Elton John certainly gained a lot after he adopted his rock-star persona — but according to the superstar born Reginald Dwight, some things got lost along the way.
In a new interview clip with Good Morning America posted Tuesday (Dec. 10), the 77-year-old icon opened up about the moment he realized his name change had “caught up” to him: right before his historic performance at Dodger Stadium in 1975. “Reginald is a really old-fashioned name,” Elton began. “It’s shortened to Reggie, which I hated.”
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“I just didn’t like it, and as soon as I could, I changed my name,” he continued. “I was very clever, I thought, ‘No one’s really called Elton, so I’ll be Elton and I’ll be the only Elton.’ I wanted to leave my childhood and that persona behind, and that caught up with me. I realized I put everything into my work and my art, my recording, and there was nothing underneath there.”
“I was just a void,” the “Tiny Dancer” musician added. “I left little Reggie behind, but little Reggie was still inside of me.”
The interview comes nearly a month after Elton’s documentary Elton John: Never Too Late premiered in select theaters in November, featuring an original song by the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and Brandi Carlile. On Friday (Dec. 13), the film will become available for streaming on Disney+.
Elton is also fresh off the premiere of the Devil Wears Prada Broadway musical, for which he composed the soundtrack — a feat made more challenging by the musician losing his eyesight after suffering an eye infection over the summer. “I haven’t been able to come to many of the previews, because — as you know — I have lost my eyesight,” he told The Associated Press earlier this month after the show’s opening night in London. “So it’s hard for me to see it, but I love to hear it and, boy, it sounded good tonight.”
Watch Elton talk about his name change above.
