Elton John laughed off the issues he had with hair loss in the ‘70s and ’80s, noting that ever since he started wearing a wig, no one seems to bother with it any more.

He went through a series of attempts to save himself from baldness, with results that failed to satisfy but left press photographers “obsessed” with trying to catch him without a hat.

“In the late ‘80s, just before I got sober, I decided I’d had enough and dyed what was left of my hair platinum blond,” John wrote in his new memoir Me (via the Daily Mail). “Then after I got sober, I had a weave done, where they take what’s left of your hair and attach more hair to it. I debuted my new look at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert. A writer noted that I looked like I had a dead squirrel on my head. I was forced to concede he had a point.”

John said eventually he "gave up and got a hairpiece, made by the people who make wigs for Hollywood movies. It’s the strangest thing. For years, people were absolutely obsessed with my hair or lack of it. Then I started wearing a wig and hardly anyone’s mentioned it since.”

However, he noted that living with a wig had its “drawbacks” and cited one example: “A few years back, I was sleeping at my home in Atlanta, when I woke up to the sound of voices. I was convinced we were being burgled. I pulled on my dressing-gown and crept out. Then halfway down the corridor, I realized I didn’t have my hairpiece on. So I rushed back to the bedroom, reasoning that if I was going to be bludgeoned to death by intruders, at least I wouldn’t be bald when it happened.

“Wig on, I went into the kitchen to find two workmen who’d been sent up to fix a leak. They apologized profusely for waking me up. I couldn’t help noticing they were staring at me. Perhaps they were starstruck, I thought, as I headed back to bed. Stopping off in the bathroom, I realized that the workmen weren’t bedazzled by the sight of the legendary Elton John. They were bedazzled by the sight of the legendary Elton John with his wig on back to front.”

 

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