Sure, Elton John spends a lot of money, but his financial people insist he's still standing
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Extravagant? Well, florists have a standing order to fill his two English homes with as many as 220 arrangements a week. Though he rarely drives, he owns a fleet of luxury cars—which reportedly include four Bentleys and a Jaguar XJ220 worth more than $600,000. Carrier referred to him as "one of our best clients." And he has collected art, furniture, lamps, eyeglasses and jukeboxes by the truckload.
But Elton John's spending habits have not broken him, his chief executive Frank Presland says, responding to Britain's Sunday Times report that the pop star is seeking a $39.5 million loan to pay for his lavish lifestyle. "He is a very, very rich man," Presland contends. "He is extremely generous. He gives a lot of money to charities."
So why does he need the money? Elton is keen to buy back the rights to his first six albums, including Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. "Artists are always attached to their own music and like to have as much control as they can of their own music," Presland says.
And he has been contacted by several banks in Britain and the U.S. to discuss the best way for Elton to finance his dream—and still have enough left over for the flowers and the cars. "His personal financial affairs are stable, his business affairs are better than stable," Presland says, adding that the banks "don't come along if you're unsound."
Palaces Apart
If it's Tuesday, this must be...marriage? Sophie Rhys-Jones included "obey" in her June 19 wedding vows to Britain's Prince Edward, but the cofounder of a successful public relations firm never said anything about commuting for him. A source at Buckingham Palace confirms that Rhys-Jones, 34, will spend Monday through Thursday at her palace suite, conveniently close to her business in tony Mayfair. At home those nights, she'll have the TV clicker to herself while Edward, 35, runs his production company, Ardent, from bucolic Bagshot Park, his 87-acre Surrey estate. Though she'll bag London for Bagshot on weekends, "they've made it pretty clear they want to pursue their careers," says the Palace source. It suits them, sniffs The Mirror's crown hound James Whitaker. "I don't find it particularly endearing, but then I'm not married to either of them."
Fox's String Fever
As a teenager, Michael J. Fox played the guitar. And like a lot of ex-teenagers, he never made it in the music business. But as a well-paid actor, Fox now enjoys collecting the instruments of his rock and roll heroes. At a charity auction June 24 at Christie's New York headquarters, Fox, 38, paid $79,300 for two guitars once caressed by guitar god Eric Clapton. Said Fox: "Mr. Clapton has meant a lot to me."
Smith & Western Saddle Up
The cachet of the cowboy, like that thing with their horses, may never be truly definable, but that didn't stop folks at the June 28 L.A. premiere of Wild Wild West from trying. "The West was a hard time and a hard life,' said the latest Jim West, Will Smith, who deftly avoided the region's current scourge—limo lock—by rolling up in a horse-drawn buggy. "I think people respect the strength that it took to survive." Costar Kevin Kline—who as West's inventor sidekick Artemus Gordon gets to sport a cool name and a dress—is a Have Gun Will Travel guy. The series's iconic character Paladin (played by a brooding Richard Boone from 1957 to 1963) was "intelligent and moral," Klein opines, and quite possibly not a bounty hunter after all "but maybe just a wandering poet." Shooting holes in the gunslinger-with-a-heart-of-gold theory is boxer Sugar Ray Leonard: "It's the man thing, riding a horse, being dirty, getting the women, being the fastest draw. It's macho."
Then again, chaps—-perhaps it's just the chaps. "When Will first tried on his leather chaps, Jada was with him," reports West director Barry Sonnenfeld, who directed Smith in Men in Black. "She took one look at him and said, 'Baby, you're taking those home with you tonight.' " Whoa, Nellie.
No Key for Hard Rock
Being a local who made it real big isn't enough to get you the key to Georgetown, S.C. Just ask Chris Rock, 34. Mayor Lynn Wood Wilson refuses to honor Rock because he uses language in his act that Wilson thinks is very, very not nice. "A key to the city should be given to someone whose work and notoriety stems from activities all Georgetonians can be proud of," Wilson stated in the Myrtle Beach Sun News. "Mr. Rock's comedy material is not suitable for our youth and is offensive to many Georgetonians." Well, there is at least one it doesn't offend: daycare center operator Rose Rock, 54, Chris's mom. While she concedes that her son's act isn't appropriate for kids, she points out, "I've never witnessed anyone leaving" one of his performances early.
Fruit Flies
When movie critics take a shot at Keanu Reeves's acting, the most he is pelted with are adjectives. His rock band Dogstar, on the other hand, found itself on the receiving end of bananas, oranges and lemons—and a hosing from a large water pistol—while playing the Glastonbury Festival in England June 27. Reeves, who dodges bullets in the sci-fi film The Matrix, and his bandmates maintained their sense of humor; one yelled, "Throw us one more orange, and we could make a fruit salad." Was the barrage an expression of music criticism? Concertgoer Victoria McCulloch had a simpler explanation: male insecurity. It was done, she says, "by bitter and twisted boys who didn't like it because all the girls started screaming."
New Roseanne, Body and Soul
Inner peace appears to have made a new woman out of Roseanne. Again. The talk show host lost 70 pounds during the past year, emerging as someone looking not at all like the old Roseanne of '87. Or '93. Or '96. Previously she credited plastic surgery for her altered state. This time she says her secret is...Kabbalah, the study of Jewish mysticism, which Roseanne, 46, claims offers her everything from inner serenity to a cure for her diseased liver. So no wonder she traveled to Israel last month, telling reporters, "I came here to feel healed." Bob Hellman, a writer on her show, agrees with his boss about her latest change. "It really is a case of when you feel good, you look good," he says. "She's a legitimate size 12 and dropping."
ON THE BLOCK: HOUSE AND GARDEN
Can the popularity of John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (216 weeks on the bestseller list) help make a killing in real estate? The owner of Savannah's Mercer House, site of the 1981 shooting that inspired the book, hopes so. The property was built for Confederate General Hugh Mercer, great-grandfather of songwriter Johnny Mercer ("Moon River"). But it won't go for a song. They're asking $8.95 million for the Italianate Victorian mansion with three bedrooms, 11 fireplaces, a 60-foot foyer and double-tiered verandas. It also has a steady stream of photo-taking tourists, all anxious to see where antiques dealer Jim Williams shot and killed 21-year-old Danny Hansford.
- Contributors:
- Larry Sutton,
- Mike Neill,
- Lisa Russell,
- Liza Hamm,
- Matthew Beard,
- Sara Bennett,
- Nina Biddle,
- Joanna Blonska,
- Kelly Carter,
- Steven Cojocaru,
- Liz Corcoran,
- Kevin Kwong,
- Jennifer Longley,
- Lyndon Stambler.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
