Elton John has risked reigniting his feud with Madonna, after branding her “ungracious and nasty” for criticising Lady Gaga in the past.
The ‘Rocketman’ singer discusses Madonna’s famous feud with Gaga in his new memoir Me, and explains how, in turn, it led to his own dispute with the Queen of Pop.
“I used to make fun of [Madonna] for lip-syncing on stage, but the problem really started when she ran Gaga down on an American chat show,” he wrote, in reference to a 2012 ABC News interview in which Madonna claimed that Gaga’s ‘Born This Way’ was “reductive,” and likened it to her own 1989 hit ‘Express Yourself’.
“I got that Gaga’s single ‘Born This Way’ definitely sounded similar to ‘Express Yourself,’ but I couldn’t see why she was so ungracious and nasty about it, rather than taking it as a compliment… particularly when she claims to be a champion for women,” John writes.
“I think it’s just wrong — an established artist shouldn’t kick down a younger artist right at the start of their career.”
In the wake of Madonna’s comments against Gaga, John’s own feud with the singer stepped up a level when he branded her a “fairground stripper”.
Recommended
“I was furious and I said some pretty horrible things about her to a TV interviewer in Australia, a guy I’d known since the seventies called Molly Meldrum,” he wrote.
“You can tell from the footage that it wasn’t part of the interview, that I was just sounding off to an old friend between takes… They broadcast it anyway, which brought that particular old friendship to a very swift conclusion. Still, I shouldn’t have said it. I apologised.”
The insight into the feud is just one of many outlandish anecdotes detailed in Elton’s tell-all memoir. As well as recalling the time he hijacked a Rolling Stones show while high on cocaine, he also tells of the time when he mistook Bob Dylan for his gardener – describing him as “scruffy”.
Yesterday, it was seemingly confirmed that Elton will not play Glastonbury next year, after newly announced farewell tour dates in the US seemingly clashed with the Worthy Farm festival.