Elton John got sober following confrontation with Graham Taylor

Music legend Elton John has credited late former England manager Graham Taylor for having saved his lifeThe 76yearold singer admitted a foulmouthed confrontation from the thenWatford boss in which he warned the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road hitmaker his drinking and drug taking was letting down himself and the club shocked him into receiving help for his issues reports Female First UKAn extract from new book Watford Forever How Graham Taylor and Elton John Saved a Football Club a Town and Each Other published by The Sunday Times newspaper revealed Elton said ldquoIrsquove no doubt that Graham saved my life Without him I would have been lostAs per Female First UK on December 26 1981 Elton who owned the club immediately poured himself a whisky when he and Graham arrived at the Vicarage Road stadium and the next day the manager arrived early for a board meeting in order to privately confront his bossAccording to the book Elton sat down and Graham who died of a heart attack in 2017 grabbed a bottle of brandy and slammed it on the table in front of him as he said ldquoThatrsquos what you have for breakfast isnrsquot itrdquoldquoWhat the f do you think yoursquore doing Yoursquore letting yourself down and yoursquore letting the club down If you ever turn up looking like this again thatrsquos f it as far as Irsquom concernedrdquo he addedThe Candle in the Wind singer was stunned and mortified by Grahams remarks but knew he had to listenElton told the books author John Preston ldquoIt shook me to the core It was one of those moments when all the delusions that Irsquod surrounded myself with all the lies Irsquod told myself fell away I was just left there stunned and mortified I certainly wouldnrsquot have taken it from anyone else I would just have told them to f off But because Graham came from outside my world somehow that meant I couldnrsquot ignore itrdquoHe further mentioned ldquoI may have been the king of my castle but that was completely unimportant to him Graham just cared about me as a person About the fact that if I carried on the way I was going then I was going to kill myself That was what really shone through behind his anger I could see that he really loved merdquoElton who took control of Watford in 1976 before selling it on in 1987 credits the intervention for kickstarting his recoveryldquoSomething took root inside me that day which had quietly been growing all this time It launched me on the road to recovery Although there were plenty of false dawns along the way lots of setbacks and broken promises it gave me the kickstart I needed In effect Graham saved my life Irsquove never had the slightest doubt about thatrdquo he saidThe Philadelphia Freedom singer was determined to show he was worthy of Grahams respect He said ldquoI would have done anything for that literally anythingrdquoThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever