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i slightly different in my respect, because I think it came "I grew up in England loving 'Goodbye Yellow from both sides. It came from music and literature, which Brick Road.' That album was the biggest is where I think my scope of writing comes from. If I can be so presumptuous to say that. influence on me ever, so to eventually work with I mean, a lot of people talk about my cinematic style and Bernie Taupin was just amazing. my story songs, and I think that really comes from when I was a kid. The first music I listened to was American folk "In the '80s, Bernie was looking to work with music -you know, something like Leadbelly, Woody some different influences, and he was going to Guthrie, Johnny Horton, Johnny Cash and all these peo- ple that tell great stories. work with Thomas Dolby, but he wasn't available And then of course I read a lot. I was reading tons of at that time. Bernie had heard the song 'Dancing narrative poetry, some Tennyson and Macaulay and all of this stuff, and they were great stories, so it was the coun- In Heaven' by my band Q -Feel, so I became the terpoint. So when I heard people telling stories in songs I substitute, which was a wonderful lucky break. thought, "Shit, this is fun. You can write music and tell sto- "The ries." That's really where the influence came from. It was biggest thrill in my musical career was actually reading poetry and listening to those musicians. I Bernie coming to my house and hearing the demo always credit "El Paso" by Marty Robbins as the song that made me really want to write songs. to 'These Dreams' and telling me that he thought it was incredible. At that point, I knew we were As a youth, you listened to music on a transistor radio at night in bed. off to a great partnership. 'We Built This City' and BERNIE TAUPIN INTERVIEW Well, it was really the only way you could hear music in 'These Dreams' were the first two songs we Continued from page EJ -10 those days. Where I was, the only thing I could really get wrote, and they both went to No. 1. was the American Forces Network, which was broadcast to was just really a stab out of desperation, and it all culmi- the American forces in England. They used to play really "We had a remarkable beginning, and I feel nated from there. good music. But what you heard on the radio was pretty very privileged to be working with Bernie from limited. When you saw that Liberty Records want ad for artists A lot of the music that I started listening to really came then right up to my new album. The greatest thing and composers in New Musical Express in 1967, June from my own self-discovery. It certainly wasn't through for a collaboration is to be friends, and that's what were you doing with your life? the radio, because you didn't hear that kind of stuff on the I wasn't really doing anything at that particular time. I radio. what we are." had been working on farms I and just laboring and doing had some cousins that lived in London, and I used to -MARTIN PAGE stuff like that. I got thrown out of one job after another. I discover all kinds of music that I like by shuffling through was insubordinate, the typical rebellious teenager. I did all their old 78s. work as a printer, I worked in a factory, I worked as an I also used to hear all this American music on Radio apprentice. But they said you had to be an apprentice Luxembourg. It was kind of like a pirate radio station, until you're 21, and when you're only like 15 or 16 years because it only came on at night and it was always very old, it seemed like an entire lifetime. Fuck that. So I got exciting listening. The first time I listened, they had peo- graph and stuff. So yes, I do have the original letter [I sent fired, and I went to work on the farm and I got a series of ple like Dylan. It was just a bit more cutting - to N.M.E.]. It was all really horribly pretentious stuff like laboring jobs. It's amazing how my parents were so cool. I edge at the time. "Coffee Colored Lady," "Year Of The Teddy Bear" and don't know whether they saw something coming along. "Did Lightning Strike A Man ?" They never gave me shit at all, so I guess they And I still have a copy of the very first lyric for the very figured I'd find my way. first song that Elton and I ever wrote together. It was a song called "Scarecrow." It was never recorded. We made Your mother helped steer you in a demo of it, which I don't know if that exists anymore. It the direction of writing. I understand would be kind of cool if it did. But I still have the lyric for that you were quite a big fan of litera- that, and it's got all of Elton's sort of chord charts on the ture growing up. side of it that he wrote in. It's interesting to look at what gets Stuff like that will also be featured in the book. people into being musicians and into writing songs. When do you expect the book to be published? I think it's I don't know. It's all in the really early stages right now. -, My manager recently went to New York to meet with pub- lishers. The idea for the book was actually suggested by a friend of mine. So tell me about that first meeting with Elton. I believe you once described the two of you together as a town mouse and a country mouse. Yeah. The funny thing is, I probably perceived him as being very cosmopolitan and very trendy, when in his own way he was finding his feet, too. Just the fact that he lived in London and played in a sort of professional rock 'n' roll band was enough for me to The young musical Bernie Taupin think he was really cool. Especially to me. I just turned up (right) with a childhood playmate on the doorstep looking like the Scarecrow from "The Wizard Of Oz," and I probably felt like it too. When did you start writing lyrics? As far as the meeting, it was sort of uneventful, really. I Until I saw that ad in the paper, I didn't even attempt to mean, he was very pleasant. We just went and had a cup write a lyric or a song. I used to fiddle about writing poet- of coffee in a place called the Lancaster Grill on ry when I was in school. It was all very much, I suppose, a Tottenham Court Road just around the corner from Dick parody of Dylanesque lyrics, but I always thought of it as James Studios, which is where we actually met. poetry. We just talked. I really don't know whether it was small When I saw the ad, I said, "I better write some of what's talk or whether we talked about writing songs. It was 30 supposed to be lyrics." Whether they looked like lyrics or years ago, so I don't think you can blame me if I've for- whether they looked like bad poetry, I don't really know. I gotten the gist of the conversation. I know we just agreed did a combination of both. to keep in contact and try to write some songs. I went back up north to live for a year, and we commu- Do you remember the names of those pieces? nicated from there for a long time before I actually moved Oh yeah. I've still got them. In fact, I'm preparing, out to London. I was writing stuff and sending it to him. at the end of this year, a book of all my old manu- scripts, which should be kind of fun. There have You said it was difficult to remember some of the been books with my lyrics and stuff, but nothing specifics of your first meeting with Elton. that I've really ever been 100% involved with. A It was all so long ago. I know I have to try, but it is dif- lyric book just came out last year called "The ficult to simply sit and think about it, but you also have to Complete Lyrics," which I think is incomplete and remember that over the past 30 years trying to recapture incorrect. But that's my fault because I didn't get all that period of time has become very constant for Elton involved. They asked me if I would proofread it, and I. We both joke about it. Can you imagine how many s and I didn't have the time. times we've been asked how Elton and I got together? It I've kept most of my original manuscripts except got to a point in time when, after we did the "Two Rooms" for a lot of stuff that I've given to people as gifts or thing, we said we weren't going to answer that question stuff like that. But I know a lot of the people who ever again.

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