Bernie Taupin: Willie Dixon, Merle Haggard, Elton & Me

credit: Lauren Maeve Photography

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Bernie Taupin just may be the world’s most fascinating man.

Taupin is best known in many circles for his 55-year songwriting partnership with Elton John. However, he’s also collaborated with Alice Cooper and contributed to songs recorded by Heart, Starship, Melissa Manchester, Rod Stewart and his roots-based group, Farm Dogs. In addition, he’s been a restaurateur, a ranch owner, a satellite radio host, a competitor on the Professional Bull Riders circuit, an acclaimed visual artist and a world traveler with a discerning eye for culture (and hotel bars).

He’s also an author, and his book, Scattershot: Life, Music, Elton & Me (now out in paperback) is suffuse with eloquent, engaging passages that reflect on his many journeys.

Taupin notes, “Duke Ellington always said that everybody should do at least two things. Well, I took his advice and pushed the envelope on it. If you’re interested in something and you want to try it, there’s no harm in doing so. If you fail miserably, nobody can say you didn’t try. That’s always been the way I’ve looked at things.”

You’re an inveterate reader. Were there any books that inspired your approach to this memoir?

I read a tremendous amount of biographies, but they are usually more historical in nature. They tend to be people who have been instrumental in my musical awakening—people like Merle Haggard. I love the biography of The Louvin Brothers, Satan Is Real. I just finished a book on Lefty Frizzell, who was a huge hero of mine.

While books didn’t influence me in the writing of my own book, they’ve certainly invested me with ideas for song material. I mean all the way back to the Elton John album [in 1970] with things like “The King Must Die,” which is a total take from Mary Renault’s trilogy about Alexander the Great. People who I write about in the book, like Graham Greene, have characters who have influenced a lot of my characters. All kinds of people have invested me with ideas for songs, but they’re very haphazard; they’re all over the place. A song can be inhabited by several different characters from different walks of life or different places and ideas. One song can sometimes be more than one single idea.

In Scattershot, you don’t offer much detailed exegesis when it comes to your songs, as you would rather defer to what a listener brings to bear.

I prefer people to enjoy my work with their own imagination. It’s like looking at abstract art and coming up with your own conclusions as to what a particular painting or a piece of work means. That’s how I like people to engage themselves with what I write.

People have come up with many different observations about our songs, and like Paul Simon says, sometimes their observations are more interesting than our original intentions. At the beginning of the book, I quote Lou Reed where he said, “Just because I wrote a song doesn’t mean I know what it’s about.” I think you write them, you record them, you release them, and then it becomes open season on them.

One of many discoveries I made in reading your book was that Willie Dixon served as a mentor.

He was one the three most important people who helped further my interest and understanding of my passions [along with jazz photographer William Claxton and art dealer/ historian Michael Schwartz]. He was indescribably interesting as a human and certainly the greatest post-war blues writer of all time. What I loved about his songs was they didn’t kowtow to the original blueprint of blues songs with the repetitive two-line thing. I think, to this day, he is not given his due as the creative titan he was.

I was completely blessed to be able to spend several years with him before he passed away. His family became family to me. I was invited into the home and was listening at the foot of a colossus, soaking up information.

What remains fascinating to me is that in the 1960s, British groups helped Americans appreciate our own blues artists. How did you experience that on both sides of the Atlantic?

Without all those British bands that came along in the mid to late ‘60s, the blues would not have traveled back to the States in the capacity that it did—especially the Chicago greats like Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy [Williamson] and Howlin’ Wolf. They were so revered in England.

Unfortunately, I didn’t dive into the blues on a major level until after I came to the States. When I first came over, I was invested in country music, although it was not deemed hip at the time. Country was thought of as a bastion of conservatism and rednecks, and it had no place in rock-and-roll. Johnny Cash didn’t become hip until later on. Then, along with my love of jazz, it all sort of came to a head at the beginning of the ‘70s as I began to discover more about the blues. It was a big gumbo finding and investing my time in the things that really set my ears on fire.

You mentioned Merle Haggard earlier, who played a role in the reassessment of country music.

Merle Haggard is one of my gods. I think Merle Haggard is the greatest country artist of all time, hands down. The thing about Merle Haggard is that Johnny Cash wrote good songs, George Jones sang great, but Merle Haggard wrote fantastic songs, sang great and he also played great guitar, which people never give him credit for.

You talk about living a life—Merle Haggard lived a life that was extraordinary, and the redemption part of it is amazing. He’s the one artist I’ve probably listened to more than anybody else. In fact, in my induction speech for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, I said that if anybody deserves to be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, nobody’s more rock-and-roll than Merle Haggard. I am on a quest to get him inducted.

Elton is a steady presence throughout your book, even as you also maintain parallel paths.

I wanted him to be a part of it as much as he was a part of it. We have a relationship that I think is impossible to explain to anybody because it’s so special. I think he summed it up the best way in his quote on the book jacket where he said, “I am besotted by the life I never knew he had.”

I wrote the book to delete the urban myth that we’re some two-headed monster that lives together. I think people thought we were like The Beatles in Help, where they all live in those houses. But anybody worth their salt knows we are completely different individuals who live completely different lives, but have an absolute obsession with our love and respect for each other. He’ll always be my soul brother.