Elton John has confessed he “mourned” his “little boy” after realising his sons, who he shares with husband David Furnish, 62, were growing up. “The boys were Lego crazy, then one day it just stopped. They never used to care about what they wore, then Zachary googled to see what people were wearing to the Coachella festival and ordered his outfit accordingly,” he said.

“We drove Zachary to senior school when he was 13… and I came back and burst into tears. David said, ‘What’s wrong?’ I replied, ‘I’ll never see my little boy again.’ I mourned the fact that I couldn’t pick him up any more because the kids have made all the difference to my life… It’s about the boys now. We’re making sure they’re OK, making sure they’re appreciative and not spoiling them too much because, you know, I’m Elton John,” he said in an interview with The Times.

“And then I get to the chorus, and I find that it’s about my death, my demise. And as a 76 year old man, which I was at that time, and having children and having a husband, mortality, and you think about, ‘How long have I got? How long? I hope I’ve got much longer than maybe I’ve got [left].’

“And so by the time I got to the chorus and suddenly realised that I started singing it [and] I lost it for 45 minutes. It was a very, very heavy moment for me,” he confessed.

“After 45 minutes of being consoled, I was okay, but I recorded the next day… when you’re singing about being washed out to sea and the end of your life, it took me by surprise.

“It’s a really lovely song. I did it all in one take the next day. I just came in and did its vocal and piano at the same time,” he said.