Scattershot (B PB): Life, Music, Elton and Me

An evocative, clear-eyed, and revealing memoir by Bernie Taupin, the lyrical master and longtime collaborator of Elton John.

THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER

A Times Best Music Book of 2023

This is the memoir music fans have been waiting for. Half of one of the greatest creative partnerships in popular music, Bernie Taupin is the man who wrote the lyrics for Elton John, who conceived the ideas that spawned countless hits, and sold millions and millions of records. Together, they were a duo, a unit, an immovable object. Their extraordinary, half-century-and-counting creative relationship has been chronicled in biopics (like 2019’s Rocketman) and even Elton John’s own autobiography, Me. But Bernie, a famously private person, has kept his own account of their adventures close to his chest, until now.

In this exciting, multi-decade whirlwind, we ride shotgun with Bernie on his extraordinary life. We discover early ’70s New York with Elton on the cusp of global fame. We spend late night hours with John Lennon, with Bob Marley, and hanging with Frank Sinatra in LA. We witness memorable encounters with Graham Greene, Salvador Dali , Andy Warhol and scores of notable misfits, miscreants, eccentrics, and geniuses, some of whom inspire the indelible lyrics to songs such as Tiny Dancer, Candle in the Wind, Bennie and The Jets, and so many more.

Written with honesty and candour, Scattershot bears witness to events unfolding from Taupin’s singular perspective, always with an infectious energy that only a songwriter’s vivid prose could offer – his imagination sparked by country music and cowboy culture. From his East Midlands childhood and early London days with Elton to the star-studded fishbowl of ’70s and ’80s Beverly Hills, it is an epic, picaresque journey across a landscape of unforgettable characters and locations, as well as a striking, first-hand account of a creative era like no other.