Elton John has revealed his reasons for changing his mind about writing a memoir. In a booklet packaged in his recently released Rocketman DVD, the rock icon explained that he had never been interested in looking back at the past for fear of "convincing yourself that everything was better in the past than it is now. If you start thinking that as an artist, you might as well give up writing music for a living and retire."
John revealed that he started changing his mind back in 2010 around the time his son was Zachary was born and John felt like he may want his children to know what he was really like.
He said,"But most of all, I found it was funny. Looking back at my career made me realize how ridiculous it was."
While doing research for the book, John found diaries that he kept in his earlier days of stardom, which he describes as "inadvertently hilarious." In one entry, he wrote, "Woke up, watched Grandstand. Wrote 'Candle in the Wind.' Went to London, bought Rolls-Royce. Ringo Starr came for dinner."
There are also moments that he is not too happy about in the book. He explained, . "There are moments in the book that I don't come out of very well, where I seem completely disgusting and awful, because I was completely disgusting and awful, and there's no reason to pretend otherwise."
He continued, "I can't stand books or movies about rock stars that give you some whitewashed version of reality, that are intent on telling you what a wonderful, perfect person they are. It's boring, because it's a lie: No one is perfect, and certainly no rock star is perfect."
Meis due out on October 15th.