Elton John and David Bowie's friendship never recovered from comments the Ziggy Stardust made forty years ago.

In a new interview, Elton reveals that when David died aged 69 last month they "were not the best of friends" - despite once enjoying wild nights out at gay clubs with T-Rex frontman Marc Bolan. He said: "David [Bowie] and I were not the best of friends towards the end. We started out being really good friends. We used to hang out together with Marc Bolan, going to gay clubs, but I think we just drifted apart. He once called me 'rock’n’roll’s token queen' in an interview with Rolling Stone, which I thought was a bit snooty. I wasn’t his cup of tea. But the dignified way he handled his death, I mean, thank God. I knew he’d had a heart attack on stage in Berlin years ago, but not about the cancer. Everyone else take note of this: Bowie couldn’t have staged a better death. It was classy."

Elton first touched upon David's scathing comments in a 1976 interview with rock mag Rolling Stone. The mag reported: "Currently, Bowie appears to be trying to start up a feud in Playboy, admitting in an interview that he had referred to Elton as "the Liberace, the token queen of rock. Says Bowie, 'I consider myself responsible for a whole new school of pretensions — they know who they are. Don't you, Elton?'"

He told Evening Standard's ES Magazine: "I was in Los Angeles, asleep. It was 3am and the phone rang. It was David [Furnish]. I immediately panicked, as when you get a phone call at three o’clock in the morning you think something is wrong. I thought of the kids, something has happened to the kids. And David said, 'I thought I better let you know, David Bowie has died.' And I was shocked... I couldn’t go back to sleep."

However, he can't help but praise Bowie for selling so many records even after his death. He added: "The best thing to happen to your records is for you to die. Death is very popular. Obviously, no one wanted David to die, but it’s astonishing how many records he’s sold since — something like two million in two weeks. And that’s CDs."

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