Sir Elton John came about this close to borrowing some words from another famous set of Brits when he explained his vision for ending AIDS — all you need is love. “Maybe you think I’m naive, maybe you think I’m off my rocker, well here I am, telling an audience of 7,000 global health experts that we can end AIDS with love,” John said Monday afternoon at the International AIDS Conference being held this week at the Washington Convention Center.

John, sporting a festive set of bright pink spectacles, began his presentation by describing how his own actions, drug and alcohol abuse, along with unprotected sex, put him at very high risk for contracting HIV when he was younger. “I shouldn’t be here today, I should be dead, six feet under in a wooden box,” he said. “I should have contracted HIV in the 1980s, and died in the 1990s, just like Freddie Mercury, just like Rock Hudson, just like so many friends and loved ones of yours and mine.”