WEBVTT 00:00:01.600 --> 00:00:03.680 August 1976. 00:00:04.080 --> 00:00:08.080 Elton John has just played Madison Square Garden. 00:00:08.400 --> 00:00:13.199 There were costumes, a crowd, a room full of people who knew every word. 00:00:13.679 --> 00:00:18.160 Then he went back to a hotel suite in New York and sat down with a reporter. 00:00:18.559 --> 00:00:20.719 The reporter noticed something strange. 00:00:20.960 --> 00:00:26.800 Elton could hold thousands of people from a stage, but on this sofa, he barely moved. 00:00:27.039 --> 00:00:29.280 He looked away when he spoke. 00:00:29.679 --> 00:00:34.000 Little handmade pictures of him, gifts from fans, sat around the room. 00:00:34.240 --> 00:00:41.520 There were tiny Elton Johns everywhere, and the real one was wondering if anybody actually knew him. 00:00:41.920 --> 00:00:45.520 He told the reporter he wanted someone in his life. 00:00:45.759 --> 00:00:48.159 He said he got depressed easily. 00:00:48.719 --> 00:00:51.359 He wasn't even sure he knew who he was. 00:00:52.079 --> 00:00:55.200 Then the conversation turned to whom he might love. 00:00:55.920 --> 00:01:00.880 The reporter asked him a direct question, and Elton answered it. 00:01:01.359 --> 00:01:06.640 And readers would learn that the man in the feathers and enormous glasses was bisexual. 00:01:07.599 --> 00:01:16.640 I know, in hindsight, we look at a man who could dress like a sequined peacock at a piano and think, was him being bi really breaking news? 00:01:17.120 --> 00:01:20.480 But it was 1976, and it was news. 00:01:20.640 --> 00:01:24.879 And he would spend years finding out what saying it had changed. 00:01:35.280 --> 00:01:39.760 I'm Stan Stadig, and this is The Secret Is Out. 00:01:45.680 --> 00:01:51.920 Fifty years after that interview, Elton John is one of the world's most recognizable gay men. 00:01:52.560 --> 00:01:58.079 But his story did not move in a straight line from a brave disclosure to a happy life. 00:01:58.319 --> 00:02:03.519 He told the truth in public while there were still things he could barely face in private. 00:02:03.920 --> 00:02:07.359 He could fill an arena and go home lonely. 00:02:08.159 --> 00:02:10.560 That's the story I want to tell. 00:02:10.879 --> 00:02:14.879 I came to know Elton's music later than that New York interview. 00:02:15.120 --> 00:02:22.159 The first songs of his that really stopped me were I'm Still Standing and I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues. 00:02:22.560 --> 00:02:26.479 Both came from his 1983 album, Too Low for Zero. 00:02:27.120 --> 00:02:29.599 I remember that voice more than anything. 00:02:29.919 --> 00:02:36.719 Strong, full, like it had no interest in competing for your attention because it had already won. 00:02:37.280 --> 00:02:40.800 I'm Still Standing had a kind of strut to it. 00:02:41.039 --> 00:02:45.840 The other song had ache, and not a small polite ache. 00:02:46.080 --> 00:02:49.439 Elton could make a feeling fill the whole room. 00:02:50.240 --> 00:03:07.599 We didn't have MTV in my house, but I could remember watching a video show on Saturday mornings on our old-fashioned tube TV in the living room and watching him pound away on a giant white grand piano wearing sunglasses and a brimmed hat you might see on a guy in a barbershop quartet. 00:03:07.919 --> 00:03:13.520 At 10 or 11, I thought he was unique and he wrote really catchy songs. 00:03:13.759 --> 00:03:18.960 I wasn't sitting there at 11 years old studying the history of gay men and rock music. 00:03:19.199 --> 00:03:22.240 I was a kid and I liked the voice. 00:03:23.120 --> 00:03:30.479 Oddly, one of my more vivid memories of Elton from that time isn't a performance, it's a jeans commercial. 00:03:30.960 --> 00:03:40.000 Women posing seductively in their tight Sasson jeans, Elton sad songs playing, and then he sings, Sasson says so much. 00:03:40.560 --> 00:03:44.639 That ad seemed to run during every show I watched for quite a while. 00:03:44.960 --> 00:03:51.439 Sasson was desperate for me to put him on as the jingle substituted a rhyme for the real lyrics. 00:03:51.680 --> 00:03:54.639 Forty years later, Elton's still standing. 00:03:54.879 --> 00:03:58.319 Sasson jeans apparently not so much. 00:03:59.360 --> 00:04:02.000 That is one of the odd things about famous people. 00:04:02.240 --> 00:04:06.960 They could be a part of your life long before you know anything about theirs. 00:04:07.439 --> 00:04:20.240 And what I didn't know was that the voice I heard as so commanding belonged to a man who had described himself years earlier as frightened of walking into a room where he didn't know anyone. 00:04:21.040 --> 00:04:25.360 Elton later told David Frost that performing had been easy to love. 00:04:25.920 --> 00:04:29.839 Meeting people face to face was another matter. 00:04:30.480 --> 00:04:35.920 As is often the case, I think, the showman and the scared man were both real. 00:04:37.519 --> 00:04:48.800 He was born Reginald Dwight, a shy boy from Penner outside London, who could sit at a piano and find a melody almost before someone finished handing him the words. 00:04:49.040 --> 00:04:57.680 The stage name Elton John came later, along with the funky glasses, the clothes, and the permission to be bigger than life. 00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:04.480 In 1967, he was paired with Bernie Toppin, a lyricist with a head full of rhymes. 00:05:04.800 --> 00:05:07.920 Bernie wrote the words and Elton put music to them. 00:05:08.319 --> 00:05:15.120 Often they worked separately, which is a fairly astonishing way to build one of the greatest partnerships in pop music. 00:05:15.360 --> 00:05:20.639 I can barely decide what restaurant to eat at with another person standing in the same room. 00:05:21.120 --> 00:05:25.759 They made the now classics Your Song and then Rocket Man. 00:05:26.319 --> 00:05:31.279 And then the hits came faster than a listener could get tired of the ones before. 00:05:31.600 --> 00:05:36.800 Elton's 1970 American debut at the Troupadour in Los Angeles set things moving. 00:05:37.040 --> 00:05:43.759 Within a few years, he was playing enormous rooms, and he had figured out how to look enormous in them. 00:05:44.240 --> 00:05:46.720 The clothes were theatrical. 00:05:46.959 --> 00:05:49.680 The performances could be outrageous. 00:05:57.519 --> 00:06:03.839 Someone could see a man in platform shoes and assume he must be completely at ease with himself. 00:06:04.079 --> 00:06:06.000 We do that all the time. 00:06:06.319 --> 00:06:11.199 We mistake the version a person presents us for who they are at their core. 00:06:11.600 --> 00:06:21.839 I and most people who came out later in life can relate to the experience of feeling like you had to mask who you really are with a bolder, more confident facade. 00:06:22.399 --> 00:06:26.879 By August 1976, Belton was at a turning point. 00:06:27.120 --> 00:06:32.879 He had just finished a major tour and was thinking about stepping away from the road for a while. 00:06:33.120 --> 00:06:36.560 That was when Cliff Jarr of Rolling Stone got the interview. 00:06:36.720 --> 00:06:41.600 It was held at the Sherry Netherland Hotel after the Madison Square Garden show. 00:06:41.920 --> 00:06:45.839 Jarr wrote about the difference between the performer and the man on the sofa. 00:06:46.079 --> 00:06:49.279 The performer had thrown himself across pianos. 00:06:49.759 --> 00:06:52.720 The man in the hotel suite hardly stirred. 00:06:53.040 --> 00:06:57.360 Then Elton talked about the one thing the crowds could not give him. 00:06:57.759 --> 00:06:59.680 He wanted affection. 00:07:00.160 --> 00:07:02.079 He wanted to settle down. 00:07:02.480 --> 00:07:05.120 He was trying to figure out with whom. 00:07:05.439 --> 00:07:12.959 And there, in the middle of an interview about music and exhaustion and love, Jar asked whether he was bisexual. 00:07:13.279 --> 00:07:14.560 Elton said yes. 00:07:14.800 --> 00:07:18.319 He spoke casually about attraction to someone of his own sex. 00:07:18.720 --> 00:07:23.120 He did not issue a solemn statement with the communications team standing behind him. 00:07:23.360 --> 00:07:25.600 He answered the question in front of him. 00:07:25.839 --> 00:07:29.439 The issue came out on October 7th, 1976. 00:07:29.759 --> 00:07:41.600 So, with this episode being released on October 6th, 2026, tomorrow, October 7th, will be exactly 50 years since Elton shared his truth. 00:07:42.000 --> 00:07:48.480 I'm sure if he were sitting here with us now, he'd be nostalgically lamenting how time flies. 00:07:49.199 --> 00:07:55.519 At the time, Elton called himself bisexual, and then years later, he publicly called himself gay. 00:07:56.399 --> 00:08:05.920 Even though he described himself one way and then the other later, it is not a claim that bisexuality is a temporary stop on the way to being gay. 00:08:06.160 --> 00:08:06.959 It isn't. 00:08:07.199 --> 00:08:16.240 However, I had the same progression as Elton, first telling my wife I was bisexual, which took all the bravery I could muster. 00:08:16.639 --> 00:08:20.000 It wasn't a lie, at least not intentionally. 00:08:20.399 --> 00:08:25.920 Being raised how I was, I think it was truly all my brain could handle at the time. 00:08:26.240 --> 00:08:31.600 It took much longer to process and actually accept that I was only attracted to men. 00:08:31.920 --> 00:08:36.799 There is something else in that interview that I want to point out besides the answer to the question about sex. 00:08:37.440 --> 00:08:40.080 It was the loneliness before it. 00:08:40.720 --> 00:08:54.799 He had the elaborate costumes, he had the songs, he had an audience large enough to fill arenas, but he was asking whether someone might come home with him and know the person who lived there when the glasses came off. 00:08:55.120 --> 00:09:04.159 Elton later said he didn't regret speaking to Rolling Stone, but he also thought it had a chilling effect on his career in America. 00:09:04.559 --> 00:09:11.440 In his memory, people may have suspected his sexuality, but many of them did not want him to say it out loud. 00:09:11.759 --> 00:09:13.919 Looking at the history, I can see it. 00:09:14.159 --> 00:09:25.600 He had been everywhere in the early 70s and then somewhat faded into the background for about seven years before that legendary 1983 album when I became aware of him. 00:09:25.919 --> 00:09:29.519 That distinction will sound familiar to plenty of gay people. 00:09:29.840 --> 00:09:35.360 Someone may be perfectly content to just think they know and leaving it as a whispered rumor. 00:09:35.519 --> 00:09:37.039 That's all well and good. 00:09:37.360 --> 00:09:41.039 Then you tell them, and suddenly they need a minute. 00:09:41.279 --> 00:09:42.240 How many minutes? 00:09:42.399 --> 00:09:43.919 It depends on the person. 00:09:44.480 --> 00:09:46.480 Some are still taking one. 00:09:47.039 --> 00:09:51.360 It is difficult to measure exactly what that interview did to record sales. 00:09:51.600 --> 00:09:58.240 Elton was already exhausted, and a career that had risen at almost impossible speed was changing. 00:09:58.559 --> 00:09:59.840 He did not disappear. 00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:04.320 The records kept coming, but he understood the public response as a cost. 00:10:04.720 --> 00:10:10.240 And I think his account deserves to be heard without turning it into a neat chart statistic. 00:10:11.120 --> 00:10:16.559 The years afterward were neither a victory lap nor a simple retreat into the closet. 00:10:16.799 --> 00:10:25.120 There were more records, more performances, drinking and drugs, anger, relationships, and long periods of unhappiness. 00:10:25.679 --> 00:10:31.759 In 1984, he married, and forgive me, I am going to butcher this pronunciation. 00:10:32.159 --> 00:10:35.360 Renat Blauell, a sound engineer. 00:10:35.600 --> 00:10:37.519 They divorced in 1988. 00:10:37.679 --> 00:10:44.480 That marriage involved another human being whose private experience does not belong to an easy explanation for me. 00:10:44.799 --> 00:10:49.120 Elton and Renat later agreed publicly to respect her privacy. 00:10:49.360 --> 00:10:58.639 So I won't turn their four years into a tidy metaphor, but what I can say is that a disclosure in a magazine did not settle his life for him. 00:10:59.120 --> 00:11:03.600 I understand that more now than I would have when I first heard those songs. 00:11:03.840 --> 00:11:09.679 I came out late in life after spending decades building a life that looked different from the one I live today. 00:11:10.000 --> 00:11:12.399 Saying the words was enormous. 00:11:12.639 --> 00:11:19.600 It also did not hand me a map for every conversation, every relationship, or every morning afterward. 00:11:19.919 --> 00:11:25.679 For me, it took a long time to really even talk about things through my separation and divorce. 00:11:25.919 --> 00:11:30.559 I had to almost shut down the conversation because I couldn't take one more. 00:11:30.879 --> 00:11:32.559 You're making a big mistake. 00:11:32.799 --> 00:11:35.679 Or are you sure this is the right thing to do? 00:11:35.840 --> 00:11:38.960 Or you're turning from God's way and choosing man. 00:11:39.919 --> 00:11:47.919 After living in anguish for decades, amassed in secret, the truth was free, but it came at a very heavy cost. 00:11:48.799 --> 00:11:56.559 For Elton, the answer was not hiding somewhere at the bottom of a champagne glass or in the next shopping bag, or the next performance. 00:11:57.440 --> 00:12:05.200 He later described drugs and alcohol as things that first seemed to help him connect and finally made him more isolated. 00:12:06.159 --> 00:12:11.039 There is a point in a story like this where a writer can make recovery sound inevitable. 00:12:11.360 --> 00:12:12.320 It wasn't. 00:12:12.559 --> 00:12:15.360 Not for him and not for the people who loved him. 00:12:15.600 --> 00:12:24.000 During the AIDS crisis, Elton became close to Ryan White, a teenager from Indiana who had contracted HIV through contaminated blood. 00:12:24.639 --> 00:12:31.120 Ryan and his family faced extraordinary cruelty from people frightened of a virus they did not understand. 00:12:32.080 --> 00:12:35.440 Elton first heard about Ryan through a television interview. 00:12:35.679 --> 00:12:40.240 Ryan had been asked whom he was looking forward to meeting at an AIDS event. 00:12:40.480 --> 00:12:42.080 He said Elton John. 00:12:42.879 --> 00:12:45.200 Elton saw it and called the family. 00:12:45.600 --> 00:12:49.679 Imagine that call arriving in the middle of everything they were facing. 00:12:50.240 --> 00:12:52.240 I was a kid during those years. 00:12:52.480 --> 00:12:55.600 AIDS wasn't an abstract headline in my world. 00:12:55.759 --> 00:13:04.159 It came wrapped in fear, judgment, and the awful sense that some people believed a diagnosis said something about what a life was worth. 00:13:04.559 --> 00:13:09.919 My own parents talked about how it was God's judgment on a sinful lifestyle. 00:13:10.639 --> 00:13:15.679 Ryan had done nothing to earn the disease or the treatment he received from his neighbors. 00:13:16.320 --> 00:13:18.639 Neither had the gay men who were dying. 00:13:18.879 --> 00:13:20.559 I want to say that plainly. 00:13:37.360 --> 00:13:41.120 Ryan's reason for wanting to meet him stays with me. 00:13:41.360 --> 00:13:46.240 His mother said, Ryan admired though Elton was willing to be different. 00:13:46.639 --> 00:13:48.720 Think about the exchange in that. 00:13:48.960 --> 00:13:56.320 A boy the world was treating as untouchable looked up to a man who had once taken a risk by speaking about whom he might love. 00:13:56.720 --> 00:14:03.360 And that man saw the courage of a boy who kept showing up and telling people the truth about his illness. 00:14:05.039 --> 00:14:09.440 Sadly, Ryan died in 1990 at only 18. 00:14:10.240 --> 00:14:12.240 Elton was at the hospital. 00:14:12.799 --> 00:14:19.200 The Elton John AIDS traces its beginnings in part to that friendship and to his death. 00:14:20.000 --> 00:14:25.120 Ryan mattered so much to Elton that he helped him examine himself closer. 00:14:25.919 --> 00:14:30.799 He is said that after Ryan's funeral, he saw how far his own life had slipped. 00:14:31.039 --> 00:14:33.519 In 1990, Elton got sober. 00:14:33.759 --> 00:14:37.440 Two years later, he founded the Elton John AIDS Foundation. 00:14:38.639 --> 00:14:44.159 He began directing money and attention toward people whom much of the world would rather not look at. 00:14:44.639 --> 00:14:48.240 And this is where the story reaches a place near my own home. 00:14:48.559 --> 00:14:53.840 The foundation says it began around Elton's kitchen table in Atlanta in 1992. 00:14:54.399 --> 00:14:59.360 Till I began researching for this episode, I had no idea Elton even had a home here. 00:14:59.600 --> 00:15:04.000 In fact, he lived just around the corner from my old church in Buckhead. 00:15:04.879 --> 00:15:08.960 It's cool to think about how ideas can have such humble beginnings. 00:15:09.279 --> 00:15:20.320 An idea discussed around a modest kitchen table became an organization that helped throngs of strangers survive long enough to be known by the next generation of people who would love them. 00:15:21.360 --> 00:15:27.919 No amount of work for others erases what he went through or excuses anything he did while he was hurting. 00:15:28.159 --> 00:15:30.960 But it changed where his energy went. 00:15:32.240 --> 00:15:38.559 That same year, in another Rolling Stone interview, Elton described himself as comfortable being gay. 00:15:38.799 --> 00:15:42.559 It was a different answer from the one he'd given in 1976. 00:15:42.960 --> 00:15:45.919 It belonged to a different point in his life. 00:15:46.799 --> 00:15:53.039 People sometimes want one coming out date, as if the rest of a person's life should fit after a colon. 00:15:53.840 --> 00:16:03.360 For Elton, there was the first disclosure, the private work that followed, the words he chose later, and then the ordinary daily act of living as himself. 00:16:05.120 --> 00:16:08.320 In the early 1990s, Elton met David Furnish. 00:16:08.720 --> 00:16:14.080 Years later, a New Yorker profile showed a quieter sort of partnership beneath the celebrity. 00:16:14.320 --> 00:16:18.559 David could see Elton's moods, challenge him, and laugh with him. 00:16:18.879 --> 00:16:21.120 Elton could still be difficult. 00:16:21.360 --> 00:16:25.840 He could also come home to somebody who knew that and stayed in the conversation. 00:16:26.399 --> 00:16:32.000 They entered a civil partnership in 2005 and then married in 2014. 00:16:32.639 --> 00:16:36.159 They have two sons, Zachary and Elijah. 00:16:36.799 --> 00:16:42.399 Finally, the man in the hotel suite in 1976 found what he was looking for. 00:16:42.960 --> 00:16:45.759 He said he wanted someone in his life. 00:16:46.000 --> 00:16:48.399 He wondered if he might have children. 00:16:49.039 --> 00:16:51.919 He couldn't see the shape of that future then. 00:16:52.960 --> 00:16:59.519 To be clear, David and the boys aren't the only option for a happy ending at the end of a suffering story. 00:17:00.399 --> 00:17:05.039 People do not have to marry or become parents to come out and live a fulfilling life. 00:17:05.359 --> 00:17:08.880 But this was a future Elton himself had wanted. 00:17:09.200 --> 00:17:13.599 It took time to find it, and it is lovely that he did. 00:17:15.119 --> 00:17:20.240 There is one more Elton moment I have carried with me for almost 30 years. 00:17:20.880 --> 00:17:24.720 In 1997, Princess Diana died in Paris. 00:17:25.279 --> 00:17:27.839 I remember the shock of it. 00:17:28.079 --> 00:17:33.359 The whole world seemed sucker punched and felt like we lost our breath. 00:17:34.079 --> 00:17:37.920 I remember I was working as a worship leader for an evangelist at the time. 00:17:38.079 --> 00:17:43.759 We were on a nationwide church tour, but had parked our RV at a campground for a few days of R. 00:17:45.200 --> 00:17:52.960 When the news came on the TV and I saw the images of the horrific vehicle wreckage, it left me speechless. 00:17:53.839 --> 00:18:01.440 Why did this have to happen to such a wonderful young woman who dedicated her life to doing so much good in the world? 00:18:01.759 --> 00:18:03.759 It made me so, so sad. 00:18:05.039 --> 00:18:07.920 Elton and Diana had been good friends. 00:18:08.240 --> 00:18:13.119 Only weeks before, she had comforted him at the funeral of another friend, Gianni Versace. 00:18:14.079 --> 00:18:17.119 Then suddenly she was gone too. 00:18:17.839 --> 00:18:20.880 Elton was asked to sing at her funeral. 00:18:21.359 --> 00:18:27.680 Bernie Toppin rewrote their song Candle in the Wind, which was originally written about Marilyn Monroe. 00:18:28.480 --> 00:18:31.440 I heard the new version and it touched me. 00:18:31.920 --> 00:18:36.079 There was something about his voice that let the grief into the room. 00:18:36.720 --> 00:18:42.880 We were all looking at the same terrible loss, and for a few minutes somebody gave us a way to sit with it. 00:18:43.759 --> 00:18:46.799 He played at the funeral in Westminster Abbey. 00:18:47.119 --> 00:18:54.640 Elton and Bernie's version went on to be a single and was heard around the world with proceeds going to raise money for Diana's memorial fund. 00:18:55.759 --> 00:18:58.799 Truly, the song helped us grieve. 00:19:00.079 --> 00:19:07.039 I have only vague memories of watching the funeral and mourning along with the rest of the world while I watched from that little RV. 00:19:07.680 --> 00:19:11.039 Elton sharing his song is really the strongest image. 00:19:11.279 --> 00:19:14.880 I suppose that is the power of music and shared loss. 00:19:15.839 --> 00:19:23.039 And now, as I reflect on Elton, it goes much deeper than the 11-year-old who heard and danced to I'm Still Standing. 00:19:23.279 --> 00:19:26.400 I hear something else in that captivating voice. 00:19:27.359 --> 00:19:38.640 Here is a man of enormous talent, but wholly human, who made mistakes and experienced damage, recovery, love, grief, and is still standing. 00:19:39.680 --> 00:19:43.200 That song was released years before he got sober. 00:19:43.759 --> 00:19:46.720 It wasn't written as a report from the end of his journey. 00:19:47.039 --> 00:19:48.960 I think that makes it more interesting. 00:19:49.200 --> 00:19:54.480 He sang about standing while he still had plenty of falling and getting up ahead of him. 00:19:55.519 --> 00:19:57.759 Happily, Elton is still with us. 00:19:58.000 --> 00:20:01.759 He is still making music and speaking about the people who need care. 00:20:02.319 --> 00:20:07.279 His foundation continues its work against HIV and the stigma around it. 00:20:07.920 --> 00:20:12.400 I wonder what that young man and that hotel would make of the life ahead of him. 00:20:12.799 --> 00:20:15.200 I suspect he'd have questions. 00:20:15.839 --> 00:20:22.480 He might be relieved to hear about David and the boys, but he also might dread how much getting there would hurt. 00:20:23.279 --> 00:20:26.240 Nobody gets an answer to that in advance. 00:20:26.640 --> 00:20:32.640 I didn't get one when I first decided to come out trying to picture what the truth would do to my life. 00:20:32.880 --> 00:20:40.400 And I certainly didn't as a boy listening to a voice on the radio that proclaimed how he could stand through almost anything. 00:20:40.799 --> 00:20:46.480 When Elton spoke to Rolling Stone, he wasn't handing the world a finished version of himself. 00:20:46.720 --> 00:20:49.839 He was a lonely man, answering a question. 00:20:50.079 --> 00:20:55.279 It was a beginning with more uncertainty than a headline in a magazine can hold. 00:20:55.759 --> 00:20:58.960 That feels closer to how it happens for many of us. 00:20:59.359 --> 00:21:03.119 You tell someone what you know today and you keep living. 00:21:03.359 --> 00:21:10.319 Sometimes you learn how to say it more clearly, and sometimes you finally let another person see you after the room empties. 00:21:11.359 --> 00:21:15.920 And 50 years later, I can still hear that powerful voice. 00:21:16.400 --> 00:21:18.960 I'm so grateful for the songs. 00:21:19.200 --> 00:21:25.039 I'm especially grateful for the progress his story, his music, and his work has helped to make possible. 00:21:26.079 --> 00:21:33.680 I'm also moved that the man who once wondered whether anyone knew the real him kept trying to make a life where someone could. 00:21:38.000 --> 00:21:40.640 And now, The Secret Is Out. 00:21:41.599 --> 00:21:48.720 If you enjoyed this story, please follow The Secret Is Out and share it with someone who might know Elton's songs better than his story. 00:21:49.039 --> 00:21:58.160 Perhaps if this little podcast grows, the stories might find someone for whom it makes a real difference and help them keep standing in authenticity and truth. 00:21:59.200 --> 00:22:07.279 And as the outro music, as I have in a previous episode, I included a link in the show notes to one of Elton's signature songs. 00:22:07.519 --> 00:22:10.799 Please go and click the Spotify link and listen. 00:22:11.200 --> 00:22:18.319 I chose the song Your Song, mainly because of one line that I would like to reflect back to Elton. 00:22:19.599 --> 00:22:23.359 How wonderful life is while you're in the world. 00:22:30.240 --> 00:22:33.279 And we certainly have had a better world with him being in it. 00:22:34.000 --> 00:22:35.200 Thank you, Elton. 00:22:36.400 --> 00:22:38.480 And listeners, thank you. 00:22:39.519 --> 00:22:40.960 And I'll see you next week.