A new autobiography sheds light on John’s songwriting partner – someone who wrote lyrics with astonishing empathy, and cleverly documented the music scene that surrounded the pair
As befits a lengthy autobiography by an artist who, as the cover puts it, is “a famously private person”, we learn a great deal about lyricist Bernie Taupin from Scattershot: Life, Music, Elton and Me, published this week.
We discover that, low public profile or not, Taupin enjoyed the fruits of his success in almost as lavish a style as his songwriting partner Elton John: while holidaying in Barbados in the mid-70s, he rectifies the problem of having forgotten to buy a birthday present for his then girlfriend by simply flying to New York, picking something up at Tiffany, then immediately flying back to the Caribbean. We learn that the man who wrote the lyrics for Candle in the Wind wasn’t a fan of Marilyn Monroe, and that the man who rewrote the lyrics for Candle in the Wind so it could be performed at Diana, Princess of Wales’s funeral isn’t keen on the institution of monarchy. And we learn that – again, like his most celebrated songwriting partner – he is possessed of a winningly waspish sense of humour. As skewering live reviews go, his view from the audience at the Rolling Stones’s legendary Shelley-quoting, butterfly-releasing 1969 Hyde Park gig takes some beating: “Then the Stones came on,” he writes, “pretending they were sorry Brian Jones was dead.”
