The song that divided Elton John and Bernie Taupin: ‘He would kill me’
There’s hardly any other partnership in rock and roll that has endured for as long as Elton John and Bernie Taupin have.
They might have taken a few breaks from each other over the years, but even over decades in the industry, there have never been any moments where they have tore each other apart in the press or tried their best to belittle what the other brought to the table. Everything was extremely professional on every one of their records, but it’s not like they couldn’t have little disagreements here and there whenever it came to the finer details of their records.
But when you think about it, the John/Taupin partnership is a lot different from what most people think of when looking at rock and roll tandems. Having one person writing all of the music and one person writing all the lyrics and not playing an instrument tends to work out a lot more on Broadway, but Taupin was the perfect person to set up pictures for John to follow every single time he sat behind the piano.
He was breathing life into tales of Marilyn Monroe on ‘Candle in the Wind’ or the beautiful love ballad on ‘Your Song’, but it’s not like every one of their tunes was meant to be a home run. John would have been happy to see a song like ‘Crocodile Rock’ become a massive hit, but compared to the true masterpieces off of an album like Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, it’s not like they were trying to outmatch what they had done on tunes like ‘Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding’.
Granted, there is a bit of a sweet spot when it comes to John’s songs as well. Both he and Taupin loved going back and reminiscing about their childhood every once in a while, so when they hit on something like ‘Roy Rogers’, it wasn’t hard for either of them to make a song that sounded completely heartfelt. They had both lived that lifestyle of watching Westerns before, but things started to change when John started to get a little too glamorous with his music throughout his career.
The era of the outrageous outfits is still one of the greatest runs that any pop star has ever gone on, but that does mean having a fair bit of fluff in the mix as well. Usually, John’s records could still be pretty punchy when it comes to having the best songs for the time, but for an album that was jam-packed with classics as Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, John remembered that ‘Grey Seal’ was one of the few songs that he and Taupin walked away with completely different opinions about.
The song itself is played perfectly, but John remembered Taupin being annoyed by what it ultimately turned into, saying, “I love that song. Bernie, of all the songs he’s ever written, hates that more than any other song. I re-recorded a lot of songs like ‘Skyline Pigeon’ but I’ve always liked ‘Grey Seal’. It came out as a B-side during the Elton John sessions that really just didn’t make it onto an album. I really liked it. I think Bernie would kill me if I ever re-recorded it.”
In all fairness, it’s not the most complicated lyric that Taupin ever wrote, but that’s why the music is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. For an album that was all about the excess of being one of the biggest stars in the world, John is operating at the peak of his powers, and even aside from his fabulous piano playing, Dee Murray’s bass runs throughout the song is one of the most impressive performances he ever gave on one of John’s albums.
Sure, it’s not the most thoughtful lyric in the world, but the reason why it works so well is because of how the rest of the band sell it. You’d be hard-pressed to figure out what the hell John is even talking about throughout the song, but when a song is throwing this many hooks at you at one time, it almost doesn’t matter.
