In his new memoir, the Rocket Man opens up on the reason why his collaboration project with the 'Proud Mary' hitmaker years ago never came to fruition.
- October 10, 2019
AceShowbiz - Elton John found Tina Turner impossible to work with as she constantly slammed his appearance and musicianship.
Elton and Tina planned to tour together in the late 1990s, but failed to hit it off, as the British singer claims she was rude about his clothes and hair.
"While it was at the planning stage, she rang me up at home, apparently with the express intention of telling me how awful I was and how I had to change before we could work together," the "Rocket Man" musician writes in his new memoir, serialised in Britain's Daily Mail newspaper.
"She didn't like my hair, she didn't like the colour of my piano, and she didn't like my clothes. You wear too much Versace, and it makes you look fat - you have to wear Armani."
Elton then rang off as he could no longer cope with her criticism.
"I got off the phone and burst into tears: 'She sounded like my f**king mother,' I wailed at David (Furnish, Elton's husband)," he explains.
The pair still planned to tour together, however, but abandoned the idea after a disastrous rehearsal at VH1's Divas Live '99 concert, which was thrown into chaos by a shouting match over how to play Tina's track "Proud Mary".
"The subsequent debate about whether I knew how to play Proud Mary became quite heated, before I brought it to a conclusion by telling Tina Turner to stick her f**king song up her a**e and stormed off."
The pair later calmed down, but Tina did not like Elton's improvisational style and agreed not to continue with a tour.
"That made it obvious the tour wasn't going to work, although we made up later: she came for dinner and left a big lipstick kiss in the visitors' book," he adds.
