In an interview with the Irish
Times, Sir Elton John said that George Michael was “too
stubborn” to get sober.
John, whose memoir Me: Elton John
Official Autobiography arrives Tuesday, October 15, is currently
on tour for the last time. His “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour
includes more than 300 shows and ends in 2021.
Speaking with the Irish Times,
John answered questions from celebrities, including Sam Smith,
Victoria Beckham, and Bob Dylan.
“You saved my life,” Donatella
Versace said. “How many other lives have you saved?”
“Donatella is talking about addiction
here,” John, who got sober in the early 1990s, said. “I am
responsible for helping a lot of people get sober and hopefully to
stay sober.”
“I remember very, very well the night
Donatella decided to go for help. It was an intervention, which isn’t
always the best way of doing things – if people aren’t ready for
it, it turns into a disaster. With Donatella, I knew she was ready,
because she came to see me play a show in Reggio Calabria three weeks
beforehand. She was in a terrible state, and I knew she was giving me
a message: 'I need help, I need this now, I’m at my lowest ebb.'
She didn’t take much persuading to go.”
“Some people, you try and they just
don’t want to know. George Michael was like that. He did go away to
Switzerland for a while, but he was too stubborn. It was weird; when
he died, Ozzy Osbourne said to me, 'You know what, Elton? I don’t
think he wanted to be here any more,' which seems like a harsh thing
to say, but I think it was right. He didn’t want to be here. He had
a choice, he knew what he had to do and he wouldn’t do it. So there
you go,” John
said.