Elton John

Born Reginald Kenneth Dwight in 1947, he won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music as a child and spent the 1960s in the blues band Bluesology, writing songs and session work before his 1969 debut. Across six decades he released 32 studio albums — Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Honky Château, The One — and composed for The Lion King, Aida, and Billy Elliot the Musical, eventually earning EGOT status. From the late '70s to the late '80s he battled severe addiction to drugs and alcohol; he's been sober since 1990. In 1992 he founded the Elton John AIDS Foundation, which has raised over £300 mi…