Elton John’s friendship with John Lennon explored in new Toronto doc
By Jada Yuan
September 8, 2024
In a new documentary, “Elton John: Never Too Late,” that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday night, the 77-year-old “Tiny Dancer” singer says he may have been “the catalyst” for John Lennon and Yoko Ono getting back together and having their son.
The spine of the film, directed by John’s husband, David Furnish, and R.J. Cutler (“The September Issue”), is intimate, somewhat confessional tapes recorded by a journalist who’s been helping John write his memoir.
As John narrates in the doc, he first met Lennon in 1973 at a video shoot for Lennon’s “Mind Games” album, at a time when the former Beatle and Ono had broken up after 4½ years of marriage. Lennon, with Ono’s encouragement, had entered into a relationship with the much younger May Pang, who had been assisting them on the album.
John recalls how “in awe” of Lennon he was, despite being someone who, himself, was already a global superstar and had sold 30 million albums. Lennon, in turn, had been a huge fan of “Your Song,” which had been a massive international hit.
The two bonded over growing up in the ’50s and ’60s in England, and over songs and radio shows they liked; both were fans of the British comedy series “Round the Horne.” In an earlier interview with Sean Lennon, the singer has said he and the Beatle also “did a lot of naughty, naughty things together.”
In the documentary, which will premiere on Disney Plus on Dec. 13 after a limited theatrical run in November, the pop star reveals that at least one of those “naughty” things was definitely cocaine.
He tells the story of a 2 a.m. drug binge in which he and Lennon had “mountains” of cocaine “coming out of our noses,” and both became extremely paranoid. They heard a knock on the door and thought it was the police. “It took me about five minutes to walk across to the peephole, and I saw it was Andy Warhol. And I went to John, ‘Andy,’ and John went, ‘No way!’ So he kept ringing the bell,” says John in the film.
They knew Warhol “carried the camera everywhere — the Polaroid,” so they just hid inside the room and didn't let him in. “Like, no thanks,” John said. “That was the fun part of cocaine.”
Although it faded once Lennon became a dad, it was during their two-year friendship — which gets a remarkable amount of time in the doc, illustrated by never-before-seen archival photos — that Lennon asked John to sing and play on “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night.”
John said he would, but only if they made a deal that if the song got to No. 1 on the charts, Lennon would join him onstage at a concert. Lennon thought it would never chart that high. But, of course, it did. And true to his word, Lennon joined John for his 1974 Thanksgiving Day concert at Madison Square Garden.
Lennon was so nervous about returning to the stage that he was “physically sick,” John recalls in the film.
Unbeknownst to Lennon, Ono had requested a ticket to the concert, but didn’t want Lennon to know she was there. Their handlers sat her in the 11th row because Lennon was so nearsighted that he’d never see her there. She sent two gardenias backstage, and Lennon immediately asked whether they were from her, and remarked that if she was there, he’d probably be too nervous to go on. So, his team never told him, but he wore one of the gardenias onstage anyway.
When he stepped out that night, the New York crowd went nuts. “It was probably the greatest night of my professional career, because I remember how the audience reacted,” John told Howard Stern in an interview.
In the film, he says, “I’d never heard a roar like it.”
They played “I Saw Her Standing There,” “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night.” And afterward, John was crying so hard with joy and emotion that he had to hide in the bathroom. Lennon gingerly went in there and sat with him.
The film doesn’t go into details, but it seems as if Ono’s gardenias were an olive branch. “I was probably the catalyst of John and Yoko getting back together,” John says in the film. “If I hadn’t told him to do the show, maybe he had never met Yoko again.”
He continues, “Of course, they did get back together and they had Sean [Lennon]. He became in love again, and so his wildness, he kind of stopped the drugs, stopped the craziness. I was happy for him. Didn’t stop my craziness.”
John was named Sean’s godfather. “I didn’t know it was John’s swan song, which it turned out to be,” John says in the film. That was his last concert before his murder in the archway of the Dakota in 1980.
After the Toronto screening, John teared up multiple times during a Q&A. It was amazing to see his life on-screen, he said. “I was closed before. I was so tightly wrung, but I was so tired of hiding away.”
He recalled coming out as bisexual to Cliff Jahr in a Rolling Stone cover story in 1976 and the weight that lifted off him. (He came out as gay in Rolling Stone in 1992.) At the time, he said, everyone in the business knew he was gay.
“And most people knew I was living with my manager [John Reid], for Christ’s sake!” he said, laughing. But, still, it was hard. “No one had ever asked me before Cliff if I was gay or what my sexuality was,” John said onstage. “I didn’t feel as [if] I was hiding, but I was just very full-on in thinking that, ‘Am I ever going to find someone being how famous I am and my sexuality?’ And that’s why I told [Jahr] to keep the tape rolling.”
The moment, John said, “was a definitive time in my life, because I was being honest and it was so good. … It was a wonderful time for me, because at least I got that kind of thing off my back.”
The point of the documentary is that “the truth should always be told,” he said. “And it took me so long to, and it made me so unhappy, and it was so stupid, the amount of years that I lost by not telling the truth and by fooling myself. And when I stopped fooling myself, obviously my life turned around.”
The film takes us through not just John’s relief at coming out, but also his addiction to drugs and alcohol. “Fame is a dangerous thing if you don’t have something else, and that something else is honesty,” said the singer. “If you don’t have the honesty to go with the fame, then you’re going to be in real, real trouble, like I was before I got sober in 1990. It’s been 34 years now.”
For that, he gave thanks to the kindness of strangers who’d come up to him and give him their phone numbers, back in his worst days. People are good and kind and generous, he said, and that’s borne out his whole life.
“Kindness will out. Kindness will always out, and that’s what I hope for the American election,” he said.
John met Furnish at a dinner party in 1993, and onstage credited him for saving his life. They entered into a civil partnership in 2005 and officially got married nine years later, when same-sex marriage became legal in the U.K.
They now have two sons. John retired from touring in 2023 to spend more time with his family.
“This is the greatest feeling I’ve ever had in my life. More than having the first number-one album in Billboard. Yeah, that was really nice for about five minutes. This is a lifetime,” he said.
“Listen, I’m 77 years old. I’m having the best time of my life except for this f---ing eye. I wish I could see you, but I can’t,” he told the crowd, laughing, referring to a severe eye infection that has left him with limited vision in one eye. He believes he’ll regain his sight in time.
Before the crowd went home, he had one thing left to add: “On my tombstone, I don’t want it to say, ‘He sold a million records.’ I just want it to say he was a great dad and great husband.”
