The secret of our success? We’ve always been polar opposites
IT WAS pretty early on that Reg tested the waters.We were inseparable, joined at the hip, so it was only natural he would add to the confusion that must have been raging in his psyche by placing his hand on my thigh.This was done almost clinically as if he felt it necessary, but at the same time wanting to get it over with.
He was still a long way from coming out, and even further from understanding it, the consummation of his chosen path being several years from this point.
This innocent approach was done with zero aggression and lacked anything of a predatory nature. If anything, I think it made me laugh. It was easily deflected and immediately understood. Of course, if I had reciprocated, it would have spelled disaster.
One of the tried-and-true components of our lasting relationship has been those parts of our personalities that have always remained polar opposites.
I don’t recall being remotely disturbed by this action or the knowledge that my best friend harboured homosexual tendencies. I imagine perhaps I wasn’t altogether convinced initially that gay Reg was a reality, and perhaps in my naivety thought that his proximity to a charismatic homosexual – like his former employer, the singer Long John Baldry, whose backing band Reg had been playing with while writing demos – had rubbed off on him.
My friend wasn’t in the slightest bit camp. In an era where grating stereotypes were the product of puerile comedy, and effeminate composites made any gay man a lisping rouged Nancy boy, Reg was everything that screamed “not gay”: a hardcore soccer fan, eclectic musical tastes, tough as old boots.
While we may have built our mutual affinity for each other on a bedrock of music and contemporary culture, we came from decidedly different backgrounds that would eventually define our footprint in the world.
Happy childhood, unhappy childhood; it’s easy to understand how Reg, an only child under the thumb of an emotionally remote and domineering father, would find solace in friendship with me, the product of a care-free and affectionate adolescence. I was the imaginary brother who became a reality, and I can only imagine that Reg realised, and was relieved, that what he had wished for was a real friend rather than a temporary lover.
Outside of those burgeoning years, we have never lived in each other’s pockets or clung to each other’s coat-tails. From the moment we made our mark, we severed our umbilical cord and went our own way.
Our devotion to each other has never wavered, and our friendship grew substantially just as our lifestyles took radically different paths. Cerebral. Telepathic.
Call it what you want. Geography may perpetually separate us, and outside pursuits and alternate careers may hamper our social interplay, but nothing can sever the bond we forged at 3A Frome Court in Pinner Road, Harrow, where Reg lived with his mother, Sheila, and stepfather, Fred. When I moved in, in 1967, we shared a room and, composing daily, we honed our craft.
Since our initial deal with Dick James Music as could-be/might-be songwriters, and in-the-trenches purveyors of bland pop, we had made a habit of spending several days a week “hanging out” at his offices above the Midland Bank at 71-75 New Oxford Street, just off Charing Cross Road.
We’d gravitated here in the shadow of the newly erected Centre Point building by way of our much-recounted introduction through Ray Williams, the boyish wunderkind of the emerging Liberty Records. Having responded to Ray’s infamous NME advert introducing Liberty Records in June 1967, Reg and I had both separately visited his plush and intimidating offices in Mayfair.
For my part, an invitation to “pop by some time” to discuss my submissions was drolly improbable considering I inhabited a fanciful world in Sleaford, Lincolnshire, over five hours away from his groovy fiefdom.
Legend has it that I was reluctant to answer the ad and my mother ultimately mailed my submission (I just forgot, OK?), and Ray randomly pulled my package of lyrics from a pile of contenders and handed them to Reg. But how many lyricists do you honestly think responded to the advertisement? Er, me, that’s how many!
Our reason for making DJM a pit stop was twofold. It’s here that we’d make demos of our songs, and it’s here that we’d socialise with studio staff, all of whom had become partisans to our cause.
We were still creating work that, on one hand, was our contribution to Dick James’s desire for middle-of-theroad ballads, suitable for the Engelbert Humpderdinck and Cilla Black, styled performers who relied on outside material, while keeping our chops honed by knocking out our hippy renderings.
For this we were being paid the princely sum of £5 a week for me, and £10 for Reg, given that he did the singing. Not a lot to live on even back then, but we divested it frugally and managed to scrape by.
THERE was a coterie of songwriters vying for studio time back then. Some like us, waiting for a break and others who had a foothold on the ladder.All, though, would interact and hang casually talking shop around the couch fronting Dick’s office.
Given Dick had been blessed with the good fortune to secure the Beatles publishing in 1963, the occasional mop-top might on occasion swing by to use the facility.
But we were years away from proving that, in Dick’s case at least, lightning does indeed strike twice.
If we were cutting demos, we’d send out for sandwiches. These were picked up by the office errand boy. The young lad currently
In an exclusive extract from his brilliant memoir, lyricist Bernie Taupin, who’s sold 300 million records with Elton John, recalls their crazy early days together at the Rocketman’s family home in Pinner
employed in this role was an eager-to-please south Londoner full of youthful bustle and barrow boyish charm. The fact he would go on to become one of England’s greatest living actors is a placeholder of no short measure. His name, Gary Oldman!
Out of the office we ate cheaply. More often than not, we took lunch at the Lancaster Grill around the corner from Dick’s. Here was where Reg and I first discussed collaborating. The food was as basic as it gets, as cheap as you’d want.That greasy spoon is still a pivotal compass point in our history, the spot where we both said, “I do”.
Whatever it is today, and if anything in our narrative merits one of those blue oval plaques, it’s that emporium of weak tea and beans on toast that gets my vote.
We’d pore over the music press here, which at the time consisted of a quartet of weeklies: Melody Maker, Disc, Record Mirror, and the NME.
These periodicals served as our town crier alerting us to new releases of interest, who was playing the clubs, and info on incoming American artists gigging in the UK.
Somewhere around this time it was suggested my friend jump ship from jobbing songwriter and become Elton John, erstwhile recording artist. In an age when normality in branding had become de rigueur, it was sensible on our part to adopt something in the middle.
Elvis, Buddy, Marty, Daryl, and Dion were names of another era. Mick and Keith, John and Paul, Ray, Roger, Pete, Eric, Jimi, George, and Ringo! All these had a routine coolness and modernity compared to Reg and Bernie, which in comparison sounded like a combined company of plumbing and accountancy.
Our first stab at notoriety was an appallingly heavy-handed piece of maudlin junk titled I’ve Been Loving You.
The fact that we allowed ourselves to be saddled with this dreck shows a desperation on our part to achieve success. It was even made more so by my non-involvement in its composition. Melodically stagnant and lyrically bland, it was a sad submission to everything we aspired not to be.
We were allowing our dreams to become hijacked in order to acquire even the most abhorrent degree of fame. I’m happy it tanked, of course. It was to prove a prodigious wake-up call for us, an unsubtle kick in the pants that ultimately led to a serious reset and unforeseen intervention. Directly before this took place, though, things got weird. Elton got engaged, and a humongous wrench got thrown in the works.
He’d become friends with a young woman called Linda Woodrow, then persuaded to believe there was more to it than an amicable relationship. At a time when he was still unsure of his own sexual orientation and how to distribute his pent-up love, it was extraordinary to watch.
I truly don’t think he knew what hit him and was just swept up in the accepted normality of it all. Perhaps it was a hangover from his background and a subconscious attempt to eradicate his true feelings. The consequences of all this was that we moved out of Frome Court and into a gloomy basement apartment on Furlong Road, Islington, a decidedly iffy area that is now one of London’s most expensive boroughs.
I was extremely intimidated by Elton’s fiancée, who had a commanding presence not to be trifled with. Like a big scary bird, she dominated our acreage, ruling with impunity under the guise of benevolent monarch. I don’t think she liked me very much, but then again I can’t say I blame her.
I’m sure she viewed me as a subversive, deviantly attempting to drive a wedge between them. I can’t recall writing anything at Furlong Road, I don’t even know if we had a piano. It just wasn’t a creative environment. It didn’t help that it was a basement flat, perennially dark, any joie de vivre sucked out of it by the overwhelming vacuum of apprehension.
Most crippled was my friend, who was undoubtedly agonising over how to handle his impending wedding vows.
They were shallow times and a low in both self-confidence and compositional improvement, digging us deeper into a quagmire of self-doubt.
It all changed with an intervention after Elton, in a staged cry for help, opened all the windows, stuck his head in the gas oven, and awaited a dramatic response. Perhaps due to the unorthodox nature of his attempt, gas on low and an embroidered pillow to rest his head on, sympathy was not forthcoming. I laughed while Linda merely looked down at him, rolled her eyes, and walked out.
Our song, Someone Saved My Life Tonight, illuminates a slightly fictional and fantastical account of the event. In reality it
was a drunken evening that changed everything. The gas oven episode, ludicrous as it appeared, was indeed a call to arms.
It might have been an amusing hiccup in our story, but the consequences and the conclusion of that particular night out cannot be over-emphasised.
AT THE culmination of the evening, we staggered into the Bag O’Nails, a rock star habitat in the heart of Soho. It was here that Long John Baldry delivered the gay equivalent of the Gettysburg Address. With Dutch courage driving the bus, we somehow managed to wend our incredibly inebriated way home.
It was lucky for the locals that this was an era before car alarms because in our attempt to navigate our collision course we slumped over dozens of automobiles and crashed into numerous dustbins, before hurtling through the front door and into the angry arms of the abyss.
Immediately, I ducked for cover while Elton, fueled by alcohol yet slapped sober by the reality of it all, sallied forth to administer Linda’s Waterloo. It was, of course, ugly.
With Elton’s ultimatum delivered, he fled to the sanctuary of my room, passing out on a threadbare stretch of protective carpeting.
The next day, Elton’s stepfather arrived early to assist us in abandoning ship while Linda lobbed several threatening bombs.
She was pregnant, would inject air bubbles into her veins and I’m sure blamed the entire debacle on me. Of course, it was all fabricated as they’d never had sex.
Revitalised by our return to Frome Court, 1969 hove into view with a smile. Things started to change for the better. It was as if a refreshing breeze had blown away the cobwebs of our grim, fugacious months, and sun and light had replaced the grey film tarnishing our outlook.