George Harrison’s Role in Helping Elton John Overcome Addiction

Elton John has never been shy about his struggles with addiction. Now that the rock icon has been clean since the early ’90s, he has been more than up for talking about his experiences. One tidbit he has shared involves George Harrison. Reportedly, the Beatle helped John curb his drug addiction.

The Beatles weren’t strangers to drugs. They had their fair share of bouts with weed and other substances. Nevertheless, Harrison took it upon himself to help out his fellow musician when he noticed he was struggling. John has opened up about how bad his drug addiction got in his heyday.

“I thought, ‘This is the drug that has opened me up,” John once said. “I can converse, I can be verbose. I would have an epileptic seizure and turn blue, and people would find me on the floor and put me to bed. Then 40 minutes later, I’d be snorting another line.”

“I’m not being flippant when I say that when I look back, I shudder at the behavior and what I was doing to myself,” he added.

It was caustic enough to prompt John to do a 180 and attempt to get sober. Part of that journey involved Harrison’s keen advice. The Beatle came to him one day to try and give the singer a wake-up call.

“It’s very hard to put into words,” he once said. “He was very forthright, and he actually administered quite a few tellings-off to me about my drug problem.”

“There was this one night in Los Angeles when he said, ‘Listen, for God’s sake, go easy on the marching powder, because it’s not going to do you any good.’ That was the evening I tried to change Bob Dylan’s wardrobe.”

Though there were many contributing factors to John’s sobriety, it seems Harrison played an important role in pointing him in the right direction.

Another game changer for John was the death of an AIDS patient, Ryan White. It wasn’t long after he passed that John decided to get sober and start the AIDS foundation. John felt he was the “luckiest man in the world” to walk away from his drug addiction AIDS-free.

“I wanted to help [Ryan’s family], but they ended up helping me much more,” John once said. “Ryan was the spark that helped me to recover from my addictions and start the AIDS foundation. Within six months [of White’s death] I became sober, and clean, and have been for 27 years.”

(Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images for The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame)

Source: American Songwriter, Particle News