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Elton John · S1 E3
Stanley & Sheila
His parents' volatile marriage, the arguments, the rules (no rock and roll), and the divorce that actually brought relief
In 1962, Stanley and Sheila Dwight finally divorce. For fifteen-year-old Reg, the silence that follows feels less like grief and more like relief.
I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues, released in 1983. The ache in this song captures the emotional distance Reg felt growing up, the sense of waiting for something better on the other side.
A New Man in the House
Sheila remarries quickly. Her new husband, Fred Farebrother, is everything Stanley was not: warm, supportive, and completely unbothered by noise. Reg gives him a nickname on the spot, "Derf," which is Fred spelled backwards. The name sticks for life.
TAP TO REVEAL: What did stepfather Derf do that Stanley never would?
“My stepfather was the most supportive man. He just let me be who I was.”
— Elton John
What nickname did Reg give his stepfather Fred Farebrother?
Come Down in Time
From Tumbleweed Connection (1970). A delicate, almost whispered ballad that floats between longing and acceptance. The gentleness here feels like the calm that settled over the house once Stanley was gone and Derf moved in.
Two years before the divorce, an eleven-year-old Reg walks into the Royal Academy of Music on a Saturday morning. He has just won a scholarship that most adult pianists never get.
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