For Elton John's legendary songwriting partner, lyricist Bernie Taupin, 2023 is shaping up to be one for the history books.
On September 12th, he'll publish his eagerly anticipated memoir, titled Scattershot: Life, Music, Elton, And Me — and on November 3rd, he'll be one of the inductees of the 2023 class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
We caught up with Taupin and asked him how he felt about receiving the Musical Excellence Award honor: “Y'know, I didn't know it had a title 'til last night or this morning, I just figured I was, y'know, one of a group (laughs). Y'know, I don't put a tremendous amount of thought into it. Do I feel I belong in there — yeah, probably. I think I've contributed enough that gives me credence to be in there, certainly.”
We asked Bernie Taupin to shed light on his creative process in finally writing his autobiography: “I spent literally two years writing the book. I set aside everything else that consumes my daily agenda and basically sat down and wrote probably five hours a day for two years and ended up writing a book that was 800 pages. And I didn't even realize until my editor said, 'Well, okay, this is probably about 400 pages (laughs) too long.' That was the hardest part of the book, was editing it down and we've edited it down to just under 400 pages.”
This year's Rock Hall induction ceremony will be held on Friday, November 3rd at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.