Elton John has never been shy about naming the songs that mean the most to him, and back in 1986 he revealed that one of his all‑time favourites wasn’t a chart‑topper or a pop classic, but a 19th‑century hymn that had become deeply personal to him.
The Rocket Man was appearing on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs when he chose the track as part of his eight‑song selection, explaining that it had stayed with him over the years because of its emotional ties to one of the biggest passions in his life: football.
“I always supported Watford Football Club as a child,” Elton said during the interview. And the love for the game would eventually take him far beyond the stands. After his career as one of the biggest pop stars in the world exploded in the 1970s, Elton moved to a large house in Windsor and soon found himself running his favourite football club.
“I was already a director of Watford Football Club,” he explained. “And the late chairman said, ‘Why don’t you become chairman?’ And I thought, my God… I never thought of becoming chairman. But I accepted, and that gave me another thing to do.”
The timing couldn’t have been better. Burnt out from constant touring and recording – “in six years I made, God knows, about 17 albums,” he said – Elton found in Watford a new sense of purpose away from the stage. “If I hadn’t had that, I don’t know what would have happened to me,” he admitted.
What followed was one of the most remarkable periods in the club’s history. “The success of Watford Football Club happened so quick,” Elton recalled. “We got from the Fourth to the First Division and into the cup final in about seven years. The reason we did it is because we worked as a team – Graham Taylor, the manager, the people that worked there, the players. I provided the money and the capital and I think a lot of enthusiasm, but Graham did a hell of a lot of work.”
Elton often said that it wasn’t just the success on the pitch that made the experience so meaningful, but the people behind the scenes who embraced him as one of their own. “They treated me so differently than people in my business,” he said. “They were very, very protective of me, very loving. They’d tell you when you were being a fool – and I needed that.”
It was during this era that the song he chose for Desert Island Discs became more than just a piece of music for him. Traditionally performed before the FA Cup final, ‘Abide With Me’ provided the soundtrack to one of the proudest moments of his life: Watford’s appearance at Wembley in 1984.
The hymn was written by William Henry Monk in 1847 and has been sung before FA Cup finals for nearly a century. The tradition began in 1927 when Cardiff City faced Arsenal in the final at Wembley, with King George V in attendance, and it has been part of the pre‑match ceremony ever since.
“When we got to the cup final, it was the first in a long time that I’d heard it without anybody singing obscenities over it,” he said. “Just to stand there in the Royal Box and see 25,000 of our supporters – it was wonderful. Apart from getting married, that was probably the happiest day of my life”, Elton explained.
Apart from the emotional track, his list of Desert Island Discs selections reflected his wide‑ranging tastes.
Alongside Monk’s solemn hymn, Elton chose Pink Floyd’s epic ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’, Nina Simone’s soulful ‘I Put A Spell On You’, Edward Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’, Chuck Berry’s ‘Let It Rock’, Thelonious Monk’s jazz classic ‘Misterioso’, John Lennon’s version of Stand By Me and Wham!’s ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go‑Go’.