In the Elton John song, “Someone Saved My Life Tonight”, there’s this line:
“Clinging to your stocks and bonds
Paying your HP demands forever”
So what’s an HP demand?
Hire Purchase demand. Overdue payment on something you purchased on pay-it-off-while-using-it basis.
Yep, hire purchase.
From terrashare.com
Quote:
“Question: What is the
meaning of the song “Someone Saved My Life Tonight”?
Answer: The song “Someone Saved My
Life Tonight” is about an episode in Elton’s life. In the late sixties, he almost got married to a woman who didn’t even like his music and what he was doing. He wanted to get out of that situation, but was too confused, and also didn’t want to face her. So one night he got drunk, then left his friends at the bar and went home. When Bernie got back, he
found Elton lying on the kitchen floor, his head on a pillow for comfort, the oven open letting gas fill the room. But there was also a window open.
So Bernie started to laugh. 
This suicide attempt was in fact a cry for help.
The line “Paying your H.P. demands forever” refers to installment payments.
I’ve been told that the letters H.P. stand for Hire-Purchase
or Hire-Pay. It means that he would have had to pay for her expenses all of their married life. He saw this marriage as a neverending chore.
In the lines “You almost had me roped and tied, altar-bound, hypnothized”, he speaks to her, saying, wow, I almost got caught in your web!”
To simplify, hire purchase is essentially the British way of saying “buying on credit.”
It’s a song about a guy who was about to settle down to a mundane, middle-class life with a wife who’s mad for shopping. He dreads the prospect of such a life, and makes a half-hearted attempt at suicide. Somebody saves his life, and now he feels FREE! He’s now mocking the woman he almost married.
If Bernie Taupin were American, he might have written a line about “paying off your Visa bills for the rest of my life.”
Thanks!
To be exact, the American equivalent of a hire-purchase plan was the installment plan. Both terms are now a little old-fashioned. They apply to an older system in which you would contract with the store when you bought something to pay it off in installments. Nowdays, you would more often do this (in either the U.S. or the U.K.) by use of a credit card.