Elton John has always had a keen eye for things that sparkle. The piano pop legend is a sucker for things that go bling, but his latest pieces are not for the faint of heart. In a new documentary short called Elton John — Touched by Gold, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer describes the “timeless” nature of gold, which can be simple, ravishing, decorative, or even overwhelming.
And, if you’re someone whose life is gilded from top-to-bottom, with gold records and countless golden awards, it’s a precious metal that can come to define your life. “It’s been there since the world began and it’s been used in all sorts of ways,” John says in the doc in which he chronicles his history with the precious metal.
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Which is why it should come as no surprise when, halfway through the short film, John reveals that he’s turned one of his most painful moments into gleaming keepsake jewelry.
“When I had my kneecaps removed, the left one first and then the right, I asked my surgeon if I could keep the kneecaps, which he was rather startled about,” John tells London jewelry designer Theo Fennell. “Then I rang you and said, ‘Would you be prepared to, if I gave you the left and the right kneecap to do what you want with them?’”
Fennell totally got the assignment and shows off a piece of jewelry he created with a fragment of the kneecap bone that he turned into a necklace. “We baked them. We had to bake them to dry them out,” says Fennell. “Then they get rather like pumice stone, they’re very porous. So we had to paint them with acetate and then just polish them up.”
Fennell sys he was very happy with the results, holding up the shiny necklace to the camera as John professes to be pleased with the unusually beautiful result. “That is amazing,” he says as Fennell twirls the finished piece. “That one, that’s the right kneecap. That’s my right patella.”
John, 78, says that his surgeon told him that he had “the worst knees he’s ever operated on,” pointing to a large hole in the piece that Fennell used to loop the necklace through. “It looks like an old artifact from Egypt or something,” John says of the necklace Fennell refers to as “talismanic.”
“I love doing things that, in a thousand years, this will be, as it says here, this will be Elton John’s kneecap,” says Fennell. “How many people will believe that? I don’t know.” The necklace chain was crafted out of bones and the back of the charm features a phrase in Latin that reads “I will no longer bow to any man,” which is ironic, Fennell says, because, of course now John can’t bow to anyone with his kneecaps missing.
Fennell turned the smaller left kneecap into a brooch because there was less material to work with. “I honestly think these are timeless pieces that will last for centuries,” John says.
John chronicled his litany of health issues during a chat at the New York Film Festival last year to promote the U.S. premiere of his Elton John: Never Too Late documentary. “To be honest with you, there’s not much of me left,” he said at the time. “I don’t have tonsils, adenoids or an appendix. I don’t have a prostate. I don’t have a right hip or a left knee or a right knee. In fact, the only thing left to me is my left hip. But I’m still here.”
Watch Elton John — Touched By Gold below.
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