Forget “Rocket Man.” Elton John is turning into the bionic man.
The 77-year-old Grammy winner always grabs attention with his daring and bold get-ups, but his latest accessory was one for the books.
John turned heads when he showed up to the UK premiere of a new documentary about himself, Never Too Late, on Thursday, October 10, allegedly wearing his old kneecap around his neck.
The “Crocodile Rock” singer looked sharp in a tailored brown suit and striped button-up. However, his necklace, which featured part of one of his knees — both of which he’s had replaced — had everyone at the BFI London Film Festival in a daze, according to Us Weekly.
John’s choicest accessory wasn’t the kneecap necklace, though. It was his husband, David Furnish, 61, who accompanied him to the event.
Furnish directed the film about the “Tiny Dancer” musician, with whom he shares two children: sons Zachary, 13, and Elijah, 11.
“There are moments making the film where it started to get too much for me. I started to be carrying a lot of anxiety and a lot of emotion,” Furnish told Hello! at the premiere. “It’s a responsibility — but for me — it’s also a joy because I know a side of Elton that the rest of the world doesn’t know. And it was really important to us that we captured his authentic voice and his heart really, really, honestly, and I feel we’ve done that.”
He also addressed John’s health woes, saying his husband “talks quite openly about his mortality. That’s not an easy thing to hear. And you’re really taking his vulnerability and you’re putting it up on the screen for people to see.”
The iconic music man spoke candidly about his health scares during the film’s showing at the New York Film Festival earlier this month.
“To be honest with you, there’s not much of me left,” John shared. “I don’t have tonsils, adenoids or an appendix. I don’t have a prostate. I don’t have a right hip or a left knee or a right knee. In fact, the only thing left to me is my left hip.”
He added that he’s “still here,” saying that, “And I can’t thank you [enough], you’re the people that made me.”
Due to having recently undergone surgery, John missed the 2024 Emmy Awards in January, where he earned EGOT status — Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony.
Just last month, the “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” singer revealed he was recovering from a “severe eye infection” that affected his vision.
“Over the summer, I’ve been dealing with a severe eye infection that has unfortunately left me with only limited vision in one eye,” he wrote in a post on Instagram. “I am healing, but it’s an extremely slow process and it will take some time before sight returns to the impacted eye.”
John has suffered health issues in the past.
The “Tiny Dancer” singer received a pacemaker in the 1990s after discovering he had an irregular heartbeat when he almost fainted during a game of tennis.
“Thank God for the British medical system, because I went through every test known to man to find out exactly what was wrong,” he later told Rolling Stone of the ordeal.
In 2009, John was hospitalized for influenza and a bacterial infection. In 2013, doctors found an abscess on his appendix, and he suffered “gastric flu” in 2016.
John has also suffered hearing loss caused by decades of touring.
In September 2021, the singer revealed, he fell and injured himself, resulting in him postponing several UK tour dates.
Earlier this year, John announced he was retiring from touring to focus on his family.
“We’ve got our sons, you know, they’re getting into their teenage years now,” Furnish told Entertainment Tonight of his husband’s decision. “We don’t want to miss anything. We want to be present for that. It’s sort of a key decade, I think, in a child’s life. He’s been doing it for 60 years, so it’s nice to have that time to spend at home with family.”
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