Elton John couldn’t quite leave the bourgeois Reginald Dwight behind.
A Reginald Dwight won’t become a superstar – at least that’s what Elton John thought when he officially changed his name. However, this decision had consequences.
“I left little Reggie behind, but he was still inside me.”
The musician spoke about his name change on “Good Morning America.” The 77-year-old shared that his official move to Elton John eventually caught up with him. “I left little Reggie behind, but he was still inside me,” the singer said. “I wanted to leave my childhood and that person behind, but it came back to me.” He dates the revelation back to October 1975, shortly before his historic performance at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. “I realized that I put everything into my work and my art, my recordings, and there was nothing underneath. There was only emptiness inside me.”
Watch the interview excerpt with Elton John here:
Reginald was too old-fashioned for the icon
Actually, according to Elton John, he wanted to change his civil identity, Reginald Dwight, as early as possible. “Reginald is a very old-fashioned name. They shorten it to Reggie and I hated that,” said the artist. “It’s quite a popular name in America, but I just didn’t like it, so I changed it as soon as I could. I was very clever and thought to myself: ‘Nobody’s really called Elton, so I’m going to be Elton and the only Elton.'” Apparently a change that he couldn’t fully make emotionally.
Still busy even in old age
The interview preceded the streaming premiere of the documentary “Elton John: Never Too Late.” The film will be available on Disney+ from Friday, December 13, 2024. It was previously shown in selected cinemas in November. In addition, the London premiere of the musical version of “The Devil Wears Prada” (premiering in Chicago: 2022), for which Elton John composed the music, recently took place. Because of his Blindness he wasn’t able to attend all of the advance appointments.