Bernie Taupin, Elton John’s lyricist, wish to have a phrase

By Associated Press

NEW YORK: If you’re pondering of trying out the brand new memoir by Elton John’s lyricist to be taught extra concerning the Rocket Man, you’re out of luck. This is Bernie Taupin’s track to sing.

“Scattershot: Life, Music, Elton & Me” is an enchanting learn for the images it paints of the music scene of the Nineteen Seventies, ’80s and ‘90s but when John is what you search, he writes, the singer-pianist is “in absentia for much of this narrative.”

“What people don’t realize is that we were joined at the hip at the beginning. It was sort of me and him against the world,” Taupin stated in a current interview. “But I think once that we gained a modicum of success, it was natural that we would sort of separate and find our own lives.”

“Scattershot” is the story of an Englishman bewitched by nation music and the American West who grows as much as provide lyrics to one among rock n ’roll’s all-time superstars and later in life embraces artwork and turns into a bona fide cowboy.

“It was a great sort of psychological adventure, in a way,” he says. “It was like being on the couch and remembering things, being prodded by myself rather than a psychiatrist.”

Readers will be taught that “Bennie and the Jets” was impressed by Fritz Lang’s landmark movie “Metropolis,” “Tiny Dancer” really describes a handful of Los Angeles ladies, and “I’m Still Standing” was based mostly on a breakup suffered by Taupin.

They’ll be taught he was buzzed and poolside in Barbados when John referred to as him for lyrics to a brand new duet he was engaged on. Taupin threw one thing collectively that was “simplistic without being overly trite.” It grew to become “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart,” their first U.Okay. No. 1 and winner of an Ivor Novello Award. “Not bad for 10 minutes of drunken scribbling,” he writes.

Of assembly John the primary time, he writes: “I like him tremendously because he’s not condescending. I sense a kindred spirit; we’re outsiders looking for a way in, and I’m willing to play along, Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote.” He additionally writes about gracefully declining an early cross from John, paving the way in which for 50 years of friendship.

Taupin reveals he as soon as punched John Belushi, ate a half block of opium on a flight from New York, cut up his pants at a reception at Kensington Palace and that Marilyn Monroe was not the preliminary option to anchor “Candle in the Wind.”

When he and John revisited the track to honor Diana, Princess of Wales, Taupin spent simply half an hour and acknowledges in his memoir that “if you put a gun to my head right now and threatened to kill me if I didn’t recite the lyric, I’d be a dead man. I don’t remember a word of it.” It would develop into the best promoting single of all time.

Taupin doesn’t keep away from spilling tea. Of Andy Warhol, he writes: “Talking to Andy was like conversing with an 8-year-old girl” and he wasn’t a fan of Hugh Hefner: “He was the possessor of a perpetual, passive smirk that I found unsettling.”

“I always find that people tend to tiptoe around in autobiographies. But you have to call people out,” he stated within the interview. “I call out a few people, some more than others. But I also compliment the ones that deserve to be complimented.”

He additionally isn’t shy about criticizing his personal work. He and John’s first album, “Empty Sky,” was “an acceptable debut, but more importantly, a harbinger of growth and improvement.” Later, the album “Jump Up!” was “definitely subpar.”

Ben Schafer, an govt editor at Hachette Books who labored with Taupin on the memoir and is thanked within the acknowledgements, stated “Scattershot” advantages from a author residing in two worlds.

“He got to live like a rock star, but he didn’t have to be one and that gives him a certain kind of clarity,” stated Schafer, who has labored on books by Brian Wilson, Lou Reed and Buddy Guy. “He’s totally inside, but, in a way, he’s outside and can live something of a normal life in the way Elton John can’t.”

Taupin rejected writing a linear memoir, as an alternative taking a web page from Bob Dylan’s “Chronicles” and amassing his ideas in themes or places. His emotions and encounters with the royal household get one chapter, as does his journeys to Mexico.

“Doing it in a linear fashion, I think would have bored me, basically. It’s like writing songs: You write what you feel like writing at any given time. And that’s how the book was.”

There are uncommon sections, like a chapter that compares the outstanding surrealist artist Salvador Dali, who received on Taupin’s nerves, with Taupin’s driver, Ralphie, an unknown man whose firm he loved.

“The chapter was to say there are people that are there for a short time in our life that don’t leave a great legacy, but they do in your own mind,” stated Taupin. “In my mind, Ralphie was every every bit as important to me as running and hanging with Salvador Dali.”

The John-Taupin collaboration has created a few of trendy music’s most lasting hits, like “Your Song” and “Rocket Man.” But Taupin will not be valuable concerning the that means of his lyrics.

“I think it’s far more interesting to let people come up with their own conclusions as to what this song is about. I think it’s fascinating. It’s like looking at contemporary modern art or abstract art. ‘Now, what was he trying to say with this?’” he stated.

“I never take for granted that our songs have stood the test of time. I’m completely complimented by that. And I never take it for granted.”

Though related carefully with John, Taupin has additionally co-written such hits as “We Built This City” by Starship,“These Dreams” by Heart and “Breakfast in Birmingham” by Tanya Tucker.

“I like writing in a country vein and the Americana vein because it suits my sensibility better than anything else. So I’m just lucky to be able to find the people that are able to put my stories into the right framework,” he stated.

Later in life, he embraced making expressionist artwork and the game of chopping, an equestrian competitors through which a horse and rider are judged on their ability separating cows. It’s full circle for the boy who as soon as performed cowboy.

The ebook comes out a couple of months earlier than Taupin’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame — virtually 30 years after John received in and, to many, a long-overdue honor for the person who wrote “My gift is my song, and this one’s for you.”

“I’m probably going to be the first lyricist that’s actually in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, because, quite honestly, there aren’t many others,” he stated. “I think I only got considered when they realized that I actually wasn’t in there.”

NEW YORK: If you’re pondering of trying out the brand new memoir by Elton John’s lyricist to be taught extra concerning the Rocket Man, you’re out of luck. This is Bernie Taupin’s track to sing.

“Scattershot: Life, Music, Elton & Me” is an enchanting learn for the images it paints of the music scene of the Nineteen Seventies, ’80s and ‘90s but when John is what you search, he writes, the singer-pianist is “in absentia for much of this narrative.”

“What people don’t realize is that we were joined at the hip at the beginning. It was sort of me and him against the world,” Taupin stated in a current interview. “But I think once that we gained a modicum of success, it was natural that we would sort of separate and find our own lives.”googletag.cmd.push(perform() googletag.show(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); );

“Scattershot” is the story of an Englishman bewitched by nation music and the American West who grows as much as provide lyrics to one among rock n ’roll’s all-time superstars and later in life embraces artwork and turns into a bona fide cowboy.

“It was a great sort of psychological adventure, in a way,” he says. “It was like being on the couch and remembering things, being prodded by myself rather than a psychiatrist.”

Readers will be taught that “Bennie and the Jets” was impressed by Fritz Lang’s landmark movie “Metropolis,” “Tiny Dancer” really describes a handful of Los Angeles ladies, and “I’m Still Standing” was based mostly on a breakup suffered by Taupin.

They’ll be taught he was buzzed and poolside in Barbados when John referred to as him for lyrics to a brand new duet he was engaged on. Taupin threw one thing collectively that was “simplistic without being overly trite.” It grew to become “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart,” their first U.Okay. No. 1 and winner of an Ivor Novello Award. “Not bad for 10 minutes of drunken scribbling,” he writes.

Of assembly John the primary time, he writes: “I like him tremendously because he’s not condescending. I sense a kindred spirit; we’re outsiders looking for a way in, and I’m willing to play along, Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote.” He additionally writes about gracefully declining an early cross from John, paving the way in which for 50 years of friendship.

Taupin reveals he as soon as punched John Belushi, ate a half block of opium on a flight from New York, cut up his pants at a reception at Kensington Palace and that Marilyn Monroe was not the preliminary option to anchor “Candle in the Wind.”

When he and John revisited the track to honor Diana, Princess of Wales, Taupin spent simply half an hour and acknowledges in his memoir that “if you put a gun to my head right now and threatened to kill me if I didn’t recite the lyric, I’d be a dead man. I don’t remember a word of it.” It would develop into the best promoting single of all time.

Taupin doesn’t keep away from spilling tea. Of Andy Warhol, he writes: “Talking to Andy was like conversing with an 8-year-old girl” and he wasn’t a fan of Hugh Hefner: “He was the possessor of a perpetual, passive smirk that I found unsettling.”

“I always find that people tend to tiptoe around in autobiographies. But you have to call people out,” he stated within the interview. “I call out a few people, some more than others. But I also compliment the ones that deserve to be complimented.”

He additionally isn’t shy about criticizing his personal work. He and John’s first album, “Empty Sky,” was “an acceptable debut, but more importantly, a harbinger of growth and improvement.” Later, the album “Jump Up!” was “definitely subpar.”

Ben Schafer, an govt editor at Hachette Books who labored with Taupin on the memoir and is thanked within the acknowledgements, stated “Scattershot” advantages from a author residing in two worlds.

“He got to live like a rock star, but he didn’t have to be one and that gives him a certain kind of clarity,” stated Schafer, who has labored on books by Brian Wilson, Lou Reed and Buddy Guy. “He’s totally inside, but, in a way, he’s outside and can live something of a normal life in the way Elton John can’t.”

Taupin rejected writing a linear memoir, as an alternative taking a web page from Bob Dylan’s “Chronicles” and amassing his ideas in themes or places. His emotions and encounters with the royal household get one chapter, as does his journeys to Mexico.

“Doing it in a linear fashion, I think would have bored me, basically. It’s like writing songs: You write what you feel like writing at any given time. And that’s how the book was.”

There are uncommon sections, like a chapter that compares the outstanding surrealist artist Salvador Dali, who received on Taupin’s nerves, with Taupin’s driver, Ralphie, an unknown man whose firm he loved.

“The chapter was to say there are people that are there for a short time in our life that don’t leave a great legacy, but they do in your own mind,” stated Taupin. “In my mind, Ralphie was every every bit as important to me as running and hanging with Salvador Dali.”

The John-Taupin collaboration has created a few of trendy music’s most lasting hits, like “Your Song” and “Rocket Man.” But Taupin will not be valuable concerning the that means of his lyrics.

“I think it’s far more interesting to let people come up with their own conclusions as to what this song is about. I think it’s fascinating. It’s like looking at contemporary modern art or abstract art. ‘Now, what was he trying to say with this?’” he stated.

“I never take for granted that our songs have stood the test of time. I’m completely complimented by that. And I never take it for granted.”

Though related carefully with John, Taupin has additionally co-written such hits as “We Built This City” by Starship,“These Dreams” by Heart and “Breakfast in Birmingham” by Tanya Tucker.

“I like writing in a country vein and the Americana vein because it suits my sensibility better than anything else. So I’m just lucky to be able to find the people that are able to put my stories into the right framework,” he stated.

Later in life, he embraced making expressionist artwork and the game of chopping, an equestrian competitors through which a horse and rider are judged on their ability separating cows. It’s full circle for the boy who as soon as performed cowboy.

The ebook comes out a couple of months earlier than Taupin’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame — virtually 30 years after John received in and, to many, a long-overdue honor for the person who wrote “My gift is my song, and this one’s for you.”

“I’m probably going to be the first lyricist that’s actually in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, because, quite honestly, there aren’t many others,” he stated. “I think I only got considered when they realized that I actually wasn’t in there.”