Sir Elton John once told Tina Turner to stick her song "up her a**e", days after he claims she told him wearing too much Versace made him "look fat".
The 72-year-old star claims the 79-year-old performer wouldn’t address the singers in his band by name during rehearsals for their joint tour in 1997, and that she began accusing each member of the group of "messing up" their joint version of her tune ‘Proud Mary’ until things reached breaking point when she told Elton he was not playing the song correctly.
He said: "The subsequent debate about whether I knew how to play ‘Proud Mary’ became quite heated, before I brought it to a conclusion by telling Tina Turner to stick her f***ing song up her a**e and stormed off.
"I’ve thrown plenty of tantrums in my time, but there are limits: there’s an unspoken rule that musicians don’t treat their fellow musicians like s**t."
Shortly before the pair began rehearsals, they spoke about the tour in a phone call, during which Elton claims Tina had the "express intention of telling me how awful I was".
In an extract from his new autobiography ‘Me: Elton John’ published in the Daily Mail newspaper, he added: "She didn’t like my hair, she didn’t like the colour of my piano, and she didn’t like my clothes.
"’You wear too much Versace, and it makes you look fat – you have to wear Armani,’ she announced.
"I could hear poor old Gianni turning in his grave at the very idea: the houses of Versace and Armani cordially hated each other. Armani said Versace made really vulgar clothes, and Gianni thought Armani was unbelievably beige and boring.
"I got off the phone and burst into tears: ‘She sounded like my f***ing mother,’ I wailed at David."
Following their ‘Proud Mary’ bust-up, Elton apologised to Tina and she told him he had been "improvising too much".
While he admits their disagreements made it quite clear the tour "wasn’t going to work", the pair have since made up.
Elton John recalls Tina Turner bust-up
