend’s out there rolling 'round the basement floor”, btw. It seems like quite the _non sequitur_ as Elton John is warming up to the task of explaining that he wants no more to do with Ms Prima Donna Wanna get Her Hooks in Me. Even if we have all gone crazy lately, why is he suddenly relating the drunken stumblings of his friend schnockered in someone’s irrelevant basement? [/hijack] All right. While granting that one’s song’s lyrics aren’t _veritas_ by definition or anything, who else thinks this song indicates at least a history of having tried things out with a woman and gotten close enough to marriage to pull back from it with a shudder? (I 'spose it does leave you with a sense that he would not be in a big hurry to try hooking up with another female any time soon after, but even so…) ---
**Author:** ![DaveRaver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/daveraver/32/1078_2.png) [@DaveRaver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DaveRaver)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2003, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gayness-of-elton-john-or-not-necessarilyness-thereof-and-ssmlt/162087/2 "2003-03-17T21:08:41Z")
Well, Elton John was briefly married to a woman in the 80s. It didn’t last very long though. Anyway, yes, the lyrics are by Bernie Taupin; Elton composes the music. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2003, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gayness-of-elton-john-or-not-necessarilyness-thereof-and-ssmlt/162087/3 "2003-03-17T21:15:28Z")
Why AHunter3! I had no idea you were an adherent of the [Quentin Tarantino](http://www.geocities.com/wbhq/quotes/toughguys.html) school of musical criticism. > [@](#): > > Mr. Brown: O.K., let me tell you what Like a Virgin’s about. It’s all about this cooze who’s a regular fuck machine, I’m talking morning, day, night, afternoon, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick. > > Mr. Blue: How many dicks is that? > > Mr. White: A lot. > > Mr. Brown: Then one day she meets this John Holmes motherfucker and it’s like, whoa baby, I mean this cat is like Charles Bronson in the Great Escape, he’s digging tunnels. Now, she’s gettin the serious dick action and she’s feeling something she ain’t felt since forever. Pain. Pain. It hurts her. It shouldn’t hurt her, you know her pussy should be Bubble Yum by now, but when this cat fucks her it hurts. It hurts just like it did the first time. You see the pain is reminding a fuck machine what it once was like to be a virgin. Hence, “Like a virgin.” ---
**Author:** ![Ender\_Will](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/eb9ed0/32.png) [@Ender\_Will](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ender_Will)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2003, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gayness-of-elton-john-or-not-necessarilyness-thereof-and-ssmlt/162087/4 "2003-03-17T21:53:39Z")
Why does Elton John play the piano? 'Cause he sucks on the organ. ---
**Author:** ![da\_pope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7ba0ec/32.png) [@da\_pope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/da_pope)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2003, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gayness-of-elton-john-or-not-necessarilyness-thereof-and-ssmlt/162087/5 "2003-03-17T21:59:37Z")
‘Someone Saved My Life Tonight’ is, IIRC, about Elton meeting up with another musician friend (Long John Baldry?) and being convinced not to get married to a girl he was engaged to. The album it’s from ‘Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy’, contains many ‘personal’ songs/storys, including ‘We All Fall in Love, Sometime’, which lyrically, sounds like Elton describing how he realized he was really in love with Bernie. Great album. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2003, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gayness-of-elton-john-or-not-necessarilyness-thereof-and-ssmlt/162087/6 "2003-03-18T04:42:00Z")
That’s close to what I would have guessed, without the specifics of course. ---
**Author:** ![it\_sjustme](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/da6949/32.png) [@it\_sjustme](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/it_sjustme)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2003, 7:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gayness-of-elton-john-or-not-necessarilyness-thereof-and-ssmlt/162087/7 "2003-03-18T07:41:23Z")
Many years ago I saw an interview in which Elton explained the lyrics. It was so long ago that I don’t remember all the details, but here’s what I do remember. When he was younger, Elton was under tremendous pressure by his parents to fit into their idea of how he should live his life. He was expected to go into a “sensible” line of work (banking, I believe), and he was engaged to marry a girl that they had all but picked out for him. He didn’t love (or even like) her, but was marrying her out of a misplaced sense of duty. His parents and fiance discouraged and disapproved of his music and he was so desperately unhappy that he was on the verge of suicide. Then, one night a friend convinced him that he could stand up to his parents, quit his job, dump his fiance, start a band and live his life on his own terms. The rest is history. ---
**Author:** ![ECJones29](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c77e96/32.png) [@ECJones29](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ECJones29)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2003, 8:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gayness-of-elton-john-or-not-necessarilyness-thereof-and-ssmlt/162087/8 "2003-03-18T08:14:08Z")
You guys have the story right. Elton still tells it on occasion, noting that his was a fairly half-hearted suicide attempt. He stuck his head in the gas oven but left all the windows in the kitchen open. [smack]