We're not the sort of guys who are going to solve the world's problems and write about fracking and corporate greed. I don't particularly have a problem with Starbucks [laughs], so we'll leave that to other people. No names mentioned [laughs].

Tell me how you started.

Once I got the idea of it, it was pretty easy. I knew that, basically, it was gonna be a loud, brash pop record. I don't want to say there wasn't a tremendous amount of thought put into the songs, but I certainly realized that we wanted to blow skirts up. We wanted to write songs that were really hook-driven. As I think I wrote in the liner notes, I'm dealing with a guy that's got more hooks than a tackle box.

The combination of the two of us on this different level was a fun adventure that we haven't really investigated since the loud, brash pop-rock we were doing in the mid-1970s. I think it's a natural curve for us to come back to. We're visited our early roots with the last album, and I think it was natural to return to the poppier sound of our mid-1970s work.

Do you find it harder to write happy songs?

Oh yeah, absolutely. I always lean towards the darker side. I think any songwriter, and my contemporaries would probably agree with me, thinks its far more interesting to investigate the seamier side of things, the underbelly of life, the heartbreak. Heartbreak is more easily mined than the happy side of romance.

Having said that, you try and find blueprints. You find people that you respect that have a sort of backbeat that drives the energy. You look at people like Tom Petty and his catalog. I'm not saying all of his songs are of a positive nature, but they have a positive groove to them. I was looking for a sound that was definitely West Coast.

One of the possible ideas we had was that West Coast, Jim McGuinn, Rickenbacker, ringing, joyful kind of sound.  As you can probably tell from the album, that's nowhere to be seen [laughs]. But it was something that gave us an idea of where to start off.

With me, it's all about titles. I love coming up with titles and I work around those titles or first lines, because if you have a title, you can really build a strong chorus behind it. And the song titles that I came up with on this really kind of screamed for big hooks, and I think that's what this album is. It's an album of big hooks. Once I cracked the egg and got the ball rolling, it came fairly easily.

How do you work? You set aside time each day to write and write, or just do it at moments where you feel inspired?

No. Bear in mind that most of my life is painting. I paint 24/7. People in the art world are constantly saying to me, "What do you enjoy doing most: painting or writing?" And it's really a moot point because we have a record maybe every three or four years, and it takes a couple of months. I probably set aside a month, or two if I have the luxury of time. If you think about it, I'm only writing songs two months out of every three years. Once I get the green light and I know there's a record ahead, I pretty much go in every day and work for four or five hours a day.

Do you write longhand or by computer?

It's almost like a circular motion. I write on a guitar because it gives me a rhythmic sense. It's got nothing to do with how it ultimately turns out with Elton, but I do use a guitar. I play chords and just sort of sing the lines over to myself, so that I feel when he reads them, he can read them in a rhythmic cadence. So what I'll do is have a pad and a pen and a computer and I will just sing to myself on the guitar. I'll come up with something, write it longhand and after I've written maybe a verse or something, I put it onto the word processor because I wanna make sure I can remember it, because I'm scrawling on a pad. So it really goes from guitar to the pad to the computer and back to the guitar again. Again, a circular motion.

Do you send them off to Elton in chunks or do you go one-by-one?

In the past I've faxed him things, but now he's been dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th century. He actually has an iPad and a computer. Either that, or I've met up with him somewhere and we go through them together, which is what we eventually do. I don't want you to think its a cold connection. We do get together and discuss things.

But I"ll email them and let him ingest them for a while and then we'll get together and I'll say, "Well to me, when I wrote this, it had a kind of Byrds-y feel," or I'll give him sort of an idea. For the most part, he just totally rejects those and goes the way he wants to go with them, but at least I gave it a shot [laughs].

Do you go into the studio to watch the recording process?

Oh, yeah, I'm there pretty much 24/7. I mean, I do come in and out because I'm not really a studio rat. I don't like places that don't have windows and you can't see outside. I start to feel a little constricted. And my job is done by that point, but I think that Elton enjoys the fact that I'm there. He likes my presence, though I'm not sure why [laughs]. But yeah, I'm there waving the flag.

It's gotta be gratifying to see your lyrics come to life.

Oh, yeah, that's something that never gets old, believe me. I still get a kick out of it, the same he gets a kick out of seeing a new batch of lyrics, so we're both like kids on Christmas.

I know that "I've Got Two Wings" is about the Reverend Utah Smith, [a musical Louisiana preacher who performed around the South in the 1940s with enormous white wings strapped to his back]. What drew you towards that figure?

I have this terrible tendency in my work to resurrect the neglected [laughs]. It's great ammunition for songs. I mean, a Louisiana guitar-playing evangelist who wears a pair of wings? What's not to love about that?

Is there any sort of theme to the album?

No, none whatsoever. It's just a collection of strong, hook-y pop songs. If it has a theme, it is just one of positive energy.

When you write a song, do you ever try to tap into how Elton is feeling at the moment? He's got such young kids now, and that's obviously making him very happy.

Well, I think we have a mirror image on that because we both have young kids.

Mine are a little older than his, but it's interesting. That ties us together because we're such radically different characters, but the one thing that ties us together is the kids. We can both understand the perils, pitfalls and joys of raising kids. He's got two boys and I have two girls that are seven and 10. But you draw so much energy from them, and I drew from that in a couple of songs. They're about the feeling you get from raising kids and the things you want to instill in them.

Is "A Good Heart" one of those?

Yes, definitely. I can't even remember the other one.

I think the problem that so many veteran artists face is they're always competing with their own past.

Oh, you don't have to tell me that!  I'm sure. I mean, when people hear a song like "Tiny Dancer" they're taken right back to the time they first heard it. But when they hear a new song, they simply don't have that emotional connection and often just tune it out.

That's a very, very, very astute analysis of it. I absolutely agree. Yeah, there is a nostalgia about our work that can be very debilitating at times. Depending on your mood, you can run into somebody who will be effusive about your older work and not even mention your new work. You just feel feel like ... well, not so like grabbing them around the throat [laughs]. You kinda want to say, "Well, OK, but how about the last record we made?" And they'll go, "Oh, well, I didn't even know you had one."

That can be extremely frustrating. But it's what we have to live with. The thing is, you can be Billy Joel and just give up making records. But the thing is, if you really have the drive and the passion for music and writing, you're going to do it whether it sells or not, because it's there inside you. If you don't get it out, you're going to explode.

Elton and I are incredibly creative people, and if people like what we do, that's just the icing on the cake, but we're still going to put it out there. I don't know how much longer we'll do it, but we still enjoy it immensely. And to shut down and say, "Well, that's it. I'm not going to write anymore." I'm not sure that's a healthy way of looking at it.

Most partnerships in every sort of creative field usually break down at some point. Resentments creep up and people begin hating each other. How have you guys avoided that?

Well, that's an easy answer. The fact is, you have to see each other for that to happen. We live such separate lives. We are two separate people. I think had we been the same kind of personalities and been in close proximity of each other these past years, I think there probably would have been a more acrimonious kind of thing between the two of us.

We do talk on the phone a lot, but not a tremendous amount, and it's usually about record collecting. Elton has recently reinvested in vinyl because he sold his collection years ago for charity. Now he's trying to reclaim everything. We'll have these long discussions about it. He'll call me up and say, "Do you still have the first Tiny Tim album?" I'll go, "Yeah, I've got both of them." He'll go, "You're kidding! Really?" It's because I never got rid of my vinyl, so I probably have like 15,000 albums and they're all in, like, immaculate condition. I've pretty proud of that because all I play now is vinyl.

I'm always surprised when he talks about his passion for new music. Most artists I talk to his age haven't bought a new record in decades.

Well, yeah. That's a big difference with me. He has his finger on the pulse of everything out there. I mean, let's put it like this: I was just looking at the paper before I called you. I was reading about the CMAs and their Entertainer of the Year is ... Luke Bryan?

Yeah.

Now, I've never even heard of him. That's where I'm at. I mean, Elton is just unbelievable. I'm still listening to Louis Armstrong ...

And he's listening to Kanye West.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, of course, I know who Kanye West is. Have I ever heard one of his songs? I don't think so. I mean, I guess I could have and not known about it.

Isn't it crazy to think that you got teamed up with a random musician 48 years ago by a record executive, and that single event changed both of your lives in such profound ways?

I'm not a nostalgic person by nature. I live very much in the now. Having said that, once in a while it does kind of hit you on the head. You think, "Well, it was definitely kismet that I did this and he did that and we met in the middle." I am eternally grateful for that, but I don't dwell on it. If things are meant to be, they happen. My personal feeling about it is that if something is meant to happen, it's by the grace of God and I'm not gonna argue with it.

He often needs security when he goes out into public. I take it you enjoy your relatively anonymity.

Oh, absolutely! [Laughs] That's one of the things I'm the most thankful for. I mean in the early 1970s, I would get recognized because my picture was on the album covers a lot. My name does still get recognized. I go places and give a credit card or give my name at the airport, and someone will recognize the name and the gushing begins.

But I couldn't live his life. I would rather drill myself in the head with a nail gun than do what he does. And it's what keeps him young. It's what keeps him going. I'm sure he gets very tired at times. It's got to run him down, but he doesn't play to make a living. He plays because he loves to do it. He loves to be in front of that crowd. The more they give him, the more he gives back. That's the drug he's on right now.

It's just so much traveling ...

Oh, I can't imagine. I just can't imagine. I think about the band. They're on tour all year outside of two months when they take off in the fall, and we're talking about all over the globe. He flies private, but even that takes it out of you. But I can't imagine what it does to the band flying on regular airlines. I can't even imagine the packing! How do you balance all that out?

Finally, do you see you guys still doing this in 10 years and even beyond?

I don't see why not. I mean, as long as he wants to make records, I'll be happy to do it. What kind of records they'll be, I have no idea. Whether there will be anyone to listen or most of our fans have passed away ...

No, no. As long as they don't pass away, we won't pass away. They'll stick in for the long haul with us. But yeah, I'm here. I'm feeling good. I've got no complaints. I just create in my studio and when he calls, I'll be there, willing and able.

Read the article at RollingStone.com.

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Remarkably 43 years on, John and Taupin have put together a new album, “The Diving Board,” that reflects those same qualities in such splendid fashion that it serves as an inspiring bookend to the two albums Elton showcased at the Troubadour, “Elton John” and “Tumbleweed Connection.” This is music so finely crafted and deeply moving that if they had played on that 1970 night, instead of the ones that were performed, Elton would still have been showered with applause and acclaim.

It’s no wonder that one of the album’s key numbers is titled, “Home Again.” This is music that celebrates the best of Elton and Bernie’s past, but in ways that are consistently fresh and revealing. Time after time, the songs look gracefully at a similarly broad range of themes—youth to life’s lessons—but from the perspective of age. The closest parallel in recent years is the way Bob Dylan re-examined some of his early observations in such songs as “Not Dark Yet” and “Things Have Changed” more than a dozen years ago—the start of what has been a spectacular new resurgence in his own career.

Elton’s new chapter began when he teamed with producer T Bone Burnett on “The Union,” the album Elton made in 2006 with one of his musical heroes, Leon Russell. When Burnett suggested Elton return to the spare instrumentation of the Troubadour shows, Elton responded with some of his most heartfelt music in years.

Backed only by his own vibrant and warm piano styling on the opening track, he signals the album’s spirit. The song,“Ocean’s Away,” stands with the most memorable John-Taupin works—a reflection on the passage of time, touching on both those left behind and the lessons that live on. Taupin dedicates the song to his father, Captain Robert Taupin, but he speaks for everyone who has made it to a point in life where he or she understands the blessings of the past. Its chorus:

Call ’em up, n’ dust ‘em off, let ‘em shine

The ones who hold on to the ones they had to leave behind

Those that flew and those that fell, the ones that had to stay

Beneath a little wooden cross oceans away.

From there, the album travels in some surprising directions, sometimes a touch playful, other times fearlessly personal, notably in “My Quicksand,” “Voyeur” and “The New Fever Waltz.” The songwriting duo also comments on the struggles of an artist. Rather than employ the self-aggrandizement so common in contemporary pop, John and Taupin salute the dramatic exploits of two other artists, “Oscar Wilde Gets Out” and “The Ballad of Blind Tom” (Blind Tom Wiggins).

This sub-theme of artistic dreams and sacrifice is touched upon most memorably in the album’s title song, which speaks about the daring and strength required to share one’s deepest feelings in music—a quality that John and Taupin have together done consistently over the years. It’s a quality that, too, tells la lot about why their music remains so gripping. Crucially, the song is not a complaint about the fickle nature of fame or stardom. Instead, it admits the joy of being able to spend a lifetime making music that touches people. Confides Elton, “You fell in love with it all.”

NOW CHECK OUT MORE "DIVING BOARD" REVIEWS AND ARTICLES ON BERNIE

9.30.13

ALBUM REVIEW: Elton John, ‘The Diving Board’ The Boston Globe By Sarah Rodman

A tremendous compilation could be made of the best songs from Elton John’s albums of the last 30 years. As whole entities, some were stronger than others, but the generally polished and competent affairs rarely demanded full replays. For the last decade or so, John and his criminally undersung lyricist Bernie Taupin have flirted with the sound of their creative ’70s peak. Produced by T Bone Burnett and assisted by a tasteful small combo, “The Diving Board” succeeds where the others did not. It does so by putting John’s piano and voice front and center, offering memorable melodies, and scraping off the production glop to reveal again the musician, the vocalist, the emotional artist still alive under John’s shiny shell of professional fabulousness.

If some of the songs evoke spirits of past glories —

as the ambling gospel vibe of “Take This Dirty Water” recalls “I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues” or the cri de coeur “My Quicksand” evokes the anguished “Tonight” — it’s a pleasant evocation in songs that stand on their own merits. A bittersweet wistfulness courses throughout the lyrics and the warm huskiness of John’s voice, finding its peak in the heartrending “Home Again,” which is just where John and Taupin find themselves on “The Diving Board.”

9.27.13

Still Making Music Together, Far Apart

Elton John and Bernie Taupin Are Back With ‘Diving Board’

From The New York Times

The partnership started with an ad in an English music magazine in 1967. Liberty Records was looking for songwriters, and Bernie Taupin, a farmworker and amateur poet from Lincolnshire, sent in a sheaf of lyrics, not expecting much. Around the same time a frustrated young blues pianist named Reg Dwight auditioned for the label. An executive didn’t like Mr. Dwight’s material but tossed him a stack of Mr. Taupin’s lyrics and said, “See what you can do with these.”

Since then Mr. Taupin and Mr. Dwight, who later became Elton John, have written dozens of hit songs and more than two dozen albums and have sold 250 million records. Their latest effort, “The Diving Board,” a stripped-down collection of dark piano-driven songs that look backward with the heartache of advancing years, came out on Capitol Records on Tuesday; critics have called it Mr. John’s best work in decades.

When one thinks of great songwriting teams, one imagines them lounging in a studio with guitars and empty beer bottles or sitting at a piano together, joking, fighting, becoming excited over a tune’s possibilities. But Mr. Taupin and Mr. John have always worked separately. Their songs start out as Mr. Taupin’s poetic meditations, inspired by some event in his life or something he has read.

He labors for weeks on his horse ranch in Southern California and delivers the lyrics fully formed to Mr. John, who goes into a studio, props the papers on the piano and churns out melodies and harmonies to fit the words at breakneck speed. “It’s kind of spooky,” Mr. John said in an interview. “I get bored if it takes more than 40 minutes.”

If Mr. John’s composing style is as quick and free as Japanese calligraphy, it is also effective. In the 1970s and 1980s, the pair were a hit machine: “Your Song,” “Rocket Man,” “Daniel,” “Crocodile Rock,” “Bennie and the Jets,” “I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues,” “Candle in the Wind.”

And though these songs have become identified with Elton John, they actually arise from the meshing of two distinctly different personalities — a rusticated, straight writer, who loves his solitude, the American West and raising horses, and an urbane, gay rock star who has a penchant for a crazy wardrobe and thrives in the spotlight.

“Had we been the same kind of characters I’m not sure it would have survived,” Mr. Taupin said in an interview from his home in the Santa Ynez Valley. “We live very, very, very different lifestyles, obviously. I’m very much a recluse, not a social person at all.”

Mr. John, speaking from Las Vegas, said he learned long ago he has zero talent for writing lyrics, but Mr. Taupin’s imagery has always had an uncanny way of unlocking melodies in his mind. “It is weird,” said Mr. John, 66. “It’s kind of twilight-zonish in a way.”

“Diving Board” is the first solo studio album Mr. John has made with Mr. Taupin as lyricist since 2006, though they did make a duet album, “The Union,” with the pianist Leon Russell in 2010. Both records were produced by T Bone Burnett, known for his old-school, back-to-basics aesthetic. On “Diving Board” Mr. Burnett persuaded Mr. John to return to a spare piano trio sound, letting the piano dominate the arrangements as he used to in his early live shows.

“It stripped the songs down,” Mr. John said. “It made me very relaxed.”

After a call from Mr. John, Mr. Taupin went to work on lyrics about six months before Mr. John went into the studio to write and record, in January 2012. Mr. Taupin, 63, a voracious reader, draws ideas from history and biographies: “Ballad of Blind Tom” is a stark portrait of Thomas Wiggins, the 19th-century black musical savant and composer who was born a slave; “A Town Called Jubilee” recreates a dust-bowl ballad; and “Oceans Away” is a tribute to World War II soldiers, dedicated to his father, Capt. Robert Taupin. The title track, a sad Nina Simone-style ballad, explores the fatal seduction of celebrity, comparing it to a high-dive act at the circus.

These are serious songs for adults, not radio-ready pop hits. “We are not having to write to cater to a certain trend,” Mr. Taupin said. “We’re past that.”

Mr. John said: “I like miserable songs. What can I tell you?”

Yet some radio hosts say the songs, though somber in tone and minimalist in production, have potential to become hits with older audiences. The first single, “Home Again,” a power ballad about exile, has been climbing the Adult Contemporary charts. “Lyrically it’s perfect,” said Delilah Rene Luke, a syndicated radio personality. “It goes with so many of the calls I take — that inner hunger to go home.”

Mr. Taupin sent the words for “Diving Board” via e-mail to Mr. John well in advance of the recording sessions, but Mr. John said he never reads the lyrics carefully before going into the studio to write.

“I always look forward to getting a new bunch of lyrics from him because I have no idea what I’m going to get,” he said. “There are no conferences about what direction should I go with this record. It’s really down to happenstance and kismet.”

For this album, he said, he rifled through the papers and picked the first one that caught his eye, “Oscar Wilde Gets Out,” which imagines what the Irish writer might have thought on being released from Reading prison. The first line — “Freedom for a scapegoat” — was all he needed to imagine the tripping introduction and a minor melody.

When Liberty Records introduced them in the 1960s, the two men roomed together, first at Mr. John’s parent’s house, then in an apartment in London. It was in those years that their friendship was forged. Both were lonely: Mr. Taupin was far from home and Mr. John had left his band Bluesology.

“He became the brother I never had,” Mr. John said. “I was in love with him, not in a physical way, but in a brotherly way.”

Mr. Taupin recalled: “It was really ‘You and me against the world.’ We were so incredibly close.”

Even then, however, they wrote in separate rooms. Mr. Taupin scrawled lyrics in a bedroom, and walked them into the living room, where Mr. John sat writing tunes at a piano. Then Mr. Taupin retreated to write some more.

They were hired by Dick James Music as songwriters to turn out hits for others, but writing to order turned out not to be their strong suit.

“If you see the old scraps of paper that I worked on when we first met, the songs had no form — they were all over the place,” Mr. Taupin recalled.

Mr. John said, “In the early days I had to prune a lot and make verses and choruses and middle eights out of things that weren’t written in that order.”

Then, at the urging of the producer Steve Brown, Mr. John started performing and recording their compositions himself. They racked up hit after hit, starting with “Your Song” in 1970.

Early in their partnership, Mr. John’s editing sometimes created tensions. The 1973 song “Daniel” was about a blind soldier returning from Vietnam, but Mr. John cut the last verse that explained the story. “It was too long,” he said. “And it gives the song more mystique.”

Over the years, Mr. Taupin learned to play guitar and studied the structure of pop songs. He likes to strum chords and block out a temporary rhythm and melody while writing. “It’s almost like Linus and his blanket,” he said. “I have to have some sort of musical tapestry behind me that gives me an idea of the melodic line of the lyric.”

But Mr. Taupin never shows those melodies to Mr. John. Instead he puts notes on the lyric sheet about his vision of the piece: “country rock,” “Ray Charles feel” or “Gram Parsons style.”

Because the songs begin with Mr. Taupin, there is a built-in curiosity about the pair’s collaboration. Very few of the songs flow from Mr. John’s own experiences, and yet he is the one interpreting them night after night, channeling scenes from Mr. Taupin’s life or imagination in front of thousands of fans.

“There is a kind of magic knowing that I’m not in the song,” Mr. John said. “It’s not about me.”

Mr. Taupin said: “I’m very conscious they ultimately will be sung by him so the content cannot be overtly selfish on my part. I’m conscious they are words that have to come out of his mouth.”

Mr. John added: “He’s learned to write very ambiguously. A lot of the songs don’t mention women’s names. They used to in the early days, but once I was out of the closet — Bernie’s always known I’m gay anyway — they could be about anything.”

For his part, Mr. Taupin said he’s rarely upset with the music Mr. John writes for his lyrics but he is often surprised. “It could turn out totally different than I imagined, and for the most part that’s a good thing,” he said.

In recent years, Mr. Taupin said the two have interacted more in the studio. He usually sits in the control room and listens over a speaker while Mr. John composes in another room. Sometimes if a line sounds wrong, he’ll suggest a change in wording to Mr. John. And when Mr. John has finished something, he usually plays it for Mr. Taupin and asks what he thinks.

“That is when we are the most creatively dynamic — that’s when we lock it in,” Mr. Taupin said. “We have been doing this for over 40 years, so you have a certain mental telepathy working there.”

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Though the quality holds up throughout, it is on the slower numbers where the magic is most evident. “I hear you singing I Shall Be Released like a chain saw running through a masterpiece,” Elton sings directly to Russell at the beginning of The Best Part Of The Day as the album reaches its first climax then hits further peaks on When Love Is Dying and Never Too Old (To Hold Somebody) with the two talents singing with a depth of emotion and feeling that can only come from individuals with this number of years of experience and who have lived these lives.

Elton has gone on record as saying his main objective with this project is to bring to life again Russell’s incredible back catalogue and in trying to achieve that he could not have done a better job. With an all-star cast including Booker T, Brian Wilson and Neil Young, this is the kind of album you can imagine figuring very prominently at the Grammy Awards and quite rightly, too.

The album is released in the UK on October 25.

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We're not the sort of guys who are going to solve the world's problems and write about fracking and corporate greed. I don't particularly have a problem with Starbucks [laughs], so we'll leave that to other people. No names mentioned [laughs].

Tell me how you started.

Once I got the idea of it, it was pretty easy. I knew that, basically, it was gonna be a loud, brash pop record. I don't want to say there wasn't a tremendous amount of thought put into the songs, but I certainly realized that we wanted to blow skirts up. We wanted to write songs that were really hook-driven. As I think I wrote in the liner notes, I'm dealing with a guy that's got more hooks than a tackle box.

The combination of the two of us on this different level was a fun adventure that we haven't really investigated since the loud, brash pop-rock we were doing in the mid-1970s. I think it's a natural curve for us to come back to. We're visited our early roots with the last album, and I think it was natural to return to the poppier sound of our mid-1970s work.

Do you find it harder to write happy songs?

Oh yeah, absolutely. I always lean towards the darker side. I think any songwriter, and my contemporaries would probably agree with me, thinks its far more interesting to investigate the seamier side of things, the underbelly of life, the heartbreak. Heartbreak is more easily mined than the happy side of romance.

Having said that, you try and find blueprints. You find people that you respect that have a sort of backbeat that drives the energy. You look at people like Tom Petty and his catalog. I'm not saying all of his songs are of a positive nature, but they have a positive groove to them. I was looking for a sound that was definitely West Coast.

One of the possible ideas we had was that West Coast, Jim McGuinn, Rickenbacker, ringing, joyful kind of sound.  As you can probably tell from the album, that's nowhere to be seen [laughs]. But it was something that gave us an idea of where to start off.

With me, it's all about titles. I love coming up with titles and I work around those titles or first lines, because if you have a title, you can really build a strong chorus behind it. And the song titles that I came up with on this really kind of screamed for big hooks, and I think that's what this album is. It's an album of big hooks. Once I cracked the egg and got the ball rolling, it came fairly easily.

How do you work? You set aside time each day to write and write, or just do it at moments where you feel inspired?

No. Bear in mind that most of my life is painting. I paint 24/7. People in the art world are constantly saying to me, "What do you enjoy doing most: painting or writing?" And it's really a moot point because we have a record maybe every three or four years, and it takes a couple of months. I probably set aside a month, or two if I have the luxury of time. If you think about it, I'm only writing songs two months out of every three years. Once I get the green light and I know there's a record ahead, I pretty much go in every day and work for four or five hours a day.

Do you write longhand or by computer?

It's almost like a circular motion. I write on a guitar because it gives me a rhythmic sense. It's got nothing to do with how it ultimately turns out with Elton, but I do use a guitar. I play chords and just sort of sing the lines over to myself, so that I feel when he reads them, he can read them in a rhythmic cadence. So what I'll do is have a pad and a pen and a computer and I will just sing to myself on the guitar. I'll come up with something, write it longhand and after I've written maybe a verse or something, I put it onto the word processor because I wanna make sure I can remember it, because I'm scrawling on a pad. So it really goes from guitar to the pad to the computer and back to the guitar again. Again, a circular motion.

Do you send them off to Elton in chunks or do you go one-by-one?

In the past I've faxed him things, but now he's been dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th century. He actually has an iPad and a computer. Either that, or I've met up with him somewhere and we go through them together, which is what we eventually do. I don't want you to think its a cold connection. We do get together and discuss things.

But I"ll email them and let him ingest them for a while and then we'll get together and I'll say, "Well to me, when I wrote this, it had a kind of Byrds-y feel," or I'll give him sort of an idea. For the most part, he just totally rejects those and goes the way he wants to go with them, but at least I gave it a shot [laughs].

Do you go into the studio to watch the recording process?

Oh, yeah, I'm there pretty much 24/7. I mean, I do come in and out because I'm not really a studio rat. I don't like places that don't have windows and you can't see outside. I start to feel a little constricted. And my job is done by that point, but I think that Elton enjoys the fact that I'm there. He likes my presence, though I'm not sure why [laughs]. But yeah, I'm there waving the flag.

It's gotta be gratifying to see your lyrics come to life.

Oh, yeah, that's something that never gets old, believe me. I still get a kick out of it, the same he gets a kick out of seeing a new batch of lyrics, so we're both like kids on Christmas.

I know that "I've Got Two Wings" is about the Reverend Utah Smith, [a musical Louisiana preacher who performed around the South in the 1940s with enormous white wings strapped to his back]. What drew you towards that figure?

I have this terrible tendency in my work to resurrect the neglected [laughs]. It's great ammunition for songs. I mean, a Louisiana guitar-playing evangelist who wears a pair of wings? What's not to love about that?

Is there any sort of theme to the album?

No, none whatsoever. It's just a collection of strong, hook-y pop songs. If it has a theme, it is just one of positive energy.

When you write a song, do you ever try to tap into how Elton is feeling at the moment? He's got such young kids now, and that's obviously making him very happy.

Well, I think we have a mirror image on that because we both have young kids.

Mine are a little older than his, but it's interesting. That ties us together because we're such radically different characters, but the one thing that ties us together is the kids. We can both understand the perils, pitfalls and joys of raising kids. He's got two boys and I have two girls that are seven and 10. But you draw so much energy from them, and I drew from that in a couple of songs. They're about the feeling you get from raising kids and the things you want to instill in them.

Is "A Good Heart" one of those?

Yes, definitely. I can't even remember the other one.

I think the problem that so many veteran artists face is they're always competing with their own past.

Oh, you don't have to tell me that!  I'm sure. I mean, when people hear a song like "Tiny Dancer" they're taken right back to the time they first heard it. But when they hear a new song, they simply don't have that emotional connection and often just tune it out.

That's a very, very, very astute analysis of it. I absolutely agree. Yeah, there is a nostalgia about our work that can be very debilitating at times. Depending on your mood, you can run into somebody who will be effusive about your older work and not even mention your new work. You just feel feel like ... well, not so like grabbing them around the throat [laughs]. You kinda want to say, "Well, OK, but how about the last record we made?" And they'll go, "Oh, well, I didn't even know you had one."

That can be extremely frustrating. But it's what we have to live with. The thing is, you can be Billy Joel and just give up making records. But the thing is, if you really have the drive and the passion for music and writing, you're going to do it whether it sells or not, because it's there inside you. If you don't get it out, you're going to explode.

Elton and I are incredibly creative people, and if people like what we do, that's just the icing on the cake, but we're still going to put it out there. I don't know how much longer we'll do it, but we still enjoy it immensely. And to shut down and say, "Well, that's it. I'm not going to write anymore." I'm not sure that's a healthy way of looking at it.

Most partnerships in every sort of creative field usually break down at some point. Resentments creep up and people begin hating each other. How have you guys avoided that?

Well, that's an easy answer. The fact is, you have to see each other for that to happen. We live such separate lives. We are two separate people. I think had we been the same kind of personalities and been in close proximity of each other these past years, I think there probably would have been a more acrimonious kind of thing between the two of us.

We do talk on the phone a lot, but not a tremendous amount, and it's usually about record collecting. Elton has recently reinvested in vinyl because he sold his collection years ago for charity. Now he's trying to reclaim everything. We'll have these long discussions about it. He'll call me up and say, "Do you still have the first Tiny Tim album?" I'll go, "Yeah, I've got both of them." He'll go, "You're kidding! Really?" It's because I never got rid of my vinyl, so I probably have like 15,000 albums and they're all in, like, immaculate condition. I've pretty proud of that because all I play now is vinyl.

I'm always surprised when he talks about his passion for new music. Most artists I talk to his age haven't bought a new record in decades.

Well, yeah. That's a big difference with me. He has his finger on the pulse of everything out there. I mean, let's put it like this: I was just looking at the paper before I called you. I was reading about the CMAs and their Entertainer of the Year is ... Luke Bryan?

Yeah.

Now, I've never even heard of him. That's where I'm at. I mean, Elton is just unbelievable. I'm still listening to Louis Armstrong ...

And he's listening to Kanye West.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, of course, I know who Kanye West is. Have I ever heard one of his songs? I don't think so. I mean, I guess I could have and not known about it.

Isn't it crazy to think that you got teamed up with a random musician 48 years ago by a record executive, and that single event changed both of your lives in such profound ways?

I'm not a nostalgic person by nature. I live very much in the now. Having said that, once in a while it does kind of hit you on the head. You think, "Well, it was definitely kismet that I did this and he did that and we met in the middle." I am eternally grateful for that, but I don't dwell on it. If things are meant to be, they happen. My personal feeling about it is that if something is meant to happen, it's by the grace of God and I'm not gonna argue with it.

He often needs security when he goes out into public. I take it you enjoy your relatively anonymity.

Oh, absolutely! [Laughs] That's one of the things I'm the most thankful for. I mean in the early 1970s, I would get recognized because my picture was on the album covers a lot. My name does still get recognized. I go places and give a credit card or give my name at the airport, and someone will recognize the name and the gushing begins.

But I couldn't live his life. I would rather drill myself in the head with a nail gun than do what he does. And it's what keeps him young. It's what keeps him going. I'm sure he gets very tired at times. It's got to run him down, but he doesn't play to make a living. He plays because he loves to do it. He loves to be in front of that crowd. The more they give him, the more he gives back. That's the drug he's on right now.

It's just so much traveling ...

Oh, I can't imagine. I just can't imagine. I think about the band. They're on tour all year outside of two months when they take off in the fall, and we're talking about all over the globe. He flies private, but even that takes it out of you. But I can't imagine what it does to the band flying on regular airlines. I can't even imagine the packing! How do you balance all that out?

Finally, do you see you guys still doing this in 10 years and even beyond?

I don't see why not. I mean, as long as he wants to make records, I'll be happy to do it. What kind of records they'll be, I have no idea. Whether there will be anyone to listen or most of our fans have passed away ...

No, no. As long as they don't pass away, we won't pass away. They'll stick in for the long haul with us. But yeah, I'm here. I'm feeling good. I've got no complaints. I just create in my studio and when he calls, I'll be there, willing and able.

Read the article at RollingStone.com.

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Remarkably 43 years on, John and Taupin have put together a new album, “The Diving Board,” that reflects those same qualities in such splendid fashion that it serves as an inspiring bookend to the two albums Elton showcased at the Troubadour, “Elton John” and “Tumbleweed Connection.” This is music so finely crafted and deeply moving that if they had played on that 1970 night, instead of the ones that were performed, Elton would still have been showered with applause and acclaim.

It’s no wonder that one of the album’s key numbers is titled, “Home Again.” This is music that celebrates the best of Elton and Bernie’s past, but in ways that are consistently fresh and revealing. Time after time, the songs look gracefully at a similarly broad range of themes—youth to life’s lessons—but from the perspective of age. The closest parallel in recent years is the way Bob Dylan re-examined some of his early observations in such songs as “Not Dark Yet” and “Things Have Changed” more than a dozen years ago—the start of what has been a spectacular new resurgence in his own career.

Elton’s new chapter began when he teamed with producer T Bone Burnett on “The Union,” the album Elton made in 2006 with one of his musical heroes, Leon Russell. When Burnett suggested Elton return to the spare instrumentation of the Troubadour shows, Elton responded with some of his most heartfelt music in years.

Backed only by his own vibrant and warm piano styling on the opening track, he signals the album’s spirit. The song,“Ocean’s Away,” stands with the most memorable John-Taupin works—a reflection on the passage of time, touching on both those left behind and the lessons that live on. Taupin dedicates the song to his father, Captain Robert Taupin, but he speaks for everyone who has made it to a point in life where he or she understands the blessings of the past. Its chorus:

Call ’em up, n’ dust ‘em off, let ‘em shine

The ones who hold on to the ones they had to leave behind

Those that flew and those that fell, the ones that had to stay

Beneath a little wooden cross oceans away.

From there, the album travels in some surprising directions, sometimes a touch playful, other times fearlessly personal, notably in “My Quicksand,” “Voyeur” and “The New Fever Waltz.” The songwriting duo also comments on the struggles of an artist. Rather than employ the self-aggrandizement so common in contemporary pop, John and Taupin salute the dramatic exploits of two other artists, “Oscar Wilde Gets Out” and “The Ballad of Blind Tom” (Blind Tom Wiggins).

This sub-theme of artistic dreams and sacrifice is touched upon most memorably in the album’s title song, which speaks about the daring and strength required to share one’s deepest feelings in music—a quality that John and Taupin have together done consistently over the years. It’s a quality that, too, tells la lot about why their music remains so gripping. Crucially, the song is not a complaint about the fickle nature of fame or stardom. Instead, it admits the joy of being able to spend a lifetime making music that touches people. Confides Elton, “You fell in love with it all.”

NOW CHECK OUT MORE "DIVING BOARD" REVIEWS AND ARTICLES ON BERNIE

9.30.13

ALBUM REVIEW: Elton John, ‘The Diving Board’ The Boston Globe By Sarah Rodman

A tremendous compilation could be made of the best songs from Elton John’s albums of the last 30 years. As whole entities, some were stronger than others, but the generally polished and competent affairs rarely demanded full replays. For the last decade or so, John and his criminally undersung lyricist Bernie Taupin have flirted with the sound of their creative ’70s peak. Produced by T Bone Burnett and assisted by a tasteful small combo, “The Diving Board” succeeds where the others did not. It does so by putting John’s piano and voice front and center, offering memorable melodies, and scraping off the production glop to reveal again the musician, the vocalist, the emotional artist still alive under John’s shiny shell of professional fabulousness.

If some of the songs evoke spirits of past glories —

as the ambling gospel vibe of “Take This Dirty Water” recalls “I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues” or the cri de coeur “My Quicksand” evokes the anguished “Tonight” — it’s a pleasant evocation in songs that stand on their own merits. A bittersweet wistfulness courses throughout the lyrics and the warm huskiness of John’s voice, finding its peak in the heartrending “Home Again,” which is just where John and Taupin find themselves on “The Diving Board.”

9.27.13

Still Making Music Together, Far Apart

Elton John and Bernie Taupin Are Back With ‘Diving Board’

From The New York Times

The partnership started with an ad in an English music magazine in 1967. Liberty Records was looking for songwriters, and Bernie Taupin, a farmworker and amateur poet from Lincolnshire, sent in a sheaf of lyrics, not expecting much. Around the same time a frustrated young blues pianist named Reg Dwight auditioned for the label. An executive didn’t like Mr. Dwight’s material but tossed him a stack of Mr. Taupin’s lyrics and said, “See what you can do with these.”

Since then Mr. Taupin and Mr. Dwight, who later became Elton John, have written dozens of hit songs and more than two dozen albums and have sold 250 million records. Their latest effort, “The Diving Board,” a stripped-down collection of dark piano-driven songs that look backward with the heartache of advancing years, came out on Capitol Records on Tuesday; critics have called it Mr. John’s best work in decades.

When one thinks of great songwriting teams, one imagines them lounging in a studio with guitars and empty beer bottles or sitting at a piano together, joking, fighting, becoming excited over a tune’s possibilities. But Mr. Taupin and Mr. John have always worked separately. Their songs start out as Mr. Taupin’s poetic meditations, inspired by some event in his life or something he has read.

He labors for weeks on his horse ranch in Southern California and delivers the lyrics fully formed to Mr. John, who goes into a studio, props the papers on the piano and churns out melodies and harmonies to fit the words at breakneck speed. “It’s kind of spooky,” Mr. John said in an interview. “I get bored if it takes more than 40 minutes.”

If Mr. John’s composing style is as quick and free as Japanese calligraphy, it is also effective. In the 1970s and 1980s, the pair were a hit machine: “Your Song,” “Rocket Man,” “Daniel,” “Crocodile Rock,” “Bennie and the Jets,” “I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues,” “Candle in the Wind.”

And though these songs have become identified with Elton John, they actually arise from the meshing of two distinctly different personalities — a rusticated, straight writer, who loves his solitude, the American West and raising horses, and an urbane, gay rock star who has a penchant for a crazy wardrobe and thrives in the spotlight.

“Had we been the same kind of characters I’m not sure it would have survived,” Mr. Taupin said in an interview from his home in the Santa Ynez Valley. “We live very, very, very different lifestyles, obviously. I’m very much a recluse, not a social person at all.”

Mr. John, speaking from Las Vegas, said he learned long ago he has zero talent for writing lyrics, but Mr. Taupin’s imagery has always had an uncanny way of unlocking melodies in his mind. “It is weird,” said Mr. John, 66. “It’s kind of twilight-zonish in a way.”

“Diving Board” is the first solo studio album Mr. John has made with Mr. Taupin as lyricist since 2006, though they did make a duet album, “The Union,” with the pianist Leon Russell in 2010. Both records were produced by T Bone Burnett, known for his old-school, back-to-basics aesthetic. On “Diving Board” Mr. Burnett persuaded Mr. John to return to a spare piano trio sound, letting the piano dominate the arrangements as he used to in his early live shows.

“It stripped the songs down,” Mr. John said. “It made me very relaxed.”

After a call from Mr. John, Mr. Taupin went to work on lyrics about six months before Mr. John went into the studio to write and record, in January 2012. Mr. Taupin, 63, a voracious reader, draws ideas from history and biographies: “Ballad of Blind Tom” is a stark portrait of Thomas Wiggins, the 19th-century black musical savant and composer who was born a slave; “A Town Called Jubilee” recreates a dust-bowl ballad; and “Oceans Away” is a tribute to World War II soldiers, dedicated to his father, Capt. Robert Taupin. The title track, a sad Nina Simone-style ballad, explores the fatal seduction of celebrity, comparing it to a high-dive act at the circus.

These are serious songs for adults, not radio-ready pop hits. “We are not having to write to cater to a certain trend,” Mr. Taupin said. “We’re past that.”

Mr. John said: “I like miserable songs. What can I tell you?”

Yet some radio hosts say the songs, though somber in tone and minimalist in production, have potential to become hits with older audiences. The first single, “Home Again,” a power ballad about exile, has been climbing the Adult Contemporary charts. “Lyrically it’s perfect,” said Delilah Rene Luke, a syndicated radio personality. “It goes with so many of the calls I take — that inner hunger to go home.”

Mr. Taupin sent the words for “Diving Board” via e-mail to Mr. John well in advance of the recording sessions, but Mr. John said he never reads the lyrics carefully before going into the studio to write.

“I always look forward to getting a new bunch of lyrics from him because I have no idea what I’m going to get,” he said. “There are no conferences about what direction should I go with this record. It’s really down to happenstance and kismet.”

For this album, he said, he rifled through the papers and picked the first one that caught his eye, “Oscar Wilde Gets Out,” which imagines what the Irish writer might have thought on being released from Reading prison. The first line — “Freedom for a scapegoat” — was all he needed to imagine the tripping introduction and a minor melody.

When Liberty Records introduced them in the 1960s, the two men roomed together, first at Mr. John’s parent’s house, then in an apartment in London. It was in those years that their friendship was forged. Both were lonely: Mr. Taupin was far from home and Mr. John had left his band Bluesology.

“He became the brother I never had,” Mr. John said. “I was in love with him, not in a physical way, but in a brotherly way.”

Mr. Taupin recalled: “It was really ‘You and me against the world.’ We were so incredibly close.”

Even then, however, they wrote in separate rooms. Mr. Taupin scrawled lyrics in a bedroom, and walked them into the living room, where Mr. John sat writing tunes at a piano. Then Mr. Taupin retreated to write some more.

They were hired by Dick James Music as songwriters to turn out hits for others, but writing to order turned out not to be their strong suit.

“If you see the old scraps of paper that I worked on when we first met, the songs had no form — they were all over the place,” Mr. Taupin recalled.

Mr. John said, “In the early days I had to prune a lot and make verses and choruses and middle eights out of things that weren’t written in that order.”

Then, at the urging of the producer Steve Brown, Mr. John started performing and recording their compositions himself. They racked up hit after hit, starting with “Your Song” in 1970.

Early in their partnership, Mr. John’s editing sometimes created tensions. The 1973 song “Daniel” was about a blind soldier returning from Vietnam, but Mr. John cut the last verse that explained the story. “It was too long,” he said. “And it gives the song more mystique.”

Over the years, Mr. Taupin learned to play guitar and studied the structure of pop songs. He likes to strum chords and block out a temporary rhythm and melody while writing. “It’s almost like Linus and his blanket,” he said. “I have to have some sort of musical tapestry behind me that gives me an idea of the melodic line of the lyric.”

But Mr. Taupin never shows those melodies to Mr. John. Instead he puts notes on the lyric sheet about his vision of the piece: “country rock,” “Ray Charles feel” or “Gram Parsons style.”

Because the songs begin with Mr. Taupin, there is a built-in curiosity about the pair’s collaboration. Very few of the songs flow from Mr. John’s own experiences, and yet he is the one interpreting them night after night, channeling scenes from Mr. Taupin’s life or imagination in front of thousands of fans.

“There is a kind of magic knowing that I’m not in the song,” Mr. John said. “It’s not about me.”

Mr. Taupin said: “I’m very conscious they ultimately will be sung by him so the content cannot be overtly selfish on my part. I’m conscious they are words that have to come out of his mouth.”

Mr. John added: “He’s learned to write very ambiguously. A lot of the songs don’t mention women’s names. They used to in the early days, but once I was out of the closet — Bernie’s always known I’m gay anyway — they could be about anything.”

For his part, Mr. Taupin said he’s rarely upset with the music Mr. John writes for his lyrics but he is often surprised. “It could turn out totally different than I imagined, and for the most part that’s a good thing,” he said.

In recent years, Mr. Taupin said the two have interacted more in the studio. He usually sits in the control room and listens over a speaker while Mr. John composes in another room. Sometimes if a line sounds wrong, he’ll suggest a change in wording to Mr. John. And when Mr. John has finished something, he usually plays it for Mr. Taupin and asks what he thinks.

“That is when we are the most creatively dynamic — that’s when we lock it in,” Mr. Taupin said. “We have been doing this for over 40 years, so you have a certain mental telepathy working there.”

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Though the quality holds up throughout, it is on the slower numbers where the magic is most evident. “I hear you singing I Shall Be Released like a chain saw running through a masterpiece,” Elton sings directly to Russell at the beginning of The Best Part Of The Day as the album reaches its first climax then hits further peaks on When Love Is Dying and Never Too Old (To Hold Somebody) with the two talents singing with a depth of emotion and feeling that can only come from individuals with this number of years of experience and who have lived these lives.

Elton has gone on record as saying his main objective with this project is to bring to life again Russell’s incredible back catalogue and in trying to achieve that he could not have done a better job. With an all-star cast including Booker T, Brian Wilson and Neil Young, this is the kind of album you can imagine figuring very prominently at the Grammy Awards and quite rightly, too.

The album is released in the UK on October 25.

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