Despite being able to say no to drugs and alcohol for over 30 years, Elton John still can't rid himself of his explosive temper.
He tells The Guardian, "It’s still in me, to explode at any moment. I’ve been trying to work on that for a long time and I’ve got a wonderful husband who knows how to get me out of that stuff. I think it’s an artistic thing – artists can be so self-destructive sometimes, for no reason. I can have a day when everything in my whole life is going so well, and I get up and I feel like the world is against me. Why, I do not know...
“The self-loathing, not having any self-esteem, that all comes from when I was a kid...
“All my life, until I became sober, I was afraid of talking to anybody. They asked me when I went to treatment how I felt and I said: ‘I don’t know, I don’t feel anything.’ I came to defrost, as it were, and discovered I did have feelings, and they went back a long time. And I think it stays with you for the whole of your life… I just have terrible feelings about myself; I feel bad about myself sometimes.”
But Elton does know how to control his temper when it comes to his children -- 10-year-old Zachary and eight-year-old Elijah. “We never hit them or lose our temper with them. When they’re bad, they lose their pocket money, or their electronic stuff for a week – but they don’t get punished physically or mentally. We talk it through with them. And they’re very happy children.
"I was always afraid of my parents, and I didn’t want my children to ever be afraid of me. They’re going to feel embraced and loved every second of the day; they’re not going to be beaten and have those scars for the rest of their lives. I thought I was too late to have children but actually they came at the right time in my life, and it’s taught me so much. God, I love my children so much. I have a purpose in life.”
Elton has had many public meltdowns, many of them on stage. And in 1997, his then boyfriend and now husband and manager David Furnish captured some of them in the documentary Tantrums & Tiaras.