Tonight’s mystery artist told one interviewer, The stage was a haven. Because of my shyness and social ineptitude, I thought I needed to take drugs to join the gang. Think you know who he might be??

It was in an interview with ShortList that Elton John told of his younger self battling with his weight and self-image. As Elton put it:

“I was quite an overweight young man and very shy,” he explains. “That shyness carried along with me until the early Nineties when I got sober. I was great on stage, but I wasn’t very good off stage. The stage was a haven. Because of my shyness and social ineptitude, I thought I needed to take drugs to join the gang. Cocaine meant I thought, ‘This is great, suddenly I can talk’. I had no common sense. I didn’t know how to be off stage.”

When asked if he enjoys fame now he responded:

“Do I enjoy success now? Fame now is completely different. It’s not as innocent. I don’t want to be famous any more, I just want to make my music and have a nice life. But you have to play the game, promote your records, your movies, your musicals. But if I was young I’d hate it. I very rarely do interviews, and the interviews I do, I choose because they’re intelligent people. And my mouth tends to get me into trouble because we live in such a PC world.”

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