Elton John reveals he asked Tina Turner to ‘shove her song up her f***ing arse’ during furious row in 1997 that started after she called him 'fat'
Elton John has recounted the troubles that plagued his 1997 tour with Tina Turner, revealing that he she called him "fat" and he told her to stick one of her songs "up her a***."
The two legends had planned on touring together but they kept clashing during rehearsals. As reported by DailyMail, excerpts from John's autobiography 'Me: Elton John' reveal that Turner was often mean to the 'Rocketman' hitmaker and the musicians around him and how he would retort in the same vein.
The pair's relationship did not improve during the rehearsals and the point of no return arrived when they argued about how to play a song.
"The subsequent debate about whether I knew how to play Proud Mary became quite heated before I brought it to a conclusion by telling Tina Turner to stick her f*****g song up her a**e and stormed off," John revealed.
He added that the diva was rude to the band members. He also went on to say that he had thrown many tantrums over his career but there were limits and an unspoken rule that musicians should be respectful of one another. "Maybe it was insecurity on her part. She'd been treated appallingly earlier in her career, suffered years and years of being ripped off, beaten up and pushed around," he continued.
The father of two shared that Turner had an issue with his appearance and she would frequently pick on him for it.
"She didn't like my hair, she didn't like the color of my piano and she didn't like my clothes. 'You wear too much Versace, and it makes you look fat — you have to wear Armani,'" he recalled.
Post the heated exchange, John shared that he burst into tears and called up his now-husband David Furnish to tell him how Turner had "sounded like his mother". The tour was eventually canceled and the two later made up over dinner at John's home.