“My father knew about him and accepted him, so after the initial shock, so did I. I even understood it, in a way. My parents lived in two rooms with nine other relatives, and my dad was very thrifty, whereas the other man bought her jewels and furs and took her to nice places.” He continued, “Only they were living the high life on my money. They went through hundreds of thousands of dollars. I couldn’t pay my taxes, nothing. My wife and I had to start from scratch.”
Firing his mother’s boyfriend, Sedaka explained that Eleanor almost overdosed on sleeping pills “because she couldn’t stand to see her son and her lover at odds. She said she didn’t realize it was my money they were spending. I didn’t speak to her for a year.”
It was in that time that his loyal wife became his new manager.
Just as he was poised to make some money, The Beatles came around and disrupted Sedaka’s popularity.
Though he continued writing music for others, his waning chart appeal in the U.S. motivated him to move Leba and their children, Dara and Marc, to London, the hot spot of hitmakers.
Referring to his slide in fame, Sedaka said: “Well, I used to walk down the street and people asked, ‘Didn’t you used to be Neil Sedaka?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m still Neil Sedaka, you haven’t heard the last of me.’ I had to change my style. It was the early ‘70s, and I met a guy by the name of Elton John. Did you ever hear of him?”
Sedaka, who met the singer of “I’m Still Standing” at a London party, said he was asked to sign with John’s former label, the Rocket Record Company.
And, as the label suggests, Sedaka’s fame skyrocketed with 1974’s album Sedaka’s Back—the first of three albums with Elton John—and the singer was again charting hits in the U.S.
In 1983, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and he later received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
