Elton John Trivia
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49 free Elton John trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
46 free Elton John trivia questions with answers. Elton John has been famous for more than fifty years, and the details are better than the legend. He got his surname from a saxophonist, wore glasses he did not need to look like Buddy Holly, played Central Park dressed as Donald Duck, and has performed his best-selling single exactly once. This quiz runs 49 questions across the whole career: the Bluesology days and the NME advert that paired him with Bernie Taupin, the run of 1970s albums from Your Song to Captain Fantastic, the duets, the Watford years, The Lion King and Aida, Princess Diana's funeral, Rocketman, the Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour and the Emmy that made him an EGOT. It starts with questions any radio listener will get and works up to ones for people who own the box sets. Every answer has been checked against reference sources, shown under each question once you answer, so it works for a music quiz night, a road trip playlist argument or a birthday party for a lifelong fan.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Elton John's birth name?
Reginald Kenneth Dwight
He was born Reginald Kenneth Dwight on 25 March 1947 and became Elton Hercules John by deed poll in 1972, the middle name borrowed from the horse in Steptoe and Son.
Q 02Where in England was Elton John born and raised?
Pinner, Middlesex
Elton John was born in Pinner, Middlesex, in 1947 and grew up there in a council house with his maternal grandparents, picking out tunes on his grandmother's piano.
Q 03Elton John's stage name honours which two members of his former band Bluesology?
Elton Dean and Long John Baldry
Saxophonist Elton Dean and singer Long John Baldry were both in Bluesology, which backed touring American soul acts such as Patti LaBelle and the Isley Brothers.
Q 04At what age did Elton John win a junior scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music?
11
Elton John won a junior scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music at 11 and attended Saturday classes there for five years, having started formal piano lessons at seven.
Q 05How did Elton John first come to work with lyricist Bernie Taupin in 1967?
Both answered the same advert in the New Musical Express
Liberty Records A&R man Ray Williams handed him an unopened envelope of Taupin's lyrics at their first meeting.
Q 06What was the title of Elton John's 1969 debut album?
Empty Sky
Empty Sky was released on DJM Records in June 1969 with Bluesology's former guitarist Caleb Quaye playing on it; the album did not get an American release until 1975.
Q 07Which 1970 single became Elton John's first hit, reaching the UK and US top ten?
Your Song
'Your Song' peaked at number seven in the UK and number eight in the US in January 1971, after first appearing as the B-side of 'Take Me to the Pilot'.
Q 08At which Los Angeles club did Elton John play his career-making first American concert on 25 August 1970?
The Troubadour
Elton John opened a six-night stand at the Troubadour on 25 August 1970, introduced on stage by Neil Diamond; he returned in 1975 for a fifth-anniversary celebration.
Q 09Which was Elton John's first US Billboard Hot 100 number one?
Crocodile Rock
'Crocodile Rock' topped the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks in February 1973; it came from Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player, which also produced 'Daniel'.
Q 10'Rocket Man' was the lead single from which 1972 album?
Honky Château
Honky Château, recorded at the Château d'Hérouville outside Paris and released in May 1972, was his first US number-one album; producer Gus Dudgeon had also made David Bowie's 'Space Oddity'.
Q 11Which science-fiction writer's short story inspired 'Rocket Man'?
Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury's 'The Rocket Man', collected in The Illustrated Man (1951), follows an astronaut whose job keeps him away from his family for months; Taupin has cited it as the song's starting point.
Q 12Which actor recorded a widely parodied spoken-word version of 'Rocket Man' in 1978?
William Shatner
William Shatner delivered his spoken-word 'Rocket Man', cigarette in hand, at the 1978 Science Fiction Film Awards; Kate Bush later cut a reggae-tinged cover for the 1991 tribute album Two Rooms.
Q 13'Tiny Dancer' opens which 1971 album?
Madman Across the Water
Q 21Which manager took Elton's football club from the Fourth Division to top-flight runners-up?
Graham Taylor
Graham Taylor, appointed in 1977, took the club from the Fourth Division to First Division runners-up in 1983 and an FA Cup Final in 1984; he later managed England.
Q 22As which cartoon character did Elton John dress for part of his 1980 Central Park concert?
Donald Duck
Elton John came on for the encore dressed as Donald Duck, webbed feet included, before an estimated 400,000 people in Central Park on 13 September 1980.
Q 23In 1979, Elton John became one of the first Western pop artists to tour which country?
The Soviet Union
'Tiny Dancer' opens Madman Across the Water, released in November 1971; Taupin wrote it about California and his first wife, Maxine Feibelman, a seamstress who worked on the band's clothes.
Q 14Which 2000 Cameron Crowe film gave 'Tiny Dancer' a second life with a tour-bus singalong scene?
Almost Famous
Almost Famous, drawn from Crowe's own teenage years writing for Rolling Stone, has the band Stillwater and their entourage sing along to 'Tiny Dancer' on the tour bus after a falling-out.
Q 15How was the concert-hall atmosphere on 'Bennie and the Jets' actually created?
Studio track with crowd noise mixed in
It is a studio track with crowd noise mixed in: producer Gus Dudgeon spliced in audience sound from Elton's 1972 Royal Festival Hall show and a Jimi Hendrix Isle of Wight set.
Q 16Which US TV show did Elton John appear on in May 1975, one of the first white artists to do so?
Soul Train
Elton John sang 'Bennie and the Jets' and 'Philadelphia Freedom' on Soul Train in May 1975; the first of those had crossed over to Black radio and charted on Billboard's soul singles list.
Q 17Which 1973 double album with 'Candle in the Wind' and 'Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting' topped US and UK charts?
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, released in October 1973, spent eight weeks at number one in the US and is his best-selling studio album.
Q 18Which 1975 Elton John album was the first ever to debut at number one on the US album chart?
Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy
Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy entered the Billboard 200 at number one in June 1975; the autobiographical album casts Elton as the Captain and Taupin as the Cowboy.
Q 19With whom did Elton John duet on the 1976 chart-topper 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart'?
Kiki Dee
Kiki Dee, signed to Elton's own Rocket Record Company, sang the duet that gave him his first UK number one single; they performed it again at Live Aid in 1985.
Q 20Which football club did Elton John chair from 1976 to 1987 and again from 1997 to 2002?
Watford
Elton John bought Watford in 1976; under his chairmanship the club climbed from the Fourth Division to First Division runners-up in 1983 and reached the 1984 FA Cup Final.
Elton John played eight concerts in the Soviet Union in May 1979, four in Leningrad and four in Moscow, accompanied only by percussionist Ray Cooper.
Q 24Whom did Elton John marry on Valentine's Day 1984?
Renate Blauel
Renate Blauel, a German sound engineer he met while recording Too Low for Zero, married him in Sydney on 14 February 1984; they divorced in 1988, and she sued him in 2020 over his memoir.
Q 25Which song, in 1990, finally gave Elton John his first solo UK number one single?
Sacrifice
'Sacrifice' was reissued as a double A-side with 'Healing Hands' in 1990 and spent five weeks at number one, with Elton donating the royalties to AIDS charities.
Q 26Whose live duet with Elton John on 'Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me' topped the UK and US charts in 1991?
George Michael
George Michael's duet, recorded at Wembley Arena in March 1991, topped both charts; the pair had first sung it together at Live Aid in 1985, while Michael was a member of Wham!.
Q 27With which lyricist did Elton John write the songs for Disney's The Lion King?
Tim Rice
Tim Rice, who had finished Aladdin's lyrics with Alan Menken after Howard Ashman's death, wrote the words; three of the film's songs were nominated for Best Original Song at the 1995 Oscars.
Q 28Which song won Elton John his first Academy Award?
Can You Feel the Love Tonight
'Can You Feel the Love Tonight' won Best Original Song at the 1995 Oscars and the Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance; his second Oscar came 25 years later for a Rocketman song.
Q 29Who inducted Elton John into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994?
Axl Rose
Axl Rose inducted him in January 1994; two years earlier the pair had sung 'Bohemian Rhapsody' together with the surviving members of Queen at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert.
Q 30The original 1973 'Candle in the Wind' was a tribute to whom?
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe, born Norma Jeane Mortenson, is the subject: the opening line 'Goodbye Norma Jean' became 'Goodbye England's rose' when Taupin rewrote it for Princess Diana in 1997.