The interview lasted more than an hour and got very personal. Elton admitted to grappling with depression, and lamented the lack of a romantic relationship, the main reason he was taking a break from public life. He said he longed for a partner with whom to share his success, someone to greet him when he returned home. “I would desperately like to have an affair. I crave to be loved.”

He opened up about his sex life, and admitted that he was bisexual. “There’s nothing wrong with going to bed with somebody of your own sex,” Elton told the reporter. “I think everybody’s bisexual to a certain degree. I don’t think it’s just me… I think you’re bisexual. I think everybody is.” Jahr asked about speculation that he and Bernie Taupin had been lovers, which Elton denied, saying they were like brothers. He went on to say that he believed everyone should be free to have sex with whomever they wanted. “They should draw the line at goats,” he added, a crack that would inspire a disparaging cartoon in a New York newspaper once the story broke.

After the interview was over, Pownall took a series of photos of Elton sitting in the window, then leaning out, with Fifth Avenue ten stories below. “The light filtering through the midtown skyline was perfect,” Pownall recalled. “I knew this would be my cover, so it had to be vertical. The composition was very deliberate, but when I look at the photo now I’m struck by his expression. He looks pensive, and a little bit sad, which I think he was. I took several shots of him in the window and he’s like that in all of them. Except one where he’s grimacing as Cliff pretends to push him out.”