Elton's career has spanned 35 years

He's survived career dips, drug addiction and a variety of public court cases to become one of the most successful and enduring musicians of the last 40 years. Elton John is one of 17 great Britons featured in the forthcoming Movers and Shakers exhibition at the National Archives in Kew, west London.

The son of an RAF trumpeter, Elton was born Reginald Kenneth Dwight in Pinner, Middlesex.

Elton John's name change Enlarge Image

He began playing piano at the age of four and when he was 11, won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music.

At the start of his pop career, he opted for a catchier moniker, taking his inspiration from singer Long John Baldry and sax player Elton Dean.

The document on display as part of the exhibition relates to Elton's name change and is proof that Elton Hercules John started life as Reg Dwight.

Winning team

Elton, from a portrait by Suzi Malin

Elton met lyricist Bernie Taupin when they both answered an ad for songwriters in NME.

It was the start of a beautiful and lucrative partnership.

In 1969 he released his debut album Empty Sky, which received fair reviews, but no sales - so no outrageous spending sprees for Elton just yet.

Success would come the following year with the Gus Dudgeon produced single, Your Song, taken from the album, Elton John. It was the singer's first UK hit reaching number seven in the charts.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS Writer Geoffrey Chaucer 1343-1400 Inventor William Caxton 1415-91 Noblewoman Cecily Neville 1415-95 King HenryVIII 1491-1547 Queen Elizabeth I 1558-1603 Politician and Soldier Oliver Cromwell 1599-1658 Architect Christopher Wren 1632-1723 Astronomer Edmund Halley 1656-1742 Civil Servant Henry Cole 1808-1882 Political Economist Karl Marx 1818-1883 Writer Charles Dickens 1812-1870 Nurse Mary Seacole 1805-1881 Scientist Francis Crick 1916-2004 Mathematician and Computer Scientist Alan Turing 1912-1954 Social Explorer Gertrude Bell 1868 - 1926 Soldier and Statesman Winston Churchill 1874 - 1965 Musician Elton John 1947- Karl Marx's smoking gun

By 1973, Elton had launched his own label, Rocket Records and in 1974, he became director of Watford Football Club beginning a successful working partnership with Watford manager Graham Taylor.

He has the rare accolade of charting a Top 40 single every year from 1970 to 1996.

Success brought enormous wealth coupled with a rather nasty drug habit and several well-publicised tantrums.

"I once phoned my agent telling him to do something about the wind outside my hotel room," he once said.

National Archives curator Sue Laurence says: "It's perfectly justifiable to put him in because he has also contributed something at a cultural level, as an entrepreneur involved in a football club and the Old Vic. He's an icon."