The artwork Elton John has displayed on the walls of his home in the Hollywood Hills wasn’t necessarily intended to reinforce a running theme. Yet you can’t help noticing how some of the paintings suggest a preoccupation that has consumed him through nearly four decades. On the wall nearest the picture window overlooking the Los Angeles Basin is one of Andy Warhol’s blazingly chromatic 1960s portraits of Elizabeth Taylor. And in the small dinette off the foyer where we will have an audience with John, there is a Keith Haring original.

The latter is a painting by a famous figure in the art world who died of AIDS. The other, a loving rendering of an actress who was among the first beloved celebrities bold enough to dedicate herself to the fight against AIDS when the public and government

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