Sir Elton John is gearing up for Saturday Night Live when I catch him right before the highly anticipated release of his new album. Who Believes in Angels?, a dazzling collaboration with Brandi Carlile, marks his first release since his 2021 album The Lockdown Sessions. To add even more sparkle, it dropped with a documentary, which premiered last Friday: an intimate, 30-minute film giving audiences an unfiltered look behind the velvet rope and taking them through the album’s creation, challenges and triumphs. Cameras were placed strategically around the studio, capturing thousands of hours of raw footage — everything from the musical sparks to moments of actual combustion; or, as Elton himself puts it, “the tantrums, the arguments, the frustration”. The film’s trailer made waves when it dropped in February, giving fans a glimpse of the raw emotions behind the music. Elton’s outbursts are part of his rock’n’roll legend — though I count myself lucky to have never witnessed one myself. What truly stands out, however, is his incredible longevity as a superstar. As he so famously sang in 1983: he’s still standing. Reginald Kenneth Dwight was born in 1947 in Pinner, a quiet suburb near Harrow. His musical gifts were always undeniable. From a young age, he was a prodigy on the piano, soon enrolling at London’s Royal Academy of Music, where he refined his craft before taking on London’s thriving music scene in the 1960s. He crossed paths with Bernie Taupin, the man who would become his songwriting partner and collaborator in one of the most iconic musical partnerships in history. By 1970, the duo struck gold with Your Song, a hit that marked the beginning of Elton’s stratospheric rise. By 1975, he was immortalised with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. With success came excess, and that story — at times painful, at others profound — was laid bare in his 2019 memoir Me and the subsequent Rocketman biopic. In 1990, he found the strength to get sober, and three years later, he met the love of his life, and now husband, David Furnish. In the 1990s, Elton turned his attention to musical theatre, composing music for The Lion King and, later, Aida and Billy Elliot. Now 78, his legacy is more resplendent than ever, with two more musicals to his name (Tammy Faye and The Devil Wears Prada) and the tour to end them all, Farewell Yellow Brick Road, which ended in July 2023 following the ultimate gig: headlining the Sunday spot at Glastonbury. I was fortunate to attend the actual final concert of his farewell tour, in Stockholm — a deeply moving and joyful occasion. Today still, Elton is as efficient as he is industrious. “We recorded the album in 20 days,” he says of Who Believes in Angels? Things “started off rockily because I was tired … for the first three or four days I was lost at sea because I didn’t really like the way it was going.” The moment things began to click, there was no stopping him. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Elton said Who Believes in Angels? is his best album since 1975’s Captain Fantastic. The rocketman tunes into our call today from Woodside, his home in Windsor, which he bought 50 years ago. “Until Covid, I never really spent any time here,” he says. “It was a blessing really … I got to fall in love with my house again.” He lives with his husband and two children, their four dogs (house dogs Joseph and Jacob; guard dogs Flash and Gordon) and two donkeys, Jake and Sooty. “The sweetest,” Elton smiles. Although Woodside has been rebuilt several times since the 18th century, perhaps no resident has made it their own quite like Elton, who turned it into what he once described as “Aladdin’s cave”. It was, back in the day, the site of the spoils from his rock’n’roll empire, including jukeboxes, pinball machines, Tiffany lamps and, according to an old Telegraph interview, “the odd Rembrandt etching”. There was once a replica of Tutankhamun’s state throne. All of it ended up going in a Sotheby’s sale. Elton has always avoided becoming a parody of his younger self (it helps that he’s obsessed with novelty — more on this later). Behind him today, though, is a mountain of silverware, china and porcelain figurines, two 18th-century paintings and half a chandelier affixed to the wall. It is, for better or worse, very EJ. Even more so are his fabulous glasses: red and pointy at the sides. But we’re not here to talk fashion. We’re here to talk music. How did a collaborative album between him and Brandi Carlile come about? The two have been great friends for years, he explains. “She wrote me a letter explaining how much I influenced her and what a fan she was,” Elton says (this was back in 2009), “and asking whether I’d ever consider playing on one of her records. So I wrote back and said, ‘Listen, if you can come to Las Vegas — where I was doing a residency at the time — I would love to play on a record of yours.’” Carlile, by then, had released her second album, The Story, the title track of which ended up being used in a General Motors commercial at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Naturally, her career mushroomed. Her next record would be Give Up the Ghost, produced by the legendary Rick Rubin. The album featured hers and Elton’s first duet together: Caroline. The artist has described their relationship as “kismet” — yet while an alliance with a British national treasure is normally a golden ticket, in the UK Carlile remains critically overlooked. This is despite her winning 11 Grammy Awards and personally masterminding Joni Mitchell’s return to the stage when she invited her along to the Newport Folk Festival in 2022. With Who Believes in Angels? though, there’s no doubt she’s launching head-first into the British charts. Although Elton has mentored a flotilla of artists, none have inspired quite the same partnership as the one he has with Carlile. “She’s an Americana artist,” he says. “But I bought her an electric guitar two years ago and said, ‘Okay … I want you to rock’n’roll.’” Elton is known for pushing himself to the limit, and he’s not above taking other people with him. When he spots talent, he doesn’t just nurture it: he tests its boundaries, pushing it far beyond where others would. He and Carlile performed together two weeks ago at the London Palladium. “It was probably one of the greatest concerts I’ve ever done,” Elton says today. Having attended dozens of his concerts over the years, I can attest to this. This is not Elton’s first collaborative record: there’s been 1993’s Duets and 2021’s Lockdown Sessions, which spawned the hit song Cold Heart (a duet with Dua Lipa). But it’s only the second time he’s made an album that is as much someone else’s as it is his own. “I did one with Leon Russell, who was my idol,” he says, in reference to their 2010 album, The Union. “I was so influenced by him, and he was in his declining years.” Russell died in 2016. There’s something almost circular about Who Believes in Angels? — like a torch is being passed down from one idol to another through the magic of a joint record. An equally touching credit on Who Believes in Angels? is, of course, Taupin — a constant in Elton’s otherwise peripatetic life. “We never tire of one another,” the singer explains, “because we don’t collaborate.” This has always been the case: Taupin writes the lyrics on his own, then Elton composes the music — or vice versa. As a small boy from the Soviet Union who discovered Elton John at the age of eight and has grown to love his music more and more ever since, I never imagined that one day I would be so lucky as to sit in his house while he played me his album in full. It was marvellous to see a musical genius so in the zone, playing imaginary piano and electric guitar and bopping along to his own songs when I went to visit Elton at Woodside a few months ago. I confess to crying twice: first during Brandi’s solo, which is about her daughter growing up (myself a father to a little girl who is nearly five, it really struck a chord) and second during the final track — and Elton’s solo — When this Old World is Done with Me: a meditation on life and what comes after it, which my friend recorded in one take. “Both those songs are mourning something,” Elton says. I have known Elton for nearly two decades. He’s had a tough few years, with a number of health scares which I won’t spell out as others have. Despite this, I’ve yet to meet anyone whose drive matches his. He has this insatiable hunger for everything life has to offer — although his own self-description is far less grand. “I’m a forward-thinking person,” he says. “When I stopped touring, I was happy that chapter of my life had come to an end — but I still knew I had a lot of creative things in me.” Will he continue making music? “My next record won’t be anything like this one,” he says. “I really want to do another dance track … I’ve got two songs already written that are pretty damn good.” What about his work for the stage? “I don’t think I have another musical in me,” he admits. What keeps him going is his love for “the new”. “I’m looking for new photographs, new art, new theatre, new cinema…” But it’s clear, if unsurprising, that nothing gets him going quite like new music. “I still do the radio shows,” he says, a nod to his programme with Apple Music, Rocket Hour, which shone a spotlight on Doechii, Gia Ford and Humble the Great long before they became household names. He name-checks them all today, along with Nectar Woode, Nova Twins and Moonchild Sanelly. Of all his achievements, the one that’s come to define Elton is his mentorship of younger artists. It’s something I first saw in my grandfather, who was one of the Soviet Union’s pioneering ecologists. I still meet scores of biologists nearly 30 years after his death, who are eternally grateful to him for his guidance and mentorship. I can see Elton is leaving a similar legacy. “To be empowered by youth is my greatest gift,” Elton beams. A man with immense generosity of spirit, he’s long used his success to support others. His management company, Rocket Music, has helped boost the careers of James Blunt, Lily Allen and Ed Sheeran. At his Glastonbury set, he brought out Jacob Lusk, Rina Sawayama and Stephen Sanchez. He’s also been a huge champion of Chappell Roan, whose outspoken criticism of record labels is something he picks up on today. “It’s important for young artists to stand their ground and not be pigeonholed by the record label telling them what to be like,” he says. “If you’re a creative artist, you know what direction you want to go in.” Another artist particularly close to Elton’s heart is Raye. “Oscar Winning Tears is one of my favourite songs of the last two or three years,” he tells me. “She would never have made that if the record label [which she left] had had their way.” Besides being a father figure to a legion of young stars, Elton is also a father of two. His eldest, Zachary, is my godson — which means I have something of a godmarriage with Lady Gaga. I will never forget how at a dinner Elton and David threw at the Royal Courts of Justice to celebrate me becoming a British citizen in 2010, they pulled me aside to announce they were having a child and wanted me to be godfather — before swearing me to secrecy. It’s been one of the greatest honours of my life. To watch Elton, a man who, when I met him, never wanted to have children, become one of the greatest fathers I’ve ever witnessed — whose sons are now his raison d’être — is truly inspiring. They are now teenagers, and will certainly do much to keep Elton in touch with “the new” he so craves. Despite this, his embrace of all things novel is not indiscriminate. On the topic of AI, he is trepidatious. “I think it’s very dangerous,” he says. In January, he joined other public figures in calling for a change to government proposals that would require creatives to “opt out” of their work being used to train generative AI. Baroness Kidron, my colleague in the House of Lords, led the charge in parliament with a successful amendment that would require AI firms to operate in accordance with existing copyright law. She and Elton are bravely championing British creatives at a time when their work and economic contributions are being passed over in favour of a hopeful AI boom on UK soil. One could easily write this off as the rantings of a boomer — a generation which Elton is, technically, a part of. But when somebody with such a strong record of championing progress tells us to proceed with caution, I think we ought to take heed. I ask Elton if he has any other pearls of wisdom he’d like to leave us with — specifically, for young artists. “My best advice is to play in a band,” he says. “Go and play live.” He reflects on his early days playing in pubs across London — long before selling out the Troubadour and, later, entire stadiums across the world. “When you get famous, you’ll look back on those times,” he smiles, “and they’ll inspire some of the fondest memories.” Who Believes in Angels? (Interscope) is out now Main photo by David LaChapelle