Veteran musician Elton John, who announced his retirement from showbiz earlier this week, says that it was his brush with death experience which made him do so.

John, 70, who has enjoyed five decades of success, suffered a near-fatal bacterial infection in May, which saw him rushed to intensive care for emergency care, reports thesun.co.uk.

"I went to South America, had a wonderful tour, came back from Chile, felt bad on the plane, got home on a Tuesday night. I was in intensive care on Thursday and stayed there for two days. I was very, very close to death. I didn't know that?...?and was very fortunate I had great team of doctors," he said. 

"It took me seven weeks to get back to normal after that. I had tubes coming out of every?," he added. 

The health scare was a wake-up call for the musician causing him to re-evaluate his busy life and prioritise his family.

"That is a wake-up call. You think you're completely solid and nothing is going to stop me - and then something like that, which was extremely unlucky. Things happen for a reason. I thought, ‘We made this decision to come off the road, and this has reinforced it. This is someone telling me that, you know, it is about time," said John.