ELTON JOHN
All those hits started somewhere – Tiny Dancer began when Bernie Taupin wrote a song for his beloved Maxine. She reflects on the wild days of ’71-76.
ONLINE THERE’s a 1970 clip of Elton John, seated at a white piano, saying, “There’s one here that I’ve sort of, done the other day, which is Tiny Dancer. Which is about Bernie’s girlfriend.” Also in the film are co-writer Bernie Taupin and a smiling young woman.
This was Maxine Feibelman, who became Mrs Taupin in 1971. She found herself as close as you could be to the pair’s composing partnership until 1976. As she tells MOJO in her first media interview, she is now to share insights from these years: in December she will auction (at Bonhams in Los Angeles) her ex-husband’s handwritten lyrics for key Elton tracks Your Song, Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting, Candle In The Wind, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Bennie And The Jets and Border Song. Intriguingly, the latter sees Taupin’s script amended by Elton, who has often stated that he has never written lyrics.
She entered the pair’s orbit in August 1970 in Los Angeles, when she was party to lending Elton’s touring party a hair dryer, and was invited to the singer’s breakthrough US debut at the Troubadour on August 25. “No one knew what to expect,” says Maxine. “The stickers we got for the Troubadour all said, Elton Who? Then, after he played these beautiful soulful ballads, the rock’n’roll kicked in and it was really kind of shock and awe! That hair dryer changed the course of my life.”
As romance bloomed, she was on hand as the alwaysdisciplined Taupin wrote an entire album “within three days, a week at the longest.” He would show her his lyrics (“I made no changes whatsoever”) and they’d
deliver them from their home in Lincolnshire to Elton, who’d write the music “in a week” in London. She says she did provide titles on occasion – Harmony, Love Lies Bleeding and The Bitch Is Back, about certain of Elton’s touring moods, are hers.
One Bernie didn’t show her was Tiny Dancer. “I first heard it after it had been recorded at Trident studios,” she says. “I was sitting between them in the playback room, and Bernie said, ‘This is for you.’ It was almost like having two people tell you they love you at the same time, you know? An amazing feeling. When I saw it on [2000 dram-com] Almost Famous, it reminded me of when we were on Greyhound buses, touring, before the private planes. You realise, that’s my life.”
She must, however, clarify something. “I have never been a ‘seamstress for the band!’ But I did sew many little round patches on Elton’s denim jacket and jeans. That’s the beauty of Bernie’s lyrics, to take something as silly as that and make it beautiful.”
With Elton’s autobiography Me arriving in October, Maxine is also writing her memoir. “I’ve decided now is the time to talk about certain things,” she says. “I was there at the Chateau D’Hérouville for Honky Chateau,I was in Colorado for Caribou… I cannot emphasise how much we laughed all the time. Elton has the best sense of humour, you could say what you wanted and there was never a problem. I’m saving some great stuff for my book.”
Ian Harrison
“I have never been a ‘seamstress for the band’!” MAXINE TAUPIN
The auction will be held on December 9, 2019 at Bonhams, Los Angeles. See bonhams.com.