What happens when a rock star gets older? Good question, basically if he is still in vogue – if that artist, that is, still makes the news – the common stereotype is that of the eternally young, in which Mick Jagger leads the way. Mick Jagger who, that is, never really got old. Others, like David Bowie or to a lesser extent Freddie Mercury, have transformed their life and consequently death into a work of art in itself. Still others, the majority, have more or less eclipsed themselves, effectively retiring. It’s part of the game, of course. And then there is Elton John, a true living legend, who was such in his golden period – the beginning of the seventies, when he nailed one record after another, in a state of grace that is difficult to explain – and such remained in 2024, but who has never made a secret of the time that passes first and foremost on his skin, before on music.

A sincere documentary

To give us back this feeling of aged is a documentary just released on Disney Plus, Elton John: Never Too Latedirected by RJ Cutler and David Furnish. The occasion is the tour Farewell Yellow Brick Roada tour of around three hundred concerts between 2018 and 2022 with which he said goodbye to the stage. And ok, like all works in which the protagonist shows off so much, basically, it’s a hagiography, even considering its enormous artistic merits. And again: from the point of view of archive footage it is not irresistible – and in any case, come on, there are plenty of documentaries on the subject – and for the entire central part it focuses on the well-known beginnings.

But. But seen against the light and cleared of these aspects, it is a sincere and, indeed, unique testimony. The first brick of this sort of counter-narrative had already been laid with the biopic – of which Elton John himself was, among other things, producer – Rocketmanfrom 2019, where the glory and sequins of the golden years were already contrasted by the various addictions (alcohol, drugs, sex, pornography) that have tormented its protagonist over the years, in addition to insecurities and an always difficult discovery of his own sexuality . The idea was that it was something far from cool, that in short there was nothing beautiful in the cliché of the cursed artist, but arriving at a serene conclusion, in which he declared himself cleaned up and happy, married, with two children. Here you are, Elton John: Never Too Late he takes a step forward and shows it directly today, almost eighty years old, behind the scenes of live shows and face to face with the ailments of age and the toll presented by excesses.

A human look at the reckless rock star

A human picture emerges, in the opposite direction to the works that somehow celebrate the reckless rock stars to whom he too, for a certain period, belonged. Elton John, if anything, as well as a humble and likeable character – from the British humour, obviously, to the manifest, for him, inability to write lyrics, given that he has always and only dealt with melodies – he passes for someone full of tics, neuroses and defects, which he neither hides nor glorifies, but which he talks about, simply, without rhetoric. Like, that is, about something that was about to kill him, to then move on to how he healed, how he became better, but also to the contradictions that his job requires him to face at his age: the body that doesn’t respond as first, the feeling of having left something else aside to dedicate oneself to one’s career, the fear of not having enough time for one’s teenage children and, on the other hand, the need to still be there for people – for someone like him, of course, withdrawal is difficult, he feels a certain responsibility towards the public. Even rock stars, well, they cry, and they really do.

Elton (also) old

But everything comes back. At a certain point, talking about the success of the beginning, he asks himself how it was possible: he wasn’t good looking, he wasn’t very athletic, he didn’t know what allure; yet he still became a global icon, a glam rock star. The answer is that what made the difference was probably determination, which in turn transformed him into a model: if he had done it, anyone could have done it. This is not entirely true in reality, the society of images had not yet transcended to what it is today, through social media, and the aesthetic aspect counted up to a certain point – what counted, if anything, was charisma, presencewhat could be conveyed on stage, live, and in this he was always unbeatable. However, the human aspect remains, then also translated into a somewhat down-to-earth style, typical of the glam of the time, so distant and at the same time so close to those who were under the stage. And today there is a documentary which tells us that even Elton John, as an old man, has everyone’s problems, even though he faces different challenges.