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Elton John was born on March 25, 1947 in London. A force of nature in the world of music, Sir Elton John is one of the most successful and influential musical artists of all time. His artistic reach is long, his generosity breathtaking and his presence powerful not only in popular music but also on the Broadway stage, on the Hollywood screen and beyond. Since his intensely personal 1970 ballad "Your Song," this inimitable piano man has conquered a field usually dominated by guitars, and broke Elvis Presley's record for the most consecutive years of Top 40 hits on the Billboard charts with 24 consecutive years on top. He has sold more than 60 million albums to date, and his work is far from over. Not one to be contained by musical or any other borders, John also has made his mark as a persuasive AIDS warrior and a fearless champion of free speech. From "Crocodile Rock" and "Daniel" to "Bennie and the Jets" and "Candle in the Wind," from The Lion King to AIDA, and from his Watford Football Club to today's Elton John AIDS Foundation, here is an artist and humanist whose brilliance is drenched in love. His first hit was a love song. Like much of his work, John's gentle "Your Song" remains a deceptively simple little gem. It is both a song and a song about a song, unabashedly romantic art reflecting on timeless art, post-modernism revealed to the masses: "And you can tell everybody this is your song / It may be quite simple but now that it's done / I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind that I put down in words / How wonderful life is while you're in the world." In the decades that have followed, John has emerged in serious rock and roll armor from his tender 1970 debut. His enigmatic 1973 album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was both a straightforward musical meditation and a cultural snapshot of an era that would keep semioticians busy for years. He was a pioneer in moving rock music into ever-larger arenas, which nevertheless seemed somehow barely big enough for John's outrageously theatrical, larger-than-life productions. His participation in the heart-breaking 1985 AIDS fundraiser "That's What Friends Are For" and his own "Candle in the Wind 1997," a heartfelt tribute to the late Princess of Wales that sold more than 33 million copies, helped the world grieve and helped usher in a spirit of hope. The son of a Royal Air Force trumpet player, the future Elton John was born Reginald Kenneth Dwight, in the London suburb of Pinner. He taught himself the piano at the age of four. At 11, he won a scholarship to a program for gifted children in the venerable Royal Academy of Music, where he was grounded in the classics even as his heart belonged to rock and roll. He left school after six years, joined the band Bluesology, changed his name to Elton John and began appearing in London cabarets. An audition for Liberty Records did not yield much more than a promise, but it was at Liberty in 1967 that John met Bernie Taupin. The pair became a songwriting team in 1968, and the hit-making machine of John's music and Taupin's lyrics has not stopped since.
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