POP/ROCK - Nov. 22, 1991

Rising From the Dead: Pop star Elton John, in a frank television interview scheduled to air tonight on PBS, admits that he became “emotionally dead” as a result of years of drinking and drugs which he used to fight crippling shyness and cope with fame. Talking with David Frost, John, 46, says he experienced periods of “intense and utter pain and distress” from 1976 to 1990 and binged on food, becoming unbearable to live with. “I looked like a 60-year-old man, terribly ill and sad. I had big bags, black eyes and I was overweight,” he says. John also suffered in secret for six years from bulimia, in which people eat food and then regurgitate it. “I was emotionally dead, like a carcass.” He said a friend finally persuaded him to pull himself together.