Sir Elton John is celebrating 300 episodes and six years of Elton John’s Rocket Hour with a candid in-depth interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music.
Speaking about his foray into the podcasting world, Elton reminisced about some of his favourite moments over the years he’s been making Rocket Hour.
“What it’s brought me is it’s brought me into contact with so many great new artists who’ve become friends. It’s kept me so up to date with what’s going on,” Elton began.
“In fact, I think I look better now than I did six years ago when I started it. So it’s like, good music makes you look younger. I don’t know. But it’s just, I’ve had such a great time and I’m indebted to you and to Apple for asking me to do this because it’s a dream.
“And every week we find something new and something great to talk about. I’m 74 now. And I just think I’m just as excited now as I was when I was a kid buying records with my record tokens.”
The ‘Candle In the Wind’ hitmaker also explained that having fresh young artists on the show has given him a new appreciation for young talent.
“And I love old music and it just, it’s fantastic,” Elton said.
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“But when you hear someone young and someone who’s doing something for the first time, like when I played Lorde on the show for the first time when she was 16 or something, whatever. Or I played Billie Eilish or Channel Tres, or Rina Sawayama, or Dua Lipa.
“It’s wonderful because you think, ‘God they’re 16 or 17… 15 years of age. How do they do that?’ And so it’s just it keeps me animated and it keeps me so happy.
“Music makes you happy. And in the last few years, it’s not been a particularly wonderful political climate to go through. Then we’ve had a pandemic, and we’ve had a lot of violence and racial problems.”
As part of the Rocket Hour celebrations, Apple Music 1 will host Rocket Day and will encore several of Elton’s favourite episodes of the podcast leading up to the big 300th episode.
The episode will also feature guests Yola, The Weather Station and Jake Wesley Rogers.
For more on this topic, head over to the Classic Rock Observer.
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