Elton John has shocked fans after revealing his unusual necklace was actually made out of his kneecap.
The 78-year-old musician shared the bizarre anecdote in the World Gold Council’s new documentary short film, Touched By Gold, detailing how he turned his kneecaps into jewellery after undergoing a double knee replacement.
“When I had my kneecaps removed, the left one first and then the right, I asked my surgeon if I could keep the kneecaps, which he was rather startled about — then I rang you,” John said to jewellery designer Theo Fennell in the film.
“We baked them,” Fennell explained of John’s kneecaps. “We had to bake them to dry them out. Then they get raw like pumice stone, they’re very porous. So we had to paint them with acetate and then just polish them up.”
The result? A gold-plated necklace made out of John’s knees.
“That’s my right kneecap,” the singer proudly announced. “That’s my right patella.”
The back of the necklace also contains a tongue-in-cheek phrase, “I will no longer bow to any man,” written in Latin — which, as Fennell pointed out, “you can’t do with a kneecap missing.”
Once the necklace was completed, the pair was faced with a new question: what to do with the musician’s other kneecap.
“It was a smaller kneecap. We couldn’t do so much with it,” Fennell admitted. “It’s an incredibly difficult job to get the gold following the shape of something quite as unusual.”
The jeweler opted to turn the second piece of bone into a small gold brooch.
The pair went on to explain the thought process behind the unique jewellery.
“They’re kind of talismatic,” said Fennell. “In 1,000 years, as it says here, this will be Elton John’s kneecap. How many people will believe that? I don’t know. It’ll be sort of like a reliquary.”
“I honestly think these are timeless pieces that will last for centuries,” added John.
The one-of-a-kind pieces had a mixed reaction online, with fans divided on whether the process was grotesque or artful.
“Weird,” one commented, as another labelled the stunt “odd behavior.”
“That’s why I love Elton John,” another fan countered, as another described the move as “the winner for wildest story of the day.”
The 78-year-old father of two has been open about his health struggles in recent years, sharing with fans details of his various ailments.
“To be honest with you, there’s not much of me left,” he said at the New York Film Festival last year. “I don’t have tonsils, adenoids or an appendix. I don’t have a prostate.”
“I don’t have a right hip or a left knee or a right knee,” he continued. “In fact, the only thing left to me is my left hip. But I’m still here.
