The critically acclaimed Elton John biopic Rocketman explores the star's colourful past in detail - but what fans might not know is the story of how he got arrested in Auckland in 1974.
As the lauded biopic hits cinemas this week, we revisit Judith Baragwanath's first-person account of whathappened, and what it's like to party with Elton.
This story was first published in the New Zealand Herald in 2002.
On Wednesday, February 27, 1974, the air in Auckland was electric: Elton John, at that time the biggest name in rock, had arrived in town for his only concert in New Zealand.
An estimated 34,000 fans from all over the country converged on Western Springs to see their pudding-shaped idol howl "Benny and the Jets", "Rocket Man" and "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" while cavorting about the stage like a fat chicken in an outfit made of feathers.
The evening before the concert, word got around that a swish press reception would be held for Elton at the Parnell Rose Garden's tearooms. I was working as a model and writing a fashion column for the Sunday News; and, as was my wont in those days, turned up uninvited with a bunch of man-hungry marauding broads who would have put those Sex and the City trollops to shame.
We were gate-crashers, sure, but easy on the eye, unattached, devil-may-care loose units in mini skirts - and welcomed with open arms.
Outside the tearooms, a Maori welcome party waited for the Great Feathered One and entourage to arrive in open-topped Rollers. They were to wait quite some time because, as the story goes, Elton's manager, John Reid, had disappeared from the hotel. Gone "yachting", someone said.
Meanwhile, inside the venue things were rapidly going downhill.
The room was pitch-black except for a spinning mirrored ball on the ceiling scattering a million shards of hallucinatory light over the usual scrum of media hacks, groupies and all the other sundry rock and roll hangers-on and riff-raff that go with the territory.
The music was one decibel below nose-bleed and everyone, let's be candid, was as pissed as parrots. I stood beside Kevin Williams from Festival Records. He was the party organiser and a nicer man you could not meet. Next to him was a small, rodent-faced Scotsman in dungarees. I did not know him. He was roundly berating Williams with a mouth we can only pray he has never used to kiss his mother.
The whisky, it transpired, had run out and the news did not suit the man. He wanted whisky and he wanted it now! As Williams tried to explain the situation, the Glaswegian rat suddenly hurled the contents of his glass at him, striking him in the eyes.
Williams staggered back with an agonised cry. The man – John Reid – then dashed the glass to the floor and smashed it under his heel.
Musician Elton John (left) and music manager John Reid pictured in 1988. Photo / Getty Images
It was at this point, according to Philip Norman's new biography of Elton John, that "a journalist named Judith Baragwanath, in forthright antipodean fashion, rebuked Reid for his earlier behaviour. Reid then hit her, knocking her to the floor."
Norman also writes that I used "foul and derogatory language to Reid".
True again.
"Baragwanath herself admitted she had called Reid 'a rotten little bastard' for throwing champagne at her friend Kevin Williams."
Quite false. I called him something a lot worse. Twice.
The first time I said it Reid snarled that if I repeated the words he would thump me. I did. He thumped me. I remember flying through the air, hitting the floor and some fool asking if I was all right.
I was picked up like a bag of rags and transported home with a shiner more shades of the rainbow than Mary Quant ever dreamt up.
Later that night, at Tommy Adderley's nightclub Grandpa's, Sunday News reporter David Wheeler was grabbed by Elton and punched by Reid, who then kicked him in the mouth as he lay on the ground.
Elton's wild partying ways are a big part of Rocketman. Photo / Getty Images
The next day, with the concert only hours away, Elton and his manager were arrested.
I had to identify Reid in a line-up somewhere in the bowels of the central police station. Could I? That was the worry. Could I? Instantly. It must have been the dungarees.
Then, of course, there was the court case. I appeared in the witness box in a demure pink floral frock and Jacqui O shades. A cameo brooch got an airing. Elton John, I remember, wore something beige with big lapels and twiddled 10 fat little fingers behind his back. I had to repeat the offending words to the learned judge.
The upshot of this frankly appalling incident was that Elton John copped a $300 fine, the concert went ahead and Reid went inside Mt Eden for a month.
I was awarded the princely sum of $2500 – collected by my lawyer Julian Miles from the White Heron Hotel in $1 bills. Why $1 bills? Who knows. Probably a final up-yours-bitch gesture.
I learnt to drive and bought a car. A Mini Clubman GT. White. Fast. Ten-inch steering wheel. Nice car. Lousy driver.
Many years later I met Reid socially in Auckland. We had a drink. We had a laugh. We parted company without a fist thrown or a four-letter word fouling the air.
