Sir Elton John made plenty of shocking revelations in his new autobiography Me, but he still had one more up his sleeve during a recent interview with the BBC. The “Crocodile Rock” singer revealed that he needed to wear a diaper during a Las Vegas concert in 2017 and had to use it. The concert took place just two weeks after he had prostate cancer.
In Elton John: Uncensored, the 72-year-old told Graham Norton he needed to wear a diaper on stage after the procedure because it impacted his bladder control.
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“If only [the audience] knew… at that moment I was pissing myself,” John said, according to a Guardian review of the BBC1 special.
John was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2017 and decided to have surgery instead of chemotherapy so it would not be “hanging over’ his family, he revealed in Me. John said the surgery was a “complete success,” but he suffered a “rare complication.”
After flying back to London, he noticed something was wrong 10 days after the procedure. He spent the next 11 days in a London hospital, “wondering if I was going to die.”
“In the hospital, alone at the dead of night, I’d prayed: please don’t let me die, please let me see my kids again, please give me a little longer,” John wrote, reports The Guardian. “In a strange way, it felt like the time I spent recuperating was the answer to my prayers: if you want more time, you need to learn to live like this, you have to slow down.”
In that moment, John realized he loved being with his family “more than being on the road.”
“Any lingering doubts about retiring from touring just evaporated,” he added.
Elsewhere in the interview with Norton, John explained why he wears a toupee.
“I don’t like being bald. I look like Shreck,” he joked.
John is now in the middle of his epic Farewell Yellow Brick Road world tour, which he says will be his final tour. On Sunday, he performed in Perth, Australia and continues his Australia/New Zealand leg through March 2020. He will be back in North America beginning on March 26 with a rescheduled show in Indianapolis. The show was previously postponed due to an illness.
John has dates scheduled through December 2020, finishing with a three-night stand at London’s O2 Arena.
John and his husband, David Furnish, have two sons, Zachary, 8, and Elijah, 6.
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