50 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 50 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 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Elton John's birth name?
Reginald Kenneth Dwight
He legally changed it to Elton Hercules John in January 1972; the 'Hercules' was a later addition.
Q 02Where in England was Elton John born and raised?
Pinner, Middlesex
He grew up in a council house there with his maternal grandparents and started on his grandmother's piano.
Q 03Reg Dwight's stage name pays homage to two members of his old band Bluesology. Who were they?
Elton Dean and Long John Baldry
Dean was the saxophonist and Baldry the singer; the band backed touring American soul acts like Patti LaBelle and the Isley Brothers.
Q 04At what age did Elton John win a junior scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music?
11
He had begun formal piano lessons at seven after his mother caught him picking out 'The Skater's Waltz' by ear.
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
Bluesology's former guitarist Caleb Quaye played on it; the breakthrough came a year later with 'Your Song'.
Q 07Which single became his first hit as a singer, reaching the UK and US top ten in 1970?
Your Song
His first American concert followed that August at the Troubadour in Los Angeles, backed by Nigel Olsson and Dee Murray.
Q 08At which Los Angeles club did Elton John play his career-making first American concert on 25 August 1970?
The Troubadour
He returned in 1975 for a two-night, four-show stand to celebrate the fifth anniversary.
Q 09Which was Elton John's first US Billboard Hot 100 number one?
Crocodile Rock
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
Producer Gus Dudgeon had also produced David Bowie's 'Space Oddity', though Taupin says the real inspiration was a Ray Bradbury story.
Q 11Which science-fiction writer's short story inspired 'Rocket Man'?
Ray Bradbury
'The Rocket Man' in The Illustrated Man is about an astronaut whose job keeps him away from his family for months.
Q 12Which actor recorded a widely parodied spoken-word version of 'Rocket Man' in 1978?
William Shatner
Kate Bush later recorded a more respectful reggae-tinged cover in 1991.
Q 13'Tiny Dancer' opens which 1971 album?
Madman Across the Water
Taupin wrote it about California and, he said in 1973, about his then wife Maxine Feibelman; the film Almost Famous revived it in 2000.
Q 21Which football club did Elton John chair from 1976 to 1987 and again from 1997 to 2002?
Watford
He appointed Graham Taylor as manager and the club rose three divisions, finishing runners-up in the First Division in 1983.
Q 22Which manager took Elton's football club from the Fourth Division to top-flight runners-up?
Graham Taylor
Watford also reached the 1984 FA Cup Final at Wembley under Taylor, who later managed England.
Q 23As which cartoon character did Elton John dress for part of his 1980 Central Park concert?
Donald Duck
His stage wardrobe by then included $5,000 glasses that spelled his name in lights and a Statue of Liberty outfit.
Q 14Which 2000 Cameron Crowe film gave 'Tiny Dancer' a second life with a tour-bus singalong scene?
Almost Famous
Cameron Crowe's film about a teenage rock journalist put the song back in front of a new generation.
Q 15'Bennie and the Jets' seems to be a concert recording. How was that effect actually created?
Studio track with crowd noise mixed in
Gus Dudgeon spliced in audience noise from a 1972 Royal Festival Hall show and even a Jimi Hendrix set at the Isle of Wight.
Q 16Which US TV show did Elton John appear on in May 1975, one of the first white artists to do so?
Soul Train
He played 'Bennie and the Jets' and 'Philadelphia Freedom'; the song had broken first on Detroit R&B radio via CKLW in Windsor.
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
It stayed at number one for two months and is his highest entry on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums list.
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
Rock of the Westies repeated the trick later the same year, and it was autobiographical: Captain Fantastic is Elton, the Brown Dirt Cowboy is Taupin.
Q 19Whose cover of 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' did Elton play and sing on in 1974?
John Lennon's
Lennon repaid the favour by joining Elton on stage at Madison Square Garden that November, his last major concert appearance.
Q 20With whom did Elton John duet on the 1976 chart-topper 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart'?
Kiki Dee
She was signed to his own Rocket Record Company; they sang it again at Live Aid in 1985.
Q 24In 1979, Elton John became one of the first Western pop artists to tour which country?
The Soviet Union
He toured with just percussionist Ray Cooper, and also played Israel on the same trip.
Q 25Whom did Elton John marry on Valentine's Day 1984?
Renate Blauel
She was a sound engineer and close friend; the marriage lasted three years, and she sued him in 2020 over passages in his autobiography.
Q 26Which song, in 1990, finally gave Elton John his first solo UK number one single?
Sacrifice
It came out as a double A-side with 'Healing Hands' and stayed at the top for five weeks.
Q 27Whose 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
Elton had introduced him at Live Aid in 1985 for the same song, when Michael was still in Wham!.
Q 28With which lyricist did Elton John write the songs for Disney's The Lion King?
Tim Rice
Three of the five Best Original Song nominees at the 1995 Oscars were from the film; 'Can You Feel the Love Tonight' won.
Q 29Which song won Elton John his first Academy Award?
Can You Feel the Love Tonight
It also took the Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance; his second Oscar came 25 years later for a song from Rocketman.
Q 30Who inducted Elton John into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994?
Axl Rose
Two years earlier the pair had sung 'Bohemian Rhapsody' together with the surviving members of Queen at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert.