Coming on September 12th is Bernie Taupin's long-awaited memoir, Scattershot: Life, Music, Elton, And Me. The book by Elton John's longtime collaborator promises a non-holds barred look at his life writing the lyrics to Elton's biggest hits and the life-changing trip he stumbled upon as the pair became, arguably, the most popular and successful songwriting team of the 1970's.
Rolling Stone ran an excerpt from the book's official announcement, which states: "Readers visit Los Angeles with Bernie and Elton on the cusp of global fame. We spend time in Australia at an infamous rock n' roll hotel in an endless blizzard of drugs and spend late-night hours with John Lennon, Bob Marley, and Frank Sinatra."
It goes on to say, "Beyond the world of popular music, we witness memorable encounters with writers like Graham Greene, painters like Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali, and scores of notable misfits, miscreants, eccentrics, and geniuses, known and unknown. And of course, even if they’re not famous in their own right, they are stars on the page, and we discover how they inspired the indelible lyrics to songs such as 'Tiny Dancer,' 'Candle In The Wind,' 'Bennie And The Jets,' and so many more.
Bernie Taupin in a statement:
It was never my intention to write a traditional A-to-Z autobiography. I began a few years back composing essays and observations on my life that ultimately gained momentum and started to look like a book. . . It’s contemplative, self-assessing, and attempts to stay off the beaten path in not regurgitating what’s already been written. Nonlinear, it’s an exploratory trip bouncing back and forth along the decades.
Bernie Taupin told us that although his and Elton John's songs have become pop standards over the years, that shouldn't take away from the quality of the work: ["First and foremost, we are good songwriters. And there's nothing wrong with writing a great song — providing it retains elements of passion, and whatever. As long as it's not just a surface thing. And I think these songs are very commercial and there's nothing wrong with being commercial, yet they are at the same time very passionate."] SOUNDCUE (:18 OC: . . . time very passionate)
Elton John told us that his songwriting partnership with Bernie Taupin has given him great strength and proved to be one of the strongest relationships in his life: ["It's been a remarkable partnership in the fact that we've never broken up — although it was rumored that we did break up — we didn't, we just had a break from each other and wrote with other people. Y'know, you can't suffocate each other. And the fact that we're still writing, and loving writing with each other — we root for each other. And too often in this business, people get jealous, y'know, people break up a great thing over the most stupid thing. And he's been my brother without the music, he's been my brother with the music. He became the 'Brown Dirt Cowboy,' I became 'Captain Fantastic'– we lived out. . . y'know, that album was very prophetic, that's what we became"] SOUNDCUE (:30 OC: . . . what we became)
