Here's Why Elton John And David Bowie Had A Falling Out

Now, some may find it overly pretentious that a rock star calls himself responsible for a whole new school of pretension. However, as with Bowie's other coked-out remark that "[When Hitler] hit that stage, he worked an audience. Good God! He was no politician. He was a media artist," there is a point of a kind being made.

David Bowie was one of if not the central figure of the glam rock movement and even dropped out of it before the genre's decline. Others, like Elton John and Freddie Mercury, adopted the flamboyancy pushed by Ziggy Stardust. The Encyclopedia Britannica piece on glam rock names Elton John as a performer associated with British glam and uDiscover Music notes how Elton John "also flirted with the sounds and looks of glam rock... Crucially, Elton looked the part and his droll theatricality played into the movement's subversive tease." From Bowie's perspective, Elton John could very easily fall into the category of another repetitive bandwagoner. Or, as John Lennon described Bowie's music to Bowie, "'[your kind of rock 'n' roll] is great but it's just rock 'n' roll with lipstick on." Or perhaps he was simply being a jerk while on cocaine. David Bowie never clarified. 

However, their beef did not stop Elton John from praising how Bowie handled his impending death to the Evening Standard: "Everyone else take note of this: Bowie couldn't have staged a better death. It was classy." A classy remark after decades of aloofness. 

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