Elton John’s Memoir Reveals A Side To Princess Diana That The Public Never Really Saw

That wasn’t all. Me also contains explosive revelations about what Diana and the rest of the royal family were like behind closed doors. And as someone who ended up making his way into the royal inner circle, Elton had been a witness to some surprising scenes — ones the royals wouldn’t have wanted him to talk about.

The autobiography caused quite a stir when it was released — perhaps because Elton also chose to spill some eyebrow-raising secrets about Rod Stewart. But when it came to Diana, he was gentle with her. Even when the star spilled the beans on the feud between him and the princess, it was clear that he misses his old friend.

Elton and Diana first ran into each other in 1981, at a 21st birthday bash for Prince Andrew. They stayed in touch after that fateful meeting as well and grew to become very close. And eventually the pop star and the princess had something big in common. AIDS awareness and research were causes dear to both their hearts.

Elton got to know Princes Harry and William, too. And in 2018 he wrote a piece for Time magazine honoring Harry as one of the Time 100 that year. “I first met an extremely shy and sweet Prince Harry at a private lunch at Kensington Palace, given by his mother Princess Diana for Gianni Versace and me many years ago,” the star revealed.

“What a joy it has been to see that young boy grow to inherit his mother’s warmth, sense of humor, and courage to stand up and champion the causes he truly believes in,” Elton went on. Yes, Diana had seemed unafraid to get involved in crusades others may have wished she’d avoided. Perhaps in a bid to fight misapprehensions about HIV, she had held the hands of AIDS patients — proving the disease wasn’t transferable by touch.

So, what had led Diana and Elton to fall out? The singer spoke about the feud not long after Diana had died. It was 1997, and great swathes of Britain seemed to be in mourning for the princess. Elton performed the song “Candle in the Wind” at her funeral before releasing the track to raise money for Diana’s favorite charities.

At that time, Elton spoke to the BBC’s David Frost about his relationship with Diana. “[Diana and I] did have a little falling out earlier in the year over a charity event,” he revealed. “We did write each other letters, which neither of us responded to. It was only after the tragic death of Gianni Versace that we actually spoke.”

Versace had been a mutual friend of Elton and Diana, and he had been involved in the incident that had led the pair to become estranged. Tragically, though, the fashion designer was slaughtered outside his mansion on July 15, 1997. Diana would attend Versace’s funeral alongside Elton in what would prove to be one of her final public appearances.

In Me, Elton gave his thoughts about Diana’s funeral — and some of his words were damning. “William and Harry looked completely shell-shocked,” he wrote of his late friend’s children. “They were 15 and 12, and I thought the way they were treated that day was absolutely inhuman. They were forced to walk through the streets of London behind their mother’s coffin, told to show no emotion, and look straight ahead.”

Once the funeral had finished, Elton wrote, he had gone to a studio to record “Candle in the Wind” for release. Then he had finally gone home, where grief had overcome him. “I hadn’t felt able to show emotion all day,” he explained in Me. “I’d had a job to do, and how I felt about Diana’s death might have interfered with my ability to do it.”

Unfortunately, “Candle in the Wind” would haunt Elton for some time. “In the end, I started feeling really uncomfortable with the single’s longevity,” he wrote. “Its success meant there was footage of Diana’s funeral week after week on Top of the Pops. It almost felt like wallowing in her death, as if the mourning for her had got out of hand.”

“And I didn’t want to do anything to prolong [the wallowing] any further. So when Oprah Winfrey asked me on her talk show to discuss the funeral, I said no,” Elton went on. He also decided to never release “Candle in the Wind” again. “I’ve always tried to avoid the topic with journalists,” the star added. “It wasn’t that I wanted to forget it — or [Diana]. I just wanted life to get back to some semblance of normality.”

Elton also revealed details of the “surreal” Palace party at which he had first met Diana. “Because the Queen was there, and no one wanted to cause any offense to the royal sensibilities, the disco was turned down about as low as you could get without switching it off altogether. You could literally hear your feet moving around on the floor over the music,” he wrote.

At the event, Elton mingled with other royal family members — including the Queen herself. He wrote, “Princess Anne asked me to dance with her to ‘Hound Dog’ by Elvis Presley. Well, I say ‘dance’... I ended up just awkwardly shuffling from foot to foot, trying to make as little noise as I could so that I didn’t drown out the music… Then the Queen appeared, carrying her handbag. She walked over and asked if she could join us.”

Elton went on, “So, now I was trying to dance as inaudibly as possible with Princess Anne and the Queen — still holding her handbag — while what appeared to be the world’s quietest disco played Bill Haley. I tried my best to come up with a facial expression that suggested this was a perfectly normal state of affairs.”

But Diana provided a breath of fresh air in that awkward situation. “Anyway, that night in 1981, [Diana] arrived in the ballroom, and we immediately clicked,” Elton explained in Me. “We ended up pretending to dance the Charleston while hooting at the disco’s feebleness.” And with that, the two began a long and largely fond relationship.

In his autobiography, Elton also shared a rather remarkable story about the Queen herself. Once, he had allegedly witnessed her slap another royal family member. “In private, [the Queen] could be hilarious,” the singer recalled. “At another party, I saw her approach Viscount Linley and ask him to look in on his sister, who’d been taken ill and had retired to her room.”

And according to Elton, the monarch wasn’t best pleased with the viscount’s response. “When he repeatedly tried to fob her off, the Queen lightly slapped him across the face, saying ‘Don’t’ — SLAP — ‘argue’ — SLAP — ‘with’ — SLAP — ‘me’ — SLAP — ‘I’ — SLAP — ‘am’ — SLAP — ‘THE QUEEN!’” Naturally, Elton was rather taken aback. “As [Viscount Linley] left, [the Queen] saw me staring at her, gave me a wink, and walked off,” he added.

Elton revealed that he was similarly amazed at how he had ended up mingling in such lofty circles. “No matter how funny or normal the royal family seemed — whether they were asking me if I’d done any coke before I went on stage as Princess Alexandra once did, or winking at me after slapping a nephew across the face — there’d inevitably come a moment where I’d find myself thinking, ‘This is just bizarre. I’m a musician from a council house on Pinner Road. What am I doing here?’” he wrote.

But Diana, Elton added, was different from other members of the family. “With Diana, it wasn’t like that. She was blessed with an incredible social ease — an ability to make people feel totally comfortable in her company,” he explained. “Her kids have inherited it — Prince Harry in particular. He’s exactly the same as his mum. [He has] no interest in formality or grandeur.”

Elton continued, “That famous photo of her holding an AIDS patient’s hand at the London Middlesex Hospital — that was Diana. I don’t think she was necessarily trying to make a big point, although obviously she did. In that moment, she changed public attitudes to AIDS forever. She’d just met someone suffering, dying in agony. Why wouldn’t you reach out and touch them? It’s the natural human impulse to try to comfort someone.”

Elton went even further in his praise for Diana, describing her in the book as “fabulous company — the best dinner party guest.” “If I was bowled over by Diana, it was nothing compared with the impact she could have on straight men. They seemed completely to lose their minds in her presence. They were just utterly bewitched,” he added. And to prove his point, the pop star told a tale that involved many famous names.

According to Elton, he and his partner, David Furnish, had thrown a dinner party at the time of the production of the first Lion King movie. To make up the numbers, the couple had invited Disney CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg and his wife, George Michael, Richard Curtis, Emma Freud, Sylvester Stallone, and Richard Gere as well as Diana herself. During the get-together, however, “the most peculiar scene developed.”

Apparently, Gere had begun talking with Diana at the party, and she had seemed equally as interested in him. Elton dished the dirt when he revealed, “[Diana] was separated from Charles by this point, and Richard had broken up with Cindy Crawford. They ended up sitting in front of the fireplace together, locked in rapt conversation.”

But another party guest didn’t seem to approve of the conversation. Elton continued, “As the rest of us chatted, I couldn’t help notice a strange atmosphere in the room. Judging by the kind of looks he kept shooting them, Diana and Richard Gere’s newly blossoming friendship was not going down well with Sylvester Stallone at all.”

Elton speculated, “I think [Stallone] may have turned up to the party with the express intention of picking Diana up — only to find his plans for the evening ruined.” And an even more awkward situation would rear its head, according to the musician. When dinner was served, Stallone and Gere were apparently both out of the room, and Furnish went to find them.

Upon his return, Elton’s husband reported that there was “a situation.” Allegedly, Gere and Stallone had been about to fist-fight over Diana when Furnish found them! And sitting down for a meal together apparently didn’t improve the tension. “After dinner, Diana and Richard Gere resumed their position together in front of the fire, and Sylvester stormed off home,” Elton wrote.

Elton also claimed that Stallone had announced, “I never would have come if I’d known Prince... Charming was gonna be here. If I’d wanted her, I would’ve taken her!” This outburst reportedly caused the musician and Furnish to crack up in laughter after Stallone’s car had gone. As for Diana? She apparently “seemed completely unruffled” by the furor.

The veteran star pondered, “Maybe [Diana] hadn’t realized what was happening. Or maybe stuff like that happened all the time, and she was used to it. After she died, people started talking about something called the Diana Effect, meaning the way she managed to change the public’s attitudes to the royal family or to AIDS or bulimia, or mental health. But every time I heard the phrase, I thought about that night.”

And in the book, Elton eventually spoke about the incident that had driven him and Diana apart. “She was a very dear friend for years, and then, completely unexpectedly, we fell out,” he wrote. “The cause was a book Gianni Versace put together called Rock and Royalty — a collection of portraits by great photographers. The proceeds were going to the AIDS Foundation, and she agreed to write the foreword.”

The musician claimed, however, that Diana had ultimately “got cold feet” and changed her mind about supporting the project. He added, “I think Buckingham Palace didn’t like the idea of a member of the royal family having anything to do with a book that featured shots of naked guys with towels draped around them.” That makes sense...

Elton went on, “At the last moment, Diana withdrew her foreword. She said she had no idea of the book’s contents, which just wasn’t true. Gianni [Versace] had shown her the whole thing, and she had said she loved it.” Diana’s friend was not impressed by this sudden change of heart, and he decided to tell her so.

“I wrote back to [Diana], calling her out, telling her how much money she had cost the AIDS Foundation, reminding her that she had seen the book,” Elton explained in his memoir. But Diana didn’t play around. “The letter I got back was very formal and severe: ‘Dear Mr. John…’” The friendship had reached its breaking point.

Elton wrote of his feelings, “I was angry with [Diana], but I was also worried. She seemed to be losing touch with all sorts of really close friends who would be honest with her and surrounding herself instead with people who told her what she wanted to hear. I knew from personal experience [that] that wasn’t a healthy situation.”

After the death of Versace, however, Diana reached out to her old friend. “I didn’t speak to [Diana] again until the day Gianni was murdered,” Elton revealed. “I don’t even know how she got hold of the number; we hadn’t had the house in Nice for long. She was just down the coast, in St. Tropez, on Dodi Fayed’s yacht.”

Elton continued, “She asked how I was, if I’d spoken to Donatella [Versace’s sister]. Then she said, ‘I’m so sorry. It was a silly falling-out. Let’s be friends.’ She came with us to the funeral, looking incredible. When she walked in, the paparazzi in the church went crazy. It was like the biggest star in the world had arrived, which I suppose she had.”

And, as many know, Diana and Elton sat next to each other during the funeral. The star mentioned in his book, “I feel I should point out that the famous shot they got of her supposedly consoling me — where she’s leaning forward towards me, speaking, while I’m red-eyed and glazed with grief — is one moment in the service where she wasn’t doing anything of the sort. They snapped her just as she was leaning past me, reaching for a mint that David [had] offered her.”

Finally, Elton talked about the last time he contacted Diana. “I wrote to her [after the funeral], thanking her, and she wrote back offering to be a patron of the AIDS Foundation and asking if I would get involved in her landmine charity,” he wrote. “We were going to meet up next time we were both in London to have lunch and discuss it. But there wasn’t a next time.”

And it appears that the pop icon still holds the princess in great esteem. Speaking on the British TV show Lorraine in 2018, Elton said of Diana, “She was very much loved. She was a controversial figure in some respects — but not to me. I loved her because she did so much for AIDS, and she was a great friend to me. We had our fallings out, but we reconciled in the end.”

It was a bittersweet conclusion to a relationship that clearly meant a lot to Elton. And it wasn’t the first time he had dealt with the loss of a friend. Another of the pop star’s buddies — a certain John Lennon — had also passed away before his time. If Elton is to be believed, however, the two may have been more than just buddies...

Elton opened up about his special bond with Lennon in a BBC Radio 2 interview with the late star’s son, Sean, in commemoration of what would have been his father’s 80th birthday in 2020. He covered the breadth of their relationship, starting with its very innocent beginnings in the year before that special show when they shared the stage in the Big Apple.

Elton told Sean that he and the former Beatle had “just hit it off immediately.” The pair had much in common — both musicians, they inevitably had lots to talk about. But their shared craft wasn’t what drew him to Lennon, although his talent would be alluring to anyone. Rather, it was his sense of humor, Elton revealed.

From there, Elton went on, the relationship that they built became something of “a dream come true.” The “whirlwind romance” did more than just infuse the “Daniel” singer’s life with extra creativity and good music, though. He admitted to Lennon’s son that the pairing had been “such an important thing” to him.

But the relationship fizzled out soon after that heady evening in New York’s Madison Square Garden show, and its demise was a subject Elton also covered in the interview, too. You’re probably wondering, how had the world missed out on the close relationship between the two famous singers? Elton felt ready to talk about it nearly 50 years later.

The interview with Elton conducted by Lennon’s son Sean was only one of a trio of fascinating conversations with those who knew the late Beatle best. BBC Radio 2’s three-part series welcomed the “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” singer, as well as Lennon’s eldest son, Julian, and his former songwriting partner and bandmate, Paul McCartney.

Each part of the series brought to light new and fascinating information about the legendary musician, whose life was fated to end in tragedy when he was assassinated in 1980. McCartney, for one, admitted that he continues to think about Lennon whenever he writes new music. This was a particularly interesting revelation because, after The Beatles split up, the duo never penned a song together again.

McCartney said, “I often do it, I’m writing something and I go, ‘Oh, this is awful.,’… and I think, what would John say? And you go, ‘Yeah, you’re right. It’s awful. You’ve got to change it.’ And so I’ll change it. And I know from reports that he did similar things to that, you know, if I’d have a record out, he’d go, ‘Oh, got to go into studio, got to try and do better than Paul.’”

Of course, much of Lennon’s most noteworthy compositions came from his longtime collaboration with McCartney. And, from the sidelines, other musicians have long debated which Beatles song is best. One famous person to voice an opinion was crooner Frank Sinatra — but his choice didn’t sit well with the “Imagine” singer, according to an anecdote Sean told during his chat with half-brother Julian.

Sean revealed that Sinatra listed his favorite Lennon-McCartney track as “Something.” Any Beatles fan will know right away why that ticked off Lennon — the duo didn’t write that song. Sean said, “That’s one of the main ones that’s very George, and for Frank to pick that one out is just hilarious. I think he was a bit hurt by that.”

In the same conversation, Julian revealed that he got a sneak preview of one of the last songs his dad really had written. The tune would end up being Lennon’s final single, “(Just Like) Starting Over.” And his eldest son said that he had loved the track as soon as he heard it over the phone.

That phone call took place just before Lennon’s murder, which made it one of Julian’s last memories of his father — and it was a good final mental image to have. He said, “I just remember that as being the last kind of moment, listening to him being extremely happy, in a happy place and doing what he loved and the music that he played me at that particular point... I was very happy for him and looking forward to seeing him again. Anyway, you know, in another dimension!”

As for Sean’s relationship with his dad? Well, that wouldn’t have even existed were it not for pianist extraordinaire Elton, he revealed during the pair’s radio interview. It all traced back to that performance at Madison Square Garden in 1974. At the time, Lennon and his second wife, Yoko Ono, had been separated for 18 months.

But, according to Sean, Ono ended up attending Elton’s show and going backstage, where she crossed paths with her estranged spouse. There was no ill-will between them, though. In fact, their son recalled a photo from that very meeting. He said, “I grew up with this photograph of my mom and dad backstage at your show. And they’re looking at each other with real love in their eyes.”

The couple didn’t just reconcile that night, either. Sean revealed, “I was born nine months later, approximately, I mean, almost to the day.” And that’s why he credited Elton with his entire life: he had unknowingly helped facilitate Ono and Lennon’s reunion, after all. Their son concluded, “In a way, if it wasn’t for you playing that show, I can honestly say I wouldn’t even exist probably.”

And, while all of this information was intriguing to those who revered Lennon, there was one part of Elton’s interview in particular that turned heads. The “Rocketman” singer covered his relationship with the former Beatle — and, as it turned out, they were closer than most people knew.

Long before the two met, though, Elton had been a fan of Lennon’s music. He told Sean that one of his schoolmates had introduced him to The Beatles via their 1962 debut single “Love Me Do.” The classmate assured Elton that the band was going to be the biggest band the world had ever seen — and he was quite accurate in that prediction.

Elton, too, quickly got on board with Beatlemania. He explained why to Sean, saying, “It was the first thing that really came out of Britain as far as pop music goes… even though they were influenced, and we were all influenced, by American artists, it had an original sound. Things were written about Liverpool, Strawberry Fields. It felt authentic.”

And it wouldn’t be long before Elton joined the Fab Four in the spotlight. His second studio album, Elton John, came out in 1970, and it marked the singer’s first commercially successful production. It didn’t hurt that “Your Song,” one of the artist’s most iconic ballads — and his breakout single — appeared on the record.

Like The Beatles, Elton began to enjoy success with American audiences. And, when he did, the quartet made it clear that they supported the singer-songwriter. Elton recalled that he received “a telegram from George [Harrison] when my first album, the Elton John album, got in the charts in America, and that was so exciting.”

As for Lennon, he made it clear that he, too, was a fan of the “Candle in the Wind” singer when the pair met for the first time in 1973. And for Elton, the feeling was very much mutual. He told Sean that he was “a little bit I was in awe” — more so than he had been while meeting any of the other Beatles.

The pair met on the set of Lennon’s music video for “Mind Games.” Why was he so much more enamored by this Beatle when the other three had “treated [him] so brilliantly”? Elton said, “Your dad had that edge that none of the other Beatles had, kind of because he wasn’t afraid to say what he thought.”

But Lennon hadn’t been critical of Elton’s work — quite the contrary, according to his son, Sean. He said, “My dad, when he first heard your voice he was in America, I think already, and he was thinking that’s the first new kind of British singing that he really liked and dug.”

Sean went on to say, “I think he said that he loved your music and the songs and he liked the song, ‘Your Song.’” Lennon made it clear that he respected Elton’s talent when he invited him into a recording session for his 1974 studio album, Walls and Bridges. Specifically, he had asked Elton to sing and play piano on the song, “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night.”

After hearing the track for the first time, Elton was convinced that it should be the lead single of the album, but at that stage, Lennon wasn’t persuaded. The record label agreed with the “Crocodile Rock” singer, though, so Elton made a bet with his new collaborator: if the song went to number one, then they’d perform live together. Lennon agreed — and we all know how that turned out, as the Beatle appeared on stage with Elton at Madison Square Garden.

Thousands of people saw Lennon and Elton on stage that night, but what they didn’t know was that the duo were more than just musical collaborators. As Elton told Lennon’s son, Sean, in 2020, the pair shared a “wonderful two- or three-year whirlwind romance and it was such an important thing in my life.”

When Elton said “romance,” though, he meant a close friendship and strong connection shared by the two men. It was more than just music that brought them together, too. The “Tiny Dancer” singer said he and Lennon had “laughed so much because we talked about the ’50s and ’60s and where we grew up, you know... the radio shows we liked, the songs we liked.”

Seven years older than Elton, Lennon proved to be “a fountain of knowledge” for his close friend, too. Their connection felt like “a hand-in-glove thing” to Elton — a perfect fit. And the fact he shared it with Lennon was something he “never thought that would ever happen.”

Of course, on the music scene in the 1970s, it wasn’t just about bonding over comedy and childhood. Lennon and Elton got up to some trouble, too. When Sean pressed his interviewee about the “other things” he did with his father, the “Bennie and the Jets” singer admitted, “We did a lot of naughty, naughty things together.”

Elton didn’t explicitly go into what he meant by “naughty, naughty things.” But the singer did admit that those activities were “a lot of fun,” sighing, “Oh my God” as he vaguely recalled them to the son of his partner in crime. He then revealed that the pair had “nearly got in trouble a few times,” although he didn’t say for what.

Mostly, though, Elton remembered Lennon as someone “as kind and as generous and sweet.” Throughout their three-year relationship, the rock star said that they had “never had a bad word,” even though others had warned him about the former Beatle’s range of moods and seemingly scary behaviors.

Elton admitted, “You know, I always thought that [Lennon] was the one that could… turn, or people say, ‘Oh, watch out for him, he can turn.’ And I think maybe when he was drinking a lot and everything he did, but I never saw that.” In fact, the only time the “Imagine” singer brought any other emotion to Elton was during that fateful Madison Square Garden show.

When Lennon came out on stage that night, Elton said that he and others involved in the show began to break down. He revealed, “A lot of us cried, and there were tears running down our faces because here was one of the four people that were the biggest band ever coming out and playing with us.” This was a good way into the stars’ friendship, too — an indication of just how big an icon the one-time Beatle had been.

But the “whirlwind romance” shared by Lennon and Elton didn’t last forever. Elton admitted in the interview that, after Sean’s birth, he “didn’t really hear [from] or see [his] dad at all.” The fact that their friendship suddenly ended didn’t bother the “Philadelphia Freedom” singer, though.

Elton explained to Sean, “He was so happy being back together with your mom [Ono], and he was so enchanted having you that it was, his life had become another thing. So I didn’t really speak to him or see him that much at all or hear from him. And I didn’t mind because it was just the fact that that night was so consequential in the history of his life.

But the Lennon household did acknowledge Elton in one beautiful way after his life took a new direction and the friends lost touch. Because of the “happenstance and Kismet” involved in Elton’s New York concert bringing the then-new parents back together, Sean later chose the singer to be his godfather.

Even though their friendship faded, Elton told Sean that he had still been “very, very affected” by Lennon’s murder in 1980. After organizing a church service in Melbourne — the singer was in Australia when he got the news — he put pen to paper to write a musical tribute to his slain friend. He collaborated with his long-time writing partner Bernie Taupin on the song, “Empty Garden.”

To conclude the eye-opening, touching, and heartbreaking interview, Elton imagined what Lennon might’ve been up to if he’d had the chance to live into old age. The singer opined to Sean, “I think if your dad had still been alive, he would have... maybe won the Nobel Peace Prize or something.”

Why? Well, it came down to the same reason that Lennon and Elton became such wonderful friends in the first place. The “Imagine” songwriter could connect so well with others, but he had no trouble expressing his opinions. Elton explained, “He wanted to bring people together. He was a uniter and he was prepared to go to any lengths to make people see what his point was.”

Maybe, with more time, Elton and Lennon could have rekindled the flame and restored their close friendship, too. The “Candle in the Wind” singer said he wished his one-time pal was still with him. He said, “There aren’t many people around today with that kind of personality or strength of character.” The fact he waited so long to share the details of his relationship with Lennon suggests that was a quality they shared.