Mere months before he was found dead in an elevator in his home/studio complex, Paisley Park in April of 2016, Prince Rogers Nelson, one of the most talented, celebrated and enigmatically reclusive rock stars of all time put out word with little to no fanfare around the publishing world that he was ready to write his memoir. Shockwaves and rumors and several aborted attempts to pin Prince down – a seemingly impossible task since his emergence on the music scene as a nineteen year-old phenom that convinced Warner Bros to give him complete creative control over his work. Enter writer/editor, Dan Piepenbring, who was both an advisory editor at the Paris Review and a rabid Prince fan. The story of his enchanting but furiously quick time in Prince’s presence working through pages of scribbled screed from the man himself about his childhood makes up a third of The Beautiful Ones. The other two-thirds of the book is just as intriguing.

The second part features Piepenbring’s yeoman’s work making heads or tails of Prince’s cadence, his use of weird symbols that replace words like “two” and “four” with their subsequent numerals and “I” with a drawing of an eyeball, and many other eccentricities into a readable text that is the most revealing of Prince’s private thoughts, fears and dreams. The passages about his parents and his awakening as a musician and eventually one of the great artists of the latter half of the previous century and the first sixteen years of this one is well worth the effort.

The third part is a treasure-trove of extremely rare photographs, notes, and mementos from Prince’s rise to fame all the way through the triumph of his groundbreaking smash hit Purple Rain album, film and tour. There is original artwork and designs for album covers, tour outfits, staging and insights into the magical world that Prince had figured in his head and set about infusing into the music and eventually those who helped make it a reality.

And while it is a bittersweet document of what could have been had Prince not accidentally overdosed on prescribed opioids at age fifty-seven, we nonetheless have a better grasp on the mysteries surrounding the blossoming of a superstar in his own words and with images from deep inside his life.

In the wake of this summer’s blockbuster biopic, Rocket Man reminding everyone how preternaturally brilliant, insanely famous and spectacularly screwed-up Elton John was in the 1970s and 80s, here comes his far more detailed memoir, Me. The author proves one thing straight away, the playful drama of the film doesn’t include his incredible self-awareness of his proclivities, talents and addictions, and that by imparting it in this most intimate way, he is damned funny. It is through his self-deprecating humor that Elton John becomes less cartoon superstar, something he readily admits he knew compromised his musical integrity as a part of one the great songwriting duos of the rock and roll era, and brings us closer to the man behind it all. It is in those intrepid insights into his myopic thrill-ride of a life and career where Me truly comes alive.

My complaint, as it was with Keith Richards and Pete Townshend’s memoirs, is that there just isn’t enough info into Elton’s two main contributions to the genre; his aforementioned composing with Bernie Taupin, and his instinctual ability to awe audiences from the very beginning. For the decade of the seventies when Elton John was the biggest rock star on the planet he released thirteen albums in nine years, some two or three in a single year, many of them some of the decade’s finest, and played the world over. His 1982 MSG show is still the best concert I have ever seen. So, count me as biased here, but it is clear Elton is far more interested in sharing a retrospective of having written “Your Song” in twelve minutes or the utter terror he felt starting at his idol, Leon Russell from the Troubadour stage when he blew Hollywood away and literally became an overnight sensation in the U.S. than he is with explaining how he did it.

One thing Elton does reveal much of is his truly incredible drug abuse, his search for love in almost all the wrong places, and his constant battles to expunge the sins of his parents, especially a love-hate cycle for decades with his mother. Of course, most people perusing fame with as raid ambition have some part of their past in which they are first motivated and then mortified by the results, but Elton’s is a heartfelt and triumphant journey from child abuse to a loving father and humanitarian who has conquered his demons. Me is a brave telling and in a voice that is, well, damn hilarious and brutally honest. Kind of like sitting for tea with Sir Elton.