ELTON John has revealed how cocaine made him a violent monster – who once hijacked a Rolling Stones gig and destroyed a hotel suite.
The superstar singer admits that hoovering up the Class A drug throughout the 70s and 80s made him “irresponsible and self-obsessed”.
Writing in his new autobiography, serialised in the Daily Mail, Elton recalls fist taking cocaine in 1974.
He remembers being hooked by the euphoric feeling it gave him – and quickly became notorious for going on crazed coke binges.
The Tiny Dancer singer, 72, writes: “My appetite for the stuff was unbelievable — enough to attract comment in the circles I was moving in.
“Given that I was a rock star spending a lot of time in Seventies LA, this was a not inconsiderable feat.”
Describing one episode in Cannes in June 1983, Elton tells of his horror at waking up with an “astonishing” hangover to find his PA’s room was trashed.
He writes: “There wasn’t a single piece of furniture left intact, except the bed.
“Everything else was on its side, or upside down, or in pieces. Sitting among the splinters was a cowboy hat that Bob liked to wear.
“It was completely flat, like Yosemite Sam’s after Bugs Bunny drops an anvil on his head.
“‘F***ing hell,’ I said. ‘What happened?’
“There was a long pause.
“‘Elton,’ he said eventually. ‘You happened.'”
He goes on to explain how the previous night he bumped into Duran Duran in the lobby of his hotel and joined them for a drink.
Elton downed up to eight vodka martinis and “a couple of lines of coke” in just a hour before punching his manager and ex-lover John Reid.
He was then ushered back to his suite by assistant Bob Halley – but lashed out at being forced to go to bed.
Elton writes: “I expressed my displeasure about his intervention by smashing up his hotel room.”
In another scene of drug-fuelled abandon, Elton recalls being stared down by the Stones’ Keith Richards on stage.
Elton, high on cocaine, had been invited to join the band for a performance in Colorado.
He writes that had he not been under the influence, “I might have just performed Honky Tonk Women, waved to the crowd and made my exit.
“Instead, I decided it was going so well, I’d stay on and jam along to the rest of their set, without first taking the precaution of asking the Stones if they wanted an auxiliary keyboard player.
“For a while, I thought Keith Richards kept staring at me because he was awestruck by the brilliance of my improvised contributions to their oeuvre.
“After a few songs, it finally penetrated my brain that the expression on his face wasn’t really suggestive of profound musical appreciation.
“I quickly scuttled off, noting as I went that Keith was still staring at me in a manner that suggested we’d be discussing this later, and decided it might be best if I didn’t hang around for the after-show party.”
In one bear-all passage, Elton reflects on his inability to see that he was gripped by a severe drug problem.
He explains: “That was the problem. Because I was doing coke, I wasn’t a rational human being any more.
“You become unreasonable and irresponsible, self-obsessed, a law unto yourself.
“It’s your way or the highway. It’s a horrible drug.”
Elsewhere in his memoirs, Elton reveals for the first time his terrifying secret cancer battle in 2017.
The singer, who underwent a successful op for prostate cancer, writes: “The doctors told [Elton’s husband] David I was 24 hours away from death.”
Me: Elton John Official Autobiography by Elton John is out on October 15.
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