It is not difficult to understand that the prospect of my youth work potentially displayed within such an extraordinary context was more than exciting to me. That is the only reason why I immediately subscribed to the request of the British singer’s employee : I accepted to transfer pro bono all of my digital files, as well as a guarantee of access to the few originals that I had kept and to my “back catalogue” production inspired by Elton John, in accordance with her wish.
However, the minute that my files got transferred, I heard no more of Elton John's firm’s contact. As time went by, I deduced that the exhibition project had finally stalled, or that none of my mid-Seventies work had been selected. A disappointment certainly, but which did bring the story to a close for me. However, fate has a trick up each of its innumerable sleeves. By late November of 2018, my vanished contact made an unexpected come back. She informed me that she intended to send me (as a "thank you") a copy of the product that her firm had mass-produced and put on sale as of early September 2018, when Elton John's "Farewell" world tour had kicked off. So…here was what this mysterious “celebration” finally was -and had always been. I discovered that the produced good used one of the paintings from My Elton Years, realizing abruptly that only the files that I had donated a year earlier had made that operation possible. I had thought this donation was my chance to participate in the great "celebration of the key moments of Elton John’s career” that had been mentioned. But reality was that I had just brought on a silver plate some files which my contact coveted for a purely commercial operation, using my work for her employer’s sole benefit. My gullibility had opened the royal way to a marketing action that my contact had never mentioned, during any of our exchanges or meeting - when she could have described clearly her real intentions whenever she wished.
I was completely aghast.
My first reaction was to protest firmly. Due to my dissent, the ongoing sales since Autumn 2018 of the product using my work were temporarily suspended by the decision of Elton John's corporation.

Secondly, my representative decided to contact Elton John's firm in January 2019. He firmly denounced the form and substance of the commercial operation that had been carried out. One must believe that his arguments were sufficiently legitimate and sound for the product using my work not to be put back on sale. And since then, permanently withdrawn to that day.
My representative then asked for a compensation for the misuse of my work. It took two years before that an agreement was proposed to us. However, I declined the offer made to us, in total agreement with my representative. I could have subscribed to it insofar that reputedly "getting something is always better than nothing". But “nothing” in this case was clearly preferable to the deal that was presented to us, because its terms were completely unacceptable. So we left it there. I had no difficulty in making this decision, my motivations in sending my book to Elton John having always been completely foreign to any notion of profit. I never nursed any regrets about that decision since then.

Looking back, the only thing I deplore is to have dealt with that employee of Elton John, who dangled before my eyes a great “celebration” when she had only one thing in mind : to generate a profit using my work, avoiding upstream to give me any details regarding her project. And vis-à-vis Elton John, I feel sorry that a book that I had designed with the best intentions in the world ended up in such a shipwreck. Because my driving forces behind that book were memory, admiration, care and sincerity. Not greed or an intention to make a profit. If by the fall of 2016, I had sent the British artist a two hundred forty pages book that took my heart and my soul fully during more than a year in its making, it was only for the purpose of sharing some memories that I cherished with him. Not with his firm. Insomuch as that private book’s even partial disclosure to people completely outside my story represented a true embarrassment for me. In any case, this book had not been produced to become a platform for a commercial use of its content, and still less by knowingly omitting to tell me anything about it before.