During the first few months of 1975, Elton John was not a happy bunny. Living in a rented villa on Tower Grove Drive in the Westside Los Angeles district of Benedict Canyon, he hosted wild, narcotic-fuelled parties, but the late nights were beginning to take their toll. To make matters worse, the increasingly paranoid star was haunted by the spectre of the Manson murders, which had taken place six years earlier a short drive away on Cielo Drive.
“I woke up one morning to find a girl sitting on the end of my bed, staring at me,” John wrote in his 2019 autobiography, Me. “I couldn’t get up, because I never wore anything when I slept. All I could do was sit there screaming at her to get the f**k out. She didn’t say anything back, she just kept staring, which was somehow worse than if she’d spoken."
