Singer Sir Elton John has said coming
out gay did not negatively affect his career.
The 65-year-old Sir Elton makes the
revelation in a two-part interview with TODAY host Matt Lauer to be
aired Tuesday and Wednesday, July 17 and 18.
The conversation revolves around Sir
Elton's upcoming memoir, Love is the Cure: On Life, Loss and the
End of AIDS, sales of which will benefit the Elton John AIDS
Foundation.
“I wasted such a big part of my life,
when this [AIDS] epidemic was beginning to happen in the early 1980s.
And I was a drug addict and self-absorbed,” he told Lauer at his
home outside London. “You know, I was having people die right,
left and center around me, friends. And yet, I didn't stop the life
that I had, which is the terrible thing about addiction. It's that –
you know, it's that bad of a disease.”
“I'm making up for it,” he added.
“There is so much more to be done.”
On coming out, he said: “In America,
people burned my records for a second and radio stations didn't play
me. It didn't have any effect like the Dixie Chicks had when they
made the anti-Iraq statements and their career was ruined. So by me
saying gay in the 1970s – it didn't have a big effect on me
whatsoever.”
Sir Elton and his partner, filmmaker
David Furnish, are raising 1-year-old Zachary.
“I'd love to have more children,”
Sir Elton said. “And I want him to have a brother or a sister to
go to school with. And so that he can have someone to play with.”