Elton John is a man unafraid to voice his opinion of a wide variety of subjects. Usually that opinion tends to be along the lines of "urrgh, I don't effing well like it – let's shoot it with a gun," but it's his opinion and Elton John will voice it if he wants to.
The latest thing that's narked Elton John off beyond belief is organised religion. In an interview with The Observer, Elton John chose to rail against organised religion for its stance against homosexuals and the way it turns people into lemmings. Now, there's a strong possibility that what Elton John has done here is confuse organised religion with the 1991 computer game Lemmings. It wouldn't be the first time that this sort of thing has happened, either – in 1994 Elton John threw a tantrum at the British government for injecting tiny laser-firing spaceships into people's bloodstreams after he played Microcosm on the Amiga CD32 for too long once.
If there's one thing that Elton John hates it's his own record label. No, we mean it's all photographers! No, we mean Madonna! No, the way young bands dress nowadays! People who call him rude! Margaret Thatcher! Sven Goran Abba-Dabba! Oh, let's face it – Elton John hates everything. Unless it's an Elton John-branded smelly candle or a life-size chocolate statue of Elton John, Elton John isn't having any of it and he doesn't care who he offends to deliver his message of everlasting hatred for everything and the occasional nifty tune about a happy-go-lucky cartoon warthog. This week: Elton John hates organised religion.
In an interview with Jake Shears from The Scissors Sisters that was published yesterday in The Observer, Elton John said:
"I would ban religion completely, even though there are some wonderful things about it. Religion has always tried to turn hatred towards gay people. It turns people into hateful lemmings and it is not really compassionate… The reality is that organised religion doesn't seem to work."
Now, many years ago when John Lennon did something similar it ended up with swarms of rednecks burning Beatles records in public, but Elton John probably doesn't need to worry about this too much. For a start, it's hardly a cutting-edge argument; slagging off religion helped The Da Vinci Code sell enough copies to get turned into a really awful movie, and ever since Jesus gave his blessing to Madonna for dressing up like him and singing some dated techno, anyone's been allowed to say whatever they like about organised religion without fear of reprisal. Also, nobody really buys Elton John records any more – so his outburst is only going to inspire one or two weeny fires at best – plus all Christians have been trained by the Bible to instantly forgive anything bad that anyone ever says about them, so Elton John wins.
So, with Elton John preparing to somehow ban organised religion – perhaps via the medium of an under-performing Broadway musical – what should we replace it with? There's an answer, of course, and we'll unveil it just as soon as Chris De Burgh has faxed us back confirming that he's happy to be installed as our magic-fingered new Messiah.
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