Elton John

How many cars did Elton John sell at Christie's in 2001?

In 2000, John admitted to spending £30 million in just under two years—an average of £1.5 million a month. Between January 1996 and September 1997, he spent more than £9.6m on property and £293,000 on flowers. In June 2001, John sold 20 of his cars at Christie's, saying he never had the chance to drive them because he was out of the country so often. The sale, which included a 1993 Jaguar XJ220, the most expensive at £234,750, and several Ferraris, Rolls-Royces, and Bentleys, raised nearly £2 million. In 2003, John sold the contents of his Holland Park home—expected to fetch £800,000 at Sotheby's—to modernise the decoration and to display some of his contemporary art collection. Every year since 2004, John has opened a shop called "Elton's Closet", in which he sells his secondhand clothes.


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  • In 1993, John began a relationship with David Furnish, a former advertising executive and now filmmaker originally from Toronto. On 21 December 2005 (the day the Civil Partnership Act came into force), John and Furnish were among the first couples to form a civil partnership in the United Kingdom, which was held at the Windsor Guildhall. After gay marriage became legal in the United Kingdom in March 2014, John and Furnish married in Windsor, Berkshire, on 21 December 2014, the ninth anniversary of their civil partnership.

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  • John released The Union on 19 October 2010. He has said the album, a collaboration with American singer, songwriter and sideman Leon Russell, marked a new chapter in his recording career, saying: "I don't have to make pop records any more." He began his new show The Million Dollar Piano at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, on 28 September 2011, and performed it there for the next three years. He performed his 3000th concert on 8 October 2011 at Caesars. Also in 2011, John performed vocals on "Snowed in at Wheeler Street" with Kate Bush for her album 50 Words for Snow. On 3 February 2012, he visited Costa Rica for the first time, performing at the recently built National Stadium.

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  • In August 2003, John's fifth UK number one single, "Are You Ready for Love", topped the charts. Returning to musical theatre, John composed music for a West End production of Billy Elliot the Musical in 2005 with playwright Lee Hall. Opening to strong reviews, the show won four Laurence Olivier Awards, including Best New Musical. The 11th-longest-running musical in West End history, the London production ran through April 2016, with 4,566 performances. As of December 2015, Billy Elliot has been seen by over 5.25 million people in London and nearly 11 million people worldwide (on Broadway, in Sydney, Melbourne, Chicago, Toronto, Seoul, the Netherlands and São Paulo, Brazil etc.), grossed over $800 million worldwide and won over 80 theatre awards internationally. John's only theatrical project with Taupin is Lestat: The Musical, based on Anne Rice's vampire novels. It received negative reviews from critics and closed in May 2006 after 39 performances. John featured on rapper Tupac Shakur's posthumous single "Ghetto Gospel", which topped the UK charts in July 2005.

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  • On 4 June 2012, John performed at the Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee Concert at Buckingham Palace, including "Your Song", "Crocodile Rock" and "I'm Still Standing". On 30 June, he performed in Kiev, Ukraine, at a joint concert with Queen + Adam Lambert for the Elena Pinchuk ANTIAIDS Foundation. An album containing remixes of songs that he recorded in the 1970s, Good Morning to the Night, was released in July 2012. The remixes were conducted by Australian group Pnau, and the album reached number one in the UK. At the 2012 Pride of Britain Awards on 30 October, along with Michael Caine, Richard Branson, Simon Cowell and Stephen Fry, John recited Rudyard Kipling's poem "If—" in tribute to the 2012 British Olympic and Paralympics athletes.

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  • As part of his farewell tour, in June 2019, John was presented with France's highest civilian award, the Legion d'honneur, by President Emmanuel Macron during a ceremony at the Élysée Palace in Paris. Macron called John a "melodic genius" and one of the first gay artists to give a voice to the LGBT community. On 25 June 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed John as one of hundreds of artists whose master recordings were reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal Studios fire.

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