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Elton John Coverage date: 14 September 2013 Circulation: 666898 Page: 4,5,6
[)TMD>DNO & OCDIF JA HTN@GA fter more than 40 years as – when he was earning case of thinking ‘I’ve come home’.” one half of one of the most £5 a week, and Elton He has now lived in America for successful songwriting £10, “because he sang” almost 40 years, and it is 10 since he partnerships in British – the two friends were was last in Britain. He has no desire musical history, Bernie both in the habit of to go back. Taupin says that he now considers spending every available penny on “The England I remember doesn’t writing lyrics simply as “a hobby”. albums. Elton, ever fastidious, would really exist any more. The last time At his ranch in the hill country sheath his albums in clear plastic I went there I definitely felt like a above Santa Barbara in California sleeves and file them alphabetically stranger in a strange land.” The where he has lived for the past 20 in shelves ranged along the ranch, where he lives with his wife years, Taupin spends most of his bedroom wall. and two young children, is set on time pursuing other passions. Taupin was no less fastidious. He 30 acres in idyllically beautiful He paints, cooks and reads. And has 50,000 albums filed and boxed countryside, miles from the nearest from a small study above upstairs in his home. Selected items town. Taupin is a man who values his his studio – decorated are brought down to the large living privacy, and his solitude. “The more with a poster for The Wild room to play on his hi-fi. On a coffee people I meet, the more I like my Bunch, a fine pencil table there are copies of vintage dogs, as they say.” (He has five). drawing of a young albums by Lightnin’ Hopkins and Taupin bought the property 10 Taupin by Don Bachardy, Junior Wells – in clear plastic sleeves. years ago, to indulge his passion for and a photograph of On the wall are photographs of horses. “I wanted to be a cowboy. Leonard Nimoy signed Howlin’ Wolf, taken on the European I wanted to really just bury myself “to a fellow Rocket Man” folk and blues tours in the early in that whole lifestyle, not as a – produces a weekly Sixties. “I was living in the wrong plaything. If you live in this area, programme, American place and too young to see them,” you’re going to grow grapes or raise Roots Radio, for the he says, sounding genuinely peeved. horses or cattle. You don’t come here American satellite station “But I’ve got them all on DVD and for any other reason.” Sirius, playing an eclectic watch them every month or so.” He became expert in mixture of the traditional There is a sense in which Taupin “cutting” – a rodeo event blues, country and has always felt more American than where the rider “cuts” a rock ’n’ roll that has British. As a child, growing up in the steer away from the rest always been his abiding Lincolnshire village of Owmby-by- of the herd – regularly musical obsession. Spital he was obsessed with cowboy competing in rodeos and It is a matter of movies; his first serious musical love competitions across principle for Taupin that was Marty Robbins’s Gunfighter California and down to all the music he plays is Ballads and Trail Ballads. Frontier and the Mexican border from his own collection. Civil War imagery had infiltrated his against professional cow- In the early days of lyrics even before he first set foot in punchers. (He also co- his partnership with the country, when Elton made his owned a bucking bull Elton John, when Taupin American debut at the Troubador in named Little Yellow was living at John’s Los Angeles in 1970. “When I got Jacket, which was mother’s house in Pinner here,” Taupin says, “it really was a recently retired as an The contents of the publications from which these extracts have been taken are copyright works and without prior permission of the relevant collecting society or save as permitted by statute may not be copied or otherwise reproduced (even for internal purposes) or resold. Elton John Coverage date: 14 September 2013 Circulation: 666898 Page: 4,5,6 unprecedented three- Now comes a new album, The Elton, famously, can write a song time world champion.) Diving Board, and Taupin has been in as little as five minutes, and “One of the things I indulging his “hobby” again. dispatch three in a day. liked about it,” he says, Like The Union, it has been “I’m not sure that’s something you “was that nobody knew, produced by T-Bone Burnett, and should tell people,” Taupin says with or cared who I was. was recorded “live” in the studio a laugh. “Because they tend to think And the adrenalin rush giving the album a tight, uncluttered you should spend longer on it and of those two minutes, and naturalistic feel that compounds maybe you can improve it; but that’s there’s nothing like it.” The Union’s return to form (see not his modus operandi, so I’m not But age and injury have review, overleaf). going to argue with it.” put paid to the cutting; “There have definitely been Taupin dislikes the term lyricist. the horses have gone and periods that weren’t so good,” Taupin “It’s such a strange word. I think of the stables and ranch- says. “In the late Eighties and early myself as a story teller.” hand bunkhouses are Nineties we made some albums that, The songs on The Diving Board empty. “Horses and quite honestly, were crap records. include a meditation on old soldiers, restaurants – they’re both There was a certain amount of inspired by his father, who fought a bottomless money pit,” distance between Elton and me. I against the Germans in West Africa he says with a sigh. “And I’ve tried don’t mean in our relationship; I just and the Japanese in Burma; and a them both.” think we were floating in different vignette of life in a Mexican town. “He is a gentle and unassuming spheres. We weren’t communicating The Ballad of Blind Tom was inspired person who has perfected the enough, and complacency set in. by the true story of Blind Tom technique of remaining anonymous “But I’m really proud of what we’re Wiggins, an idiot-savant piano player in the crowd,” is how the director doing now. I feel that we’ve refound who went from being a house-slave Bryan Forbes described a youthful, our footing, and our passion.” to performing for crowned heads in long-haired Taupin in a 1972 Over the years Taupin and Elton Europe. While A Town Called Jubilee television documentary. “The have developed a practised, if is vintage Taupin Frontier-Americana. Cartier-Bresson, as it were, of the idiosyncratic, working relationship. “Lilly pulled a horseshoe from a pop world… Success has singed, but They seldom see each other – Elton pile of junk/ Said ‘I’m gonna keep not burnt him…” has visited Taupin’s ranch only once this good luck piece of iron inside my “Oh God, bless his heart, but that in all the years he’s been living there; trunk/ The boy just whispered ‘OK’ was the most pretentious…” Taupin but communicate frequently. and grabbed his old black dog/ As laughs. “Of course, at the time I had When Elton has a new album in we piled on in and cut out through no idea who Cartier-Bresson was.” mind, he gets in touch. Taupin then late November fog”. The youth, and the hair, have gone. spends two or three weeks writing “That’s a perfect example of how a Taupin is a stocky, well-muscled lyrics, accompanying himself on song just grows from the first line,” man with close cropped hair, dressed guitar, which he then emails to Elton. he says. “I just got the image of a down in a T-shirt and jeans, the “I used to have to fax them. It took farm being sold, and all the junk only sign of ostentation his designer a long time to drag this guy kicking lying around, and the first stanza spectacles with silver hinges, shaped and screaming into the 21st century, just came to me in one thought, as like the head of a guitar. and I’m not sure he’s mastered that it were. But he remains gentle and yet. I’m sure he has somebody print “Rocket Man was the same thing. unassuming; singed, but not burnt. them out. But he’s got plenty of ‘She packed my bags last night In their first flush of fame, he would people to do it.” preflight, zero hour, 9am. And I’m often join Elton on tours: the Elton, he says, writes everything gonna be high as a kite by then…’ limousines, the bodyguards, the in the studio: he never practises I remember, I was driving to my parties… “Oh God, I got that all out piano, and never plays for his own parents’ house in England and not of my system real quickly. I wouldn’t amusement. having anything to write it down, and want that now for all the tea in “He’s very methodical in that the just driving like crazy to get there China.” He laughs, gesturing, to one only time he ever plays is when he before I forgot it.” of his dogs, splayed out in a chair. plays live and when he’s in the “That’s my bodyguard now.” studio writing and recording. They e resists any kind of analysis of set up a booth for him with a piano his songs. It was Paul Simon, n the years since the first Elton and record everything he works on. %he says, who remarked on John album in 1969, he and Elton “We’ll sit down, and I might say, ‘I the common occurrence of people &have made 28 albums together. kind of see this as a Gram Parsons venturing a meaning of a song which (Elton has made two, A Single Man kind of song’. Or ‘there’s a very was not at all what Simon had in (1978) and Victim of Love (1979), with Ray Charles feel to this’. He likes mind when he wrote it – but was other lyricists). The frenetic output bullet points. But then he’ll go off often much more interesting. of the early period – seven albums on a tangent and take it totally “I remember when we did in the first five years – has somewhat somewhere else. Madman Across the Water people relaxed. It is three years since their “But I never argue with his were saying it was about Richard last record, a collaboration with Leon melodic stylings because the guy is a Nixon. It had never crossed my mind Russell, The Union. genius as far as I’m concerned.” for a minute, but I thought that was a The contents of the publications from which these extracts have been taken are copyright works and without prior permission of the relevant collecting society or save as permitted by statute may not be copied or otherwise reproduced (even for internal purposes) or resold. Elton John Coverage date: 14 September 2013 Circulation: 666898 Page: 4,5,6 fabulous idea. “For me, explaining songs is a bit like explaining abstract painting, I don’t think you should.” It is painting, he says, that now occupies “80 per cent” of his time. He would always travel with a sketch book, and pastels, but moving to the ranch, and converting an old racquetball court into a studio enabled him, as he puts it, JIODIP@? JI K \1C@ G \& PN@? OJ C The contents of the publications from which these extracts have been taken are copyright works and without prior permission of the relevant collecting society or save as permitted by statute may not be copied or otherwise reproduced (even for internal purposes) or resold. Elton John Coverage date: 14 September 2013 Circulation: 666898 Page: 4,5,6 Vivid blocks of colour: Taupin’s paintings sell for up to £16,000 JIODIP@? AMJH K The contents of the publications from which these extracts have been taken are copyright works and without prior permission of the relevant collecting society or save as permitted by statute may not be copied or otherwise reproduced (even for internal purposes) or resold. Elton John Coverage date: 14 September 2013 Circulation: 666898 Page: 4,5,6 In sync: Elton and Taupin hit the big time in the Seventies Partners in rhyme: Bernie Taupin and Elton John have made 28 albums together since 1969. ‘The guy is a genius as far as I’m concerned,’ says Taupin of his friend GETTY IMAGES The contents of the publications from which these extracts have been taken are copyright works and without prior permission of the relevant collecting society or save as permitted by statute may not be copied or otherwise reproduced (even for internal purposes) or resold.