Celebrated British singer and songwriter and philanthropist, Elton John was born on March 25th, 1947 in Pinner, Middlesex in the United Kingdom.
He is the eldest son of Stanley Dwight and Sheila Eileen, and goes by the name Reginald Kenneth Dwight. In 1991 and 2017, respectively, both parents passed away.
He was raised by his maternal grandparents in a council house in Pinner. He attended Pinner Wood Junior School, Reddiford School, and P inner County Grammar School before leaving at the age of 17 to pursue a career in music.
His father, a veteran pilot in the Royal Air Force, tried to steer John away from music when he first started to seriously consider a career in it.
His father was a trumpet player with the Bob Millar Band, a semi-pro big band that performed at military events, and both of his parents had a passion for music.
The Dwights were avid record consumers, introducing John to the top performers of the time. Young John began practicing on his grandmother’s piano, and after a year, his mother noticed him performing “The Skater’s Waltz” by Waldteufel by ear.
At age seven, he started taking official piano instruction after playing for friends and family at events. He shown musical talent in school, including the capacity to write tunes, and at school events, he achieved some popularity by performing in the style of Jerry Lee Lewis.
He was awarded a junior scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music at the age of 11. One of his teachers said that when John first heard a four-page work by George Frideric Handel, he immediately played it again like a “gramophone record.”
John took Saturday sessions at the Academy in central London for the following five years. He has stated that he enjoyed playing pieces by Frédéric Chopin and Johann Sebastian Bach and singing in the choir during Saturday classes, but that he was not a conscientious classical student in general.
Throughout his six-decade music career, John has sold more than 300 million records worldwide, ranking him among the best-selling musicians of all time.
He has more than fifty Top 40 singles, nine of which peaked at number one on the UK Singles Chart and the US Billboard Hot 100, as well as seven straight US number-one albums.
John made history in 2021 by becoming the first solo artist to have hits in the UK Top 10 for 60 years. In addition to the Outstanding Contribution to Music Grammy Award, John has won five Grammy Awards, five Brit Awards, two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, a Tony Award, a Laurence Olivier Award, a Disney Legend Award, and the Kennedy Center Honor. On its list of the 100 most influential musicians of the rock & roll period published in 2004, Rolling Stone rated him 49th.
Elton John husband: Who is David Furnish?
Elton John is married to the Canadian filmmaker, David James Furnish. They got married at Windsor in the United Kingdom in 2014. They have two wonderful sons together; Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John and Elijah Joseph Daniel Furnish-John.
David Furnish was born on October 25th, 1962 in Scarborough, Toronto in Canada and he also works as an advertising executive.
