Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1986, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson. A castaway today is one of the legendary figures of rock and roll.

In a notoriously fickle industry, he survived all the changes to remain a star for nearly 20 years.

Also, he's the only chairman of Watford Football Club to have sold 80 million records.

He is of course Elton John.

And let's go right back to the very beginning.

When do you first start taking piano lessons?

Well, I first started taking lessons when I was about six or seven I can't remember exactly but I originally started playing piano by ear because I grew up being looked after by my grandmother and mother because my father was in the Air Force and I was born in my grandmother's house in Pinagreen in Middlesex.

And we always had a piano in the house because my aunt used to play.

And so when I was about five or six, my parents thought it might be a good idea that I should have some formal education in music,

which of course I didn't particularly like, but I was very lucky enough.

They sent me to a local woman called Mrs Jones in Pinner, whose husband was a very good classical musician as well.

And she was lovely.

And so that was a good start.

And I got an okay.

I could read okay.

But I was never that much interested, actually,

in becoming a classical musician,

because ever since I can remember I've always

wanted to do something in music but popular music. Winnifinatwa was my first

influence and I mean her other piano I used to sit as a kid and watch her on the

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