Elton John: Collector's Biography (Classic, Rare and Unseen) (Classic Rare & Unseen) Hardcover – 2 Aug 2010

About the book ELTON JOHN: THE ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHY, the emphasis is definitely on the "illustrated" aspect, since this book is really a photo album with quite lengthy captions. Most of each page is taken up by a single photo, with a few spread onto 2 pages, and these span his entire career from the late '60s to 2009, with captions giving a moderate amount of information. Thus, there are no photos or information here on Elton's life prior to the beginning of his music career, except a little in the 3-page chronology at the end. The photos are terrific and of much variety, including concert shots, candids, many photos with friends and associates, publicity shots, pictures of non-musical aspects of his life such as his extensive charity work and playing English football, and so on. Most of the photos are good quality reproductions and are good selections, with a roughly even divide between color and black-and-white.

The captions gave me a fairly good sense of Elton's life since I didn't know a lot about it. I did find it annoying that numerous pictures do not have dates given, although it appears that they're grouped chronologically so you can estimate the dates of the ones that don't tell exactly. Also, occasionally a caption says something that is ambiguous. An extra at the end is a 3-page chronology of his life, but there's not a discography. The book runs 224 pages and is coffee-table size at 1 X 10.4 X 10.5 inches. All in all, this is a fun book to have if you're an Elton John fan as I am, and I enjoy getting it out to look at again when I'm watching him in concert on TV.

(Note: Confusingly, there are 2 entries for this book on Amazon. They appear to be the same book, although one is said to be by Jane Benn and one by Elizabeth Balmer. My copy says it is by Elizabeth Balmer, and I don't see any mention of Jane Benn anywhere on it or in it!! So ?!?!?!?!?)