Elton John was always one of the most brilliant musical minds to emerge on the charts.
As much as people like to focus on the glamorous outfits and the inner workings of his personal life, the reason everyone came back was because of the power of those melodies, but John felt it would have meant nothing had he not had the right people to listen to behind the scenes.
Because as much as John was a great pianist in his earliest days, it wasn’t like he had any ideas of being a major power player in the music industry. He loved Elvis Presley and Little Richard whenever they came on the radio, but young Reginald Dwight never really looked the part of a rock star compared to everything that The Beatles were doing or even what Long John Baldry could do whenever he worked in Bluesology.
But it was understood that John’s first musical outfit was not going to be a keeper. He earned a decent wage, but if he wanted to express himself, he needed to start writing his own stuff, and when he ditched his birth name for Elton John, he wanted to strike out on his own and make the kind of outlandish turns that he was seeing out of everyone from The Beach Boys to Bob Dylan to Jimi Hendrix.
That’s a great mindset to have, but that doesn’t always translate into record sales. As much as John could put together stunning melodies, no one in England wanted him as a songwriter, and if he couldn’t get arrested on his own, he would need someone else to help breathe life into his tunes. And after getting a letter passed on to him from yet another failed audition, Bernie Taupin was the perfect guy who walked into his life.
Although Taupin was every bit the opposite of John in many respects, his way with words painted the kind of pictures that John was born to tell. John’s songs will always be remembered by the way they made people feel, but nothing beats the stories that live on in songs like ‘Candle in the Wind’ and ‘Tiny Dancer’, and John knew that he could never have reached that kind of craftsmanship on his own.
Even when being inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, John said that he owes half of what he’s done to Taupin’s words, saying, “I let all my expressions and my love and my pain and my anger come out with my melodies. I had someone to write my words for me. Without him, the journey would not have been possible. I kind of feel like cheating standing here accepting this. Without Bernie Taupin, there wouldn’t have been any Elton John at all.”
And while John has worked with other lyricists after the fact, there’s never been anyone who can match the chemistry he and Taupin have together. Even when they took a break from each other in the late 1970s, it felt like a breath of fresh air when ‘I’m Still Standing’ came out, with John getting all of the swagger that seemed to have gone missing over the past few years of flirting with disco.
Because no matter how many times John attempts to switch up his sound to keep up with the times, audiences were always able to see through some of the more desperate-sounding moments in his career. It was always about writing the best tunes in the world, and even if not every John/Taupin song could be a winner, it’s easy to admire the perfect marriages that they have come up with over the years.
