The stories behind Elton and Bernie’s greatest hits – including some reimagined on the new album.

Sacrifice (1989)

(Sung by Don Henley and Vince Gill on Restoration) One of Taupin’s favourites: ‘It’s about a marriage falling apart and trying to live a lie when you actually can’t. People call it the divorce song.’

Candle In The Wind (1974/1997)

After Princess Diana’s (right, with Elton) death, when Elton was asked to perform at the funeral, ‘he was initially talking about writing a new song. I don’t know whose idea it was to just rewrite the words’.

Border Song (1970)

(Sung by Willie Nelson on Restoration) One of Elton’s few attempts at lyrics. Needing a couple of extra lines to complete the song, ‘I wasn’t around, so he wrote the last two lines: “There’s a man over there/What’s his colour? I don’t care”, which in retrospect is pretty obvious!’

Rocket Man (1972)

Taupin took the idea of how, in the future, even the job done by astronauts would seem everyday, ‘and I ran with it’. He was driving when the first few lines came to him and having nothing to write them on, had to repeat the lyrics over and over until he arrived home.

Daniel (1973)

About a boy whose older brother returns home after the Vietnam War, unable to find peace until he flies to Spain in search of tranquility. Written from the young boy’s point of view, it’s been ‘the most misinterpreted song that we’d ever written’.