Renate Blauel is the German recording engineer who was married to Elton John for four years in the 1980s. The marriage is the part most people remember, but her work behind the mixing desk came first.
By the time she met John in 1983, while he was finishing an album in London, she had already worked on records by Japan, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Paul McCartney. She was a studio engineer with a real body of work, and barely anyone outside those rooms knew her name.
Then she married one of the most famous men alive, and her own career slipped out of view.
Table of Contents
Quick facts
- Full name: Renate Ruth Margot Blauel
- Nationality: German
- Profession: Recording engineer and tape operator
- Known for: First wife of Elton John, married 1984 to 1988
- Notable studio work: Paul McCartney, Japan, The Human League
Who is Renate Blauel?
Her title was tape operator, and later engineer. In a recording studio, the tape operator runs the machines and logs every take, the entry-level job that engineers work their way up from. Blauel was doing it at AIR Studios, the London operation founded by Beatles producer George Martin, and across a wide spread of artists.
Her engineering and tape-operator credits, listed on music databases such as Discogs, include:
- Mike Oldfield, Platinum (1979)
- Ryuichi Sakamoto, B-2 Unit (1980)
- Japan, Gentlemen Take Polaroids (1980)
- The Blues Band, Ready (1980)
- Paul McCartney, Tug of War (1982)
- The Human League, Hysteria (1984)
The sleeve of Hysteria even carries a personal thank-you to her by name. Studio engineering was almost entirely male in that period, which makes a run of credits like hers stand out.
How she met Elton John
She met John in early 1983, working as a tape operator on the sessions for his album Too Low for Zero. Within a year they were engaged. He proposed over dinner, and the wedding came days later.
It was fast, and it ran on front pages worldwide:
- Date: Valentine’s Day, 14 February 1984
- Venue: St Mark’s Anglican Church, Darling Point, Sydney
The ceremony was broadcast live on Australian television. John was one of the biggest stars on the planet that year, off the back of the hit “I’m Still Standing”, and his new wife had no public profile of her own.
Why the marriage ended
The marriage ran from 1984 to the couple’s divorce in 1988. They had no children.
John has spoken openly since about why it failed. He had married while still in denial about his sexuality. He told Rolling Stone he was bisexual in 1976, and came out as gay in 1992, four years after he and Blauel separated. (A common error online puts his coming out in the year of the divorce. That Rolling Stone interview ran in 1992.)
In his 2019 memoir, Me, John wrote about deciding to end it: “It was the right thing to do, but it was a horrible feeling.” Writing on Instagram in 2017, as Australia voted on same-sex marriage, he said he had “denied who I really was” and described the sadness it caused his then-wife. He married the filmmaker David Furnish in 2014.
The memoir, Rocketman and the 2020 court case
For three decades after the divorce, Blauel stayed out of public life. Two projects in 2019 brought her back: John’s autobiography Me, and the biopic Rocketman, in which she was played by Dutch actress Celinde Schoenmaker.
As Variety reported, John even wrote in the book that he and Blauel had agreed at the divorce never to discuss the private details of their marriage. She argued that the memoir and the film did precisely that.
In 2020 she took it to the High Court in London, as Billboard reported:
- She applied for an injunction in June 2020.
- She claimed John had breached the confidentiality agreement from their divorce.
- The damages she sought were put at about ยฃ3 million.
- The case settled out of court in October 2020.
A joint statement said the matter had been resolved in a way that respected her need for privacy, and that John had treated her with respect over the years. Neither side gave a figure.
Her response is what makes the case unusual. John told his side of the marriage in a 400-page memoir and a film seen by millions. Blauel kept her account to herself, then went to court when she felt the privacy she had been promised was gone.
Timeline: Blauel and Elton John
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1979 | Early engineering credit, on Mike Oldfield’s Platinum |
| 1983 | Meets Elton John during the Too Low for Zero sessions |
| 1984 | Marries John on Valentine’s Day in Sydney |
| 1988 | The couple divorce |
| 2019 | John’s memoir Me and the film Rocketman are released |
| 2020 | She sues over privacy; the case settles out of court |
Where is Renate Blauel now?
Almost nobody knows, and that appears to be deliberate.
Since the divorce she has rarely, if ever, spoken to the press, and she keeps no public profile. She is now in her seventies. The 2020 case was, in large part, an effort to protect the quiet life she built after 1988.
For a woman the press only ever introduced as a famous man’s ex-wife, that quiet may be the closest thing she has to the last word on her own marriage.
