Elton John’s brief jealous feud with Bernie Taupin: “We were doing a lot of drugs”
“If you need to get something off your chest, he’s the first person you need to go to to get some easy answers,” Bernie Taupin once said before describing his long-time musical partner Elton John as “a complete constant” in his life. John and Taupin might have earned a joint reputation as two of the greatest musical collaborations in history, but there was once a time when things weren’t quite as smooth sailing.
Taupin and John first met in 1967 and soon forged a friendship and partnership that would span decades. In just three years, the two had honed their craft exponentially, resulting in a partnership where Taupin could present John with a single lyric, and he could go away and craft something timeless within an hour or two.
However, diverting from their well-established songwriting realm was always going to be on the cards as they each branched out and explored projects with other writers. Although this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, it ended up hurting both John and Taupin as a result of undiscussed jealousy, rivalry, and an added mix of drug and alcohol abuse.
This diversion resulted in John creating A Single Man, his first album without Taupin. The record seemed to take on a noticeably edgier tone, with John singing in a lower register and including the nuanced narrative contributions by Gary Osborne, who replaced Taupin as John’s lyricist. Although the partnership between John and Taupin hadn’t been completely fractured, working without him likely felt like learning to tread water for the first time.
Discussing this period of time with Rolling Stone, John recalled: “Bernie and I never split up. But we were doing a lot of drugs and drinking heavily, and he was beginning to write with other people, which made me a little jealous.”
He added: “I decided I’d write with some other people. We never discussed it; we just let it go, and it hurt. It hurt him, and it hurt me.”
Having worked together so closely for a number of years, it’s understandable why John suddenly felt hung out to try. Someone he trusted, who often only worked with him, was suddenly venturing out and contributing his skills to other projects. The singer admits it might have seemed silly, but finding his way with a different lyricist was easier said than done.
However, despite the frustrations that were bubbling to the surface, John once reflected on this period of time as a major learning curve for both him and Taupin. “We both had the resilience and the intelligence to know that if we didn’t let each other write with other people, it would be the end of our relationship,” he explained.
Interestingly, despite the fleeting animosity, A Single Man still ended up encompassing some of John’s favourite songs, including ‘Song for Guy’, which “meant so much” to him because it saw him “doing everything”. Although his friendship with Taupin was on the line, and the song ended up becoming his first not to achieve a spot in the Top 100 in the US, he managed to look back fondly, recalling the times he was able to experiment while learning about what matters the most to his musicianship.
