Auction of songwriter’s souvenirs
ICONIC souvenirs belonging to Lincolnshire’s most famous songwriter Bernie Taupin will go under the hammer next month.
The songwriter, who wrote about his visits to Grimsby as a young man growing up in the Market Rasen area, is moving house and has decided to raise money for an armed forces veterans charity and Aids foundation. Bernie, born in Lincolnshire in May 1950, celebrated his 50-year famed collaboration with Elton John this year.
The chair on which he wrote some of the most famous songs ever and the original music sheets on which he wrote lyrics will be on sale at the Hard Rock Cafe, New York on November 9. Their collaboration produced some of music’s greatest hits of all time including, Rocket Man, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Your Song, Candle In the Wind, and Daniel, earning more than 30 gold and platinum albums together.
They shared 40 top 10 hit records and were one of pop music’s greatest songwriting duos. Taupin demonstrated an early interest and talent for writing and poetry as a child.
At 15, he left school and worked as a farm labourer and an apprentice printer for The Lincolnshire Standard.
In 1967, he answered a “talent wanted” advertisement in the New Musical Express along with a 20-year-old unknown singer/pianist named Reginald Dwight who had also applied to the post. When the two met, Taupin gave him a stack of his lyrics. Reg, who would shortly after change his name to Elton John, began to write music to the lyrics and thus, began a lifelong songwriting partnership that forever changed their lives and pop music history. Their first hit together, 1970’s Your Song brought the duo international fame, subsequently making Bernie Taupin and Elton John household names.
The Taupin-John collaboration dominated the 1970s with a slew of number one and Billboard top 100 charting hits that included Border Song, Tiny Dancer, Rocket Man, Mona Lisas And Mad Hatters, Daniel, Someone Saved My Life Tonight, The Bitch Is Back, Philadelphia Freedom, Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word, Crocodile Rock, Don’t Go Breaking My Heart – a duet with Kiki Dee and more.
Elton John famously rode into Market Rasen in his white Rolls Royce when he attended Bernie’s wedding at Holy Road RC Church in the town, where the writer had been an altar boy.
Bernie married his first wife Maxine Frebelman on April 27, 1971.
Best man, Elton, wore a white suit emblazoned with red roses, together with a white hat, and he and Taupin stayed the night before at the Limes Hotel in the town, together with Elton’s manager John Reed and other members of the wedding party.
His signature – in his real name of Reg Dwight – can still be seen in the register of marriages in the parish church.
After leaving school at 15, Taupin worked as an apprentice at the newspaper for a brief period. He also lived on Beck Hill, Tealby for a while.
From 1970 to 76, the duo created an astonishing 14 albums including Elton John, Tumbleweed Connection, Madman Across The Water, Honky Chateau, Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only The Piano Player, Caribou, Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy, which became the first album to enter the Billboard 100 at number one and the all time classic album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road which produced the smash hit singles Candle In the Wind, and Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting.
Taupin said his visits to Grimsby and the weekend clashes between Caistor lads and Market Rasen youths inspired the song. In 1974 they created the song Grimsby with the lyric “As I lay dreaming in my bed, Across the great divide, I thought I heard the trawler boats, Returning on the tide.”
In 1978, Taupin co-wrote the album From The Inside with Alice Cooper and later found songwriting success with other artists. Starship’s 1985 hitsong We Built This City and Heart’s number one 1986 hit These Dreams brought additional success to Taupin. The 1980s and 1990s produced more hits with Elton John including, 1982’s Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny) a salute to John Lennon, I’m Still Standing, I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues, Sad Songs (Say So Much), Nikita, The One, and more. In 1997, Taupin rewrote the lyrics of Candle In The Wind in tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales which became the bestselling single in Billboard history and procured Elton John a Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for the song that year.
In 2002, Willie Nelson and Kid Rock recorded Taupin’s Last Stand In Open Country and in 2003, Taupin’s song Mendocino County Line, recorded also by Nelson in a duet with Lee Ann Womack, won the Grammy for best vocal collaboration in country music.
In 2006, Taupin won a Golden Globe for his lyrics to the song A Love That Will Never Grow Old, from the film Brokeback Mountain.
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I hope that these items that have shaped my work and fueled my passions will inspire and give as much joy to others as they’ve given me Bernie Taupin
In 1992, Taupin and John were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
In 1994, as Elton John was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, he beckoned Taupin to the stage and proclaimed, “Without Bernie Taupin, there would be no Elton John” as he handed Taupin his Hall of Fame trophy.
In 2013, the duo collaborated on their critically acclaimed 31st studio album, The Diving Board and their most recent studio album 2016’s Wonderful Crazy Night hit number eight on the Billboard 200 album charts and number six in the UK. Coinciding with the duo’s 50 years of songwriting partnership, their immense catalogue of work was recently celebrated with the 2018 tribute albums Restoration and Revamp.
Country and pop music artists including Lady Gaga, Mary J Blige, Miranda Lambert, Little Big Town, Demi Lovato, Sam Smith and others covered many Taupin-John classic hits introducing a new audience demographic to their catalogue.
In addition to music, Taupin is a renowned visual artist whose mixed media, contemporary works have been shown in select galleries and art fairs across the United States. He is also the author of his autobiography, A Cradle of Halos, and a first collection of poetry, Devil at High Noon. A