Elton John’s endorsement of his songwriting partner’s book is revealing:“I am besotted by the life I never knew he had.” Weird,because Bernie Taupin is no stay-at-home,phone-it-in lyricist. Most of his extravagant recollections seem to emanate from the bar adjacent to his piano player’s suite,often with characters who just spilled off the same private jet.
The Rocketman’s oblivion to the inner life and outward shenanigans of the man who calls him his “best friend” reflects standard rock star self-obsession. But it also marks Taupin as a singularly abstract cat. The fact that he looks like a different bloke in every other photograph confirms a truly chameleonic character:the gift of the born spy.
Bernie Taupin and Elton John celebrate their success in early 1973.
“For those who might assume that I was simply floating on the wave of Elton’s tour dollars and flaunting around as if I was owed this luxury by way of my lyrical contributions,take note,” he feels compelled to clarify around the 300-page,five-million air-mile mark. “Whether I was cogent,sober or blitzed,I was forever feeding off my surroundings,making copious notes for future compositions.”
The offcuts pay off big time here. The visual detail in Taupin’s scene-setting is matched by a laser-focused eye for character and motivation and a luxuriance in language that makes all the world feel like a widescreen movie spanning decades of enviable excess. In short,not too surprisingly,this lyricist can write.
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The script is far from linear,and our pilgrim guide leaves giant holes as if to acknowledge tales better told by more central parties,not least in his frontman’s own memoir of 2019,ghosted and tellingly titled in contrast,Me.
Frank reflections about him,specific songs,albums and recording sessions are here – “the less said aboutIsland Girl the better”,but do have another listen toThe Diving Board – but they’re secondary to the life experience that keeps them coming,and the overarching love affair with America and its cowboy mythos that underpins so many.
The story starts when a watchful chicken farmhand from Lincolnshire shows up in a London recording studio in late ’67 to find he’s the only respondent to young Reggie Dwight’s call for a collaborator.
History is made almost instantly,in the scheme of things. There’s some cute room-share bonding under Reg’s mum’s roof,where Taupin laughs off his new friend’s sole amorous advance without shock or rancour. But the booze-sodden,coke-sniffing,restaurant-hopping,star-studded LA high life soon opens like a vortex that defines the rest of the story,either as debauched indulgence or impetus for various exotic escapes.
From here to New York and everywhere else on Earth,Taupin chooses his celebrity anecdotes with taste and purpose. He’s transformed by a chance encounter with his literary hero,Graham Greene,in a fireside armchair in London;unconvinced by Salvador Dali’s schtick in a Manhattan hipster joint. He marks Warhol boring,Leonard Cohen and Willie Dixon godlike,and himself guilty for dumping his buddy Alice Cooper when cocaine turns to crack.
From his rare place in high society’s shadows,diplomacy is surplus to requirements. He tears small,stinging strips off Rod Stewart’s pretentiousness and destroys the “anachronism” that was Hugh Hefner with rapier precision. Just the facts,eloquently parsed at close range.
Most entertaining is this brutal measure of the British royal family,who “hijacked” his best mate early and forever as an unpaid “in-house jukebox … the musical brandy and cigars for a motley group of bluebloods and upper-crust insiders.
“I couldn’t help but equate the underappreciated indulgence of satiated nobility reclining free of charge inches away from a pop megastar with the working stiff who had to fork out a fiver for a nosebleed seat,” he writes. “‘Let them eat cake,’ indeed.”
The no-frills assessment of the clear-eyed farm boy is Taupin’s saving grace as his own platinum-plated,skirt-chasing lifestyle flirts with a less sympathetic self-portrait. His self-awareness is razor-edged,a conscious work-in-progress as the “asinine choices” of his younger days gradually give way to true love and family with his fourth wife,a leggy Christian model named Heather whom he meets on a tour bus.
Elton John and Bernie Taupin celebrate their Oscars for (I’m Gonna) Love Me Again from Rocketman in 2020
Too much talk of dear (rich) friends on tropical escapades can get wearying. Likewise,less gripping are tales of his ’80s vanity band the Farm Dogs,and other late chapters about embracing his dream ranch-and-rodeo lifestyle and a typically charmed new career as an exhibiting artist.
If Elton read this far,he’d no doubt agree that snapshots of idle rich indulgence are better focused on the coke-crazed piano diva in his vomit-caked dressing gown than catching really big fish off the coast of Mexico. Some fish are better filleted for songs.
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