The following is an excerpt from The Sunday Telegraph:
The singer, 62, said he was deeply traumatised by the suicide of the man, with whom he had been involved in a relationship before he "married" David Furnish, a film-maker 15 years his junior, in 2005.
"Years back I had a relationship, and I had absolutely no idea in the world he was going to do this... he threw himself under a truck," Sir Elton said. "There was so much grief."
Mr Furnish told The Sunday Telegraph that the lover, whom he declined to name, had taken his life because he was traumatised by the clash between his Christianity and his sexual inclinations.
"He was so tortured by the conflicting views between his sexuality and his strong religious beliefs that he chose to take his own life," said Furnish, whom Sir Elton "married" in a ceremony at Windsor Guildhall on the first day that civil partnerships could be performed in England. "It is very sad indeed."
Mr Furnish, a former advertising executive, added that "out of respect" for the dead man's family he would not name him.
Sir Elton, who has a fortune estimated at £175 million, said his grief had inspired him to provide financial support for a stage play that opened in New York last week.
The couple are producers of the play, Next Fall, which documents the relationship between two homosexual men: one a young Christian from the southern states of America; the other, a non-believer. One of the men suffers an accident.
"It's the right timing for this," said Mr Furnish. "The religious divide between Right and Left has gotten wider, and so the rights of gay people never got back to where it was heading."