Elton John Childhood Home — Pinner, Middlesex

Elton John — Reginald Kenneth Dwight — grew up at 55 Pinner Hill Road in Pinner, Middlesex, a quiet suburban village in what is now the London Borough of Harrow. His childhood was comfortable but emotionally cold: his father Stanley was a strict disciplinarian who disapproved of pop music; his mother Sheila was more encouraging and took him to see Bill Haley and the Comets, which sparked his passion for rock and roll. Elton was a piano prodigy who won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music at eleven while simultaneously absorbing every record he could find.

His partnership with lyricist Bernie Taupin — formed through a mutual response to a Liberty Records ad in 1967 — is one of the most productive songwriting collaborations in pop history. Taupin wrote the words, Elton set them to music, often in minutes. The results included 'Your Song,' 'Rocket Man,' 'Crocodile Rock,' 'Tiny Dancer,' 'Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting,' 'Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me,' 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,' and hundreds more. His early 1970s run of albums was extraordinary in its consistency and ambition.

Pinner remains a pleasant, well-heeled suburb at the end of the Metropolitan Line. The house on Pinner Hill Road is a private residence. Elton John's connection to the area is not formally commemorated, though local residents are aware of it. His grandmother's flat in Northwood Hills, where he practised piano obsessively as a child, is the more significant address in his early musical formation.