Elton John is one of music’s great all-time performers. With a career spanning four decades, John has sold more than 250 million records and had seven consecutive number-one U.S. albums, fifty-seven Top 40 singles (twenty-seven in the Top 10), four number-two hits, and nine number-one hits. He has won five Grammy awards, an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Tony Award, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.
Much of his success, it must be said, has to be attributed to his songwriting partner, Bernie Taupin. Theirs is widely considered to be a legendary pairing in the pantheon of music and songwriting. Also of note is the pair’s remarkable songwriting process. Taupin writes the lyrics on his own. When he is finished, he hands them off to John, who then sets the lyrics to music. They do each task separately, never working together, and never working in the same room the entire time. They have done this for every song they worked on. Except one.
Here now is the never before seen lyric sheet that both Taupin and John worked on together, in the same room. Guessing from the lyrics that Taupin usually writes, it seems like a fairly safe bet which lyrics and handwriting/pen ink are John’s.
