Backstage at last summer’s Glastonbury, as Elton John made his first appearance at the festival and played his last-ever gig in the UK, the singer Jacob Lusk was hard to miss. The American, who is broad and well over 6ft, often performs in a smoking jacket or a silk-lined cape, but on this occasion his suit was a retina-searing Barbie pink, with an orange stripe down the leg. “I wanted to do a traditional English look for Elton,” recalls Lusk. “So I was going to wear a morning suit. But then Elton’s stylist, Jo [Hambro], brought me these fabric swatches and said, ‘We should do orange with a pink stripe.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, girl, I’m not about to look like a pumpkin out here. A jack-o’-lantern! I’m too damn big to be in orange.’ And I said, ‘But... we could do pink!’”
As Lusk waited to go on, he watched Elton from a platform with Paul McCartney, Lizzo and some other famouses he didn’t know. “Oh, there was this racecar driver who’s like really famous? I don’t know if you know the guy…”
