Elton John says he has lost his eyesight

Elton John says he has lost his sight after struggling to recover from an eye infection.
Photo: AP PHOTO

Music legend Elton John has told a theatre audience in London he has lost his sight after struggling to recover from an eye infection earlier in the year.

The 77-year-old star - famous for Tiny Dancer, Your Song and a string of other hits - was in London's West End for the opening of The Devil Wears Prada musical, for which he wrote the score.

In an emotional speech from the stage of the Dominion Theatre at the end of the show, he said the performance had sounded good, but he had not been able to watch it.

"As some of you may know I have had issues and now I have lost my sight. I haven't been able to see the performance but I have enjoyed it," John said. "I love to hear it," he added, to rapturous applause.

He thanked his husband David Furnish for being his "rock".

John, who has sold more than 300 million records over a six-decade career, said in a documentary that premiered in September that his health made him worry about the future.

"This is the latter time of my life. I don't know how much time I have left," he said in the documentary Elton John: Never Too Late.

He said that month in an Instagram post that he was feeling positive about how his eye was healing after an infection in July.

Two months later, he told ABC News he cold not see out of his right eye and his left was "not the greatest", meaning he could no longer read or watch anything.

He said his condition was keeping him out of the studio where he had been working on a new album.

"It's been a while since I've done anything," he said.

"There's hope and encouragement that it will be okay, but it's, I'm kind of stuck at the moment."

John, who shot to fame in the early 1970s, went on a farewell tour from 2018 to 2023.

He and Furnish have two sons, Zachary, 13, and Elijah, 11.

"I'm so lucky. I'm the luckiest man in the world," John told ABC News last month.

First published at The Canberra Times, via AAP, December 3, 2024