Temperamental pop star Elton John's career was back on song on Monday, three days after he announced his retirement.

John, 53, told a sell-out crowd at New York's Madison Square Garden on Friday that he planned to step down imminently. ''One more album and I'm done,'' he told his shocked fans.

But at a concert on Saturday the flamboyant rocker, who has sold more than 200 million records worldwide, changed his tune.

''Basically he said it was a load of bollocks,'' John's spokesman Paul Carey said. ''He did it on the spur of the moment bollocks when there were technical problems going on.''

Elton's erratic outbursts have grabbed as much media attention lately as his string of major hits like, ‘rocket man’ and ‘goodbye yellow brick road’. A recent television documentary about john, titled ‘tantrums and tiaras,’ showed him prone to ‘shopaholic’ excesses and pouty mood swings.

In September, Portuguese promoters threatened to sue after they accused him of fleeing from a concert, just moments before it was due to start.

Carey said that no one in the Elton camp was surprised by the latest threat to resign: ''he's probably said it a hundred times before.'' Bureau Report