BOOK REVIEW : A Fuzzy Portrait of a British Superstar : ELTON JOHN: A Biography, <i> by Philip Norman,</i> Harmony Books, $22.50; 520 pages

Not counting the oversize hats and sunglasses, there are three important aspects of the Elton John Story: music, fame and money.

Although Philip Norman, author of the definitive account of the Beatles’ career and a good book on the Rolling Stones, has written another solid and scrupulous biography here, he doesn’t seem much interested in any of those three. Which leaves the reader wondering why he wrote the book.

If John’s musical talent amounts to anything more than good honky-tonk piano-playing, we don’t find out about it here.

Similarly, why so many people love his songs, making him rock’s highest-grossing performer, is never explained. (Of all the albums, singles, compact discs and tapes purchased annually throughout the world, 3% are by Elton John.)

If the music doesn’t inspire Norman’s interest, then the fame and money ought to excite him a bit.

We’d keep reading to see how multiple millions, combined with Buckingham Palace dinners, changed the life of a simple, short and overweight boy from suburban London. But Norman tells us little about this metamorphosis, offering only trite observations such as: “Stupendously rich as he is, (John) also is known not to be outstandingly happy.”

Onstage, John always gave good value for money, as they say over there, with his style combining Liberace, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and Tanya Tucker.

Offstage, John is a modestly interesting and mildly contradictory chap. He’s close to his Mum, but changed his name from Reginald Kenneth Dwight to Elton Hercules John.

For journalists such as Norman, who covered pop music for London’s Sunday Times Magazine, John is always articulate and appealingly self-deprecating. Well-mannered and generous, John is also given to tantrums, which were known to his early colleagues as “Reggie’s Little Moments.”

Although John’s music is usually likable and sometimes quite memorable--(“Your Song,” the one that begins It’s a little bit funny/This feeling inside, is a lasting rendition of shy infatuation)--a lot of his songs are pointlessly confusing pap. On the album “Caribou,” for example, there’s one called “Solar Prestige a Gammon,” which is tres “Spinal Tap.”

The component of his private life that makes John more than ordinarily contradictory, or at least vulnerable, is his sexual confusion, or versatility.

In 1976, John told Rolling Stone magazine, “There’s nothing wrong with going to bed with someone of your own sex. I think everyone’s bisexual to a certain degree. I don’t think it’s just me.” All the same, he wanted to have children and was genuinely sad about the end of his marriage to German-born sound engineer Renate Blauer.

Perhaps because he has been writing for so long about rock stars who wreck fancy hotel rooms and destroy priceless manor houses, Norman is fascinated by how tidy John is.

Flamboyant performer and a wild party-giver though he is, John is happiest emptying ashtrays and Hoovering (Limey for vacuuming) the rugs. When he’s in a bad mood, his friends cry, “Where’s the Pledge?” knowing the star’s mental health can be restored by polishing furniture.

As told by Norman, the story of John’s life proceeds slowly, from underappreciated ‘60s pub entertainer to piano-thumping ‘70s superstar.

John spent his early years playing backup keyboard for the British tours of groups like The Drifters and Patti La Belle and the Bluebells. Then he met poet Bernie Taupin, and they shared a brief period of great happiness and productivity.

Friends, not lovers, they moved in with Elton’s mother. “Bernie would sit on the lower bunk bed, scribbling lyrics on a pad on his knee. He would then take them along the minuscule hallway and into the living room, where Elton sat at the upright piano. Back in the bedroom, a few moments later, he would hear chords begin to vibrate through the wall.”

John would usually deliver music back to Taupin within 10 minutes.

Not long after John’s successful American tour, he moved in with a lover, John Reid, who became his manager. (Reid, convicted of assault on a New Zealand tour, would be John’s best man when he married.)

At this point of career success and temporary sexual settled-ness, Norman’s narrative degenerates into this:

There was an album, and then there was a tour. And then there was another album, and then he went on tour. And then there was another album . . . .

This goes on for some seven years, with the reader burning out, as did Elton John.

Sprinkled throughout is what could be the stuff of high drama for recording execs--contractual wrangles over continental sub-rights.

Also winding through is the following threnody: John got fat and then he lost some weight. Then he gained it back. He lost a lot of his hair, and then he had a hair transplant. The transplant didn’t work.

Fame and money do not bring happiness, both Norman and John decide. (Norman’s is not an authorized biography, and he never spoke directly to John for the book.)

“The stage is about the only place where I feel safe,” John concludes.

Which is, oddly enough, exactly what another British bisexual superstar, Laurence Olivier, said, as quoted in the biography that is sitting in bookstores right now.

Onstage, they can be someone else. Sometimes, they can be who they want to be.

Next: Jonathan Kirsch reviews “Loose Cannons” by Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Oxford).