ISSUE DATE: July 7, 1975
THE BUZZ:
For him, the end of the world was a middle-class Middlesex town called Pinner, where he was born Reginald Kenneth Dwight. The lonely, lumpy, myopic only child of an R.A.F. squadron leader, he was too shy “to say boo to a goose.” He was so out of favor with his straight-backed dad that he was forbidden to kick a soccer ball in the garden lest he wreck the rose bushes. He was refused permission to purchase mohair sweaters and Hush Puppies shoes, status gear he devoutly hoped would help him gain acceptance in the local smart set in the late ’50s and early ’60s.
Now, in every home town that seems like the end of the world to its moping teen-age inhabitants, Reg Dwight, 28, and ever so much better known as Elton John, has become the repository of a million escapist dreams. He is the symbol of the often battered, never completely shattered juvenile faith that no one is too short, too fat, too awkward or parentally despised to be transformed into someone who is not only famous and rich, but—infinitely more important—loved by the multitudes.
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