The Year Two Hungry Freelancers Corralled Elton John

Medium contributor Joe Fox revisits a celebrated 1976 Rolling Stone cover story.

Imagine wrangling your first cover story as a freelance journalist and it turning out to be an interview where Elton John admits publicly for the first time that he is bisexual. That’s what happened to Cliff Jahr; the October 7, 1976 issue piece garnered waves of additional outside coverage and led its famous (and then 29-year-old) subject to stop performing live for several years.

But how did Jahr do it? Today on Medium, Joe Fox takes a look back at the efforts of the reporter and photographer Ron Pownall, who got the assignment when Annie Leibovitz was unavailable.

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