ATLANTA -- In the late-night world of rock-and-roll, noon is as likely to mark the time for a wake-up call as it is for lunch. But an energetic Elton John has already been up for almost five hours as he leads a guest on a tour of the lavish 6,000-square-foot condo here that's now his home base in America.

It's a few days before John's first U.S. tour in three years -- his first fully "sober" American tour in more than a decade, a series of shows that includes performances tonight and tomorrow at the Merriweather Post Pavilion.

"I get up at 6:30 now, which is kinda funny because there was a time when I'd be going to bed at 6:30 or ... more likely, I'd still be going strong," he says. "I used to stay up sometimes for days at a time ... concerts three nights in a row once without any sleep.

"It really was Elvis Presley time again," John concedes. "{Rock-and-roll} isn't a normal life. You get cut off from people, isolated. It's easy to lose your values and self-respect. I got to where I didn't know how to speak to someone unless I had a nose full of cocaine. Nothing could satisfy me. I used to complain about everything -- right down to the color of the private jet."

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For anyone exposed to the joy and good-time spirit of his music and concerts in the '70s and '80s, it is sobering to listen to John, 45, detail the despair in his life during most of those years. Despite being one of the most beloved figures of the modern pop era, the singer-composer went through a private hell of drugs and other problems, including the eating disorder bulimia.

The reference to Presley is especially poignant because it was hearing Elvis's "Heartbreak Hotel" as a child in England that made John fall in love with rock-and-roll. So it's easy to understand why he walked away with tears in his eyes in the '70s after his first meeting with a bloated and self-destructive Presley.

But John's own condition became so desperate in the late '80s that some of his friends and associates now speak about the times they came away with tears of their own after seeing him in such bad shape.

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"I had to change because I was frightened," he explains of his decision to enter a treatment center in Chicago in 1990. "I didn't want to die angry and bitter and sad, and that's what I had become: physically ugly, spiritually ugly ... a slob, a pig."

In recent months, John has regained the humility and enthusiasm that he exhibited in the early years. Aside from weight loss (down from about 200 pounds to 175), the most obvious physical difference is his new hair, the result of a weave that reportedly cost $25,000.

John's million-dollar apartment is in a new high-rise on Peachtree Street in Atlanta's fashionable Buckhead section. John, who also owns a London town house and a country estate in England, enjoys spending time in the United States and settled in Atlanta because "it's a young city, and I don't feel any pressure from the entertainment world. Here, I drive myself around, go down to the market -- a lot of the simple things that I never did before," he says, walking through an elegant living room furnished with pink and white cushions and chairs. The living room table is stacked with books -- including a biography of Marilyn Monroe, whose own tragic career was chronicled in John's hit single "Candle in the Wind."

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It has been widely assumed that John decided to seek help for cocaine and other addictions because of his emotional involvement with Ryan White, the Indiana child whose heroic battle against AIDS made headlines around the world. John became engrossed in the youngster's story, which included having to rally against the hostility of parents who feared their children would be infected if White were allowed to attend school. Through it all, White maintained a warm, forgiving, idealistic spirit.

Moved by the boy's plight, John was one of several celebrities who tried to comfort White in the final days before his death, at age 18, in April 1990. "I couldn't believe that a family who had had so much hatred flung at them and so much bigotry could be so forgiving. I never experienced that before -- that amount of love."

Shortly afterward, John's lover at the time told him that he was checking into a detox center. The singer's first reaction: anger. "I thought, 'God, can't you sort your own problems out?' " he says. "But that's the way I was."

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Still, John visited his friend at a clinic in Arizona. The meeting, however, didn't go well and he returned to London, thinking the relationship was over.

"I stayed in my room and I cried, and I used off and on for two weeks," he says. "But eventually I realized how much I cared about this person and how much I admired him for doing it.

"I thought, 'This person tried to do something for himself, and here you are just sitting here ... fat, haven't washed for two weeks, vomit all over your dressing gown.' "

Resolved, John returned to Arizona where he and his companion went to a counselor. He then decided to seek help for himself -- and found a hospital in Chicago that could provide treatment for both drugs and bulimia, which is a continuous hunger that leads to eating enormous amounts of food and then vomiting. He checked in on July 29, 1990.

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John -- born Reginald Dwight -- was 23 and largely unknown when he made his U.S. debut in the summer of 1970 at the Troubadour in West Hollywood. The combination of engaging showmanship and outstanding songs made such an impact on the industry-dominated audience that he was hailed as a new star by the time he stepped offstage.

At a time when the pop and rock worlds were going in separate directions, John's music combined the accessibility and craft of pop with the energy and passion of rock. The graceful and imaginative lyrics of John's British songwriting partner, Bernie Taupin, were intimate and appealing looks at such varied topics as youthful longing ("Your Song") and old age ("60 Years On").

When his self-titled debut album entered the Top 10 that fall, it was the beginning of an extraordinary streak that would establish John as the most popular artist of the decade. The '70s chart statistics remain phenomenal: 13 Top 10 albums, including seven that reached No. 1, plus 16 Top 10 singles.

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But those numbers don't tell the whole story.

"Despite all the success, I think I just wanted to be loved," John says. "I wanted someone in my life to love me."

For a brief and surprising moment in 1984, he thought marriage was the answer. John surprised the pop world, his friends -- and himself, no doubt -- by marrying Renate Blauel, a recording engineer he met while making an album in London. The wedding took place on Valentine's Day while John was on tour in Australia. He spoke in the press about the responsibility of marriage and longing for children: "I'd like to have two because I grew up an only child."

The marriage lasted only four years -- and there were no children. It's a delicate point with John, but he talks about it without prodding. "Even though I knew I was gay, I thought this woman was attractive and that being married would cure me of everything wrong in my life. ... And my wife did love me," he says. "... But it didn't change my way of life. I wasn't a sexual philanderer during that time, but I certainly didn't stop taking drugs and alcohol, and when you take that amount, you can't have any relationship."

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