
While the big guns of 1970 were 60s' icons (The Doors had 3 LPs in the top 100, the Beatles and Stones were in the top spots), there was plenty of new talent on the horizon (understatement of the year, 1970). Maybe you'll recognize this one.
As a young boy, Reginald Dwight spent five years at the
Royal Academy of Music, his natural talent leading to an audition that left everyone
awestruck. But Elvis and Buddy Holly would change the direction he'd take as a
teenager, and then, in 1968, as part of a band called Bluesology, Reg answered
an advertisement that read, "Liberty Wants Talent."
In the audition for Liberty Records, he was asked his
name and chose Elton, just because he liked it, and John because of John
Lennon. He was handed a stack of hand-scribbled poems by Bernie Taupin and
asked that he write the music for them, the most famous among them, "The
Border Song," truly classic Elton. His collaboration with lifelong
lyricist, Bernie Taupin, had begun, and they'd never even met.
Fifty-one years ago, Elton's first LP, Empty Sky, was
released in the U.K., an album that would not be released in America until
1975. The moderate success of the first LP left him doing session work for acts
like The Hollies. Elton's debut in the States was his sophomore effort, Elton
John, which had three hits in "Take Me To the Pilot," "The
Border Song," and most famously, "Your Song," which remains as
popular today, if not more so, than 50 years ago - the song has been streamed more than
100,000,000 times on Spotify alone.
A tremendously influential
series of live performances at L.A.'s Troubadour proved that John - who'd been
a huge Jerry Lee Lewis fan - could rock as hard as anyone, and before long his
solo career was taking off on stage in both the U.K. and the U.S. and in the
studio.
Bernie Taupin was born in 1950 at Flatters
Farmhouse in the southern part of England. He was anything but a diligent
student yet showed an early flair for writing and an appreciation for
nature, for literature and narrative poetry, all of which influenced his
lyrics. At age 15, he left school and started work as a trainee in the
print room of the local newspaper, The Lincolnshire Standard with
aspirations to be a journalist. He soon left and spent the rest of his teenage
years hanging out with friends and hitchhiking the country roads. At age 16, he
answered the advertisement that eventually led to his collaboration with Elton
John.
Bernie's unique blend of influences gave his early lyrics
a nostalgic romanticism that fit perfectly with the hippie sensibilities of the
late 1960s and early 1970s. "Ballad of a Well-Known Gun," the lead
song on Tumbleweed Connection, Elton's third LP, addresses the concerns of a
man arrested for unspecified crimes yet showing deep remorse when he's thrown
in prison by the Pinkertons. That kind of dusty verisimilitude seeps into
"Song of Your Father" and "Talking Old Soldiers," and of
course later in songs like "Sweet Painted Lady," "Roy Rogers" and "Have Mercy
on the Criminal." Funny that Americana is captured so well by two nerdy
Englishmen. Taupin's romantic lyrics are superb and brought to life with
Elton's rising and falling piano chords, the mark of incredible teamwork.
Elton, of course, is the voice and the music, but for me, as a writer and a
teacher, it's Taupin's lyrics that bring me back and lately, bring me to tears.
I love the storytelling in songs like "Blues For Baby and Me," kind of a
follow-up to Springsteen's "Born to Run," about a young couple who run away by
Greyhound, like in Paul Simon's "America."
50 years ago we had not yet heard or heard of Elton John,
but six months later, we'd start singing "Your Song" and never stop.
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