“If you put a gun to my head right now and threatened to kill me if I didn’t recite the lyric, I’d be a dead man,” Taupin writes in his new memoir Scattershot (Life, Music, Elton and Me). It became the bestselling single in UK and US chart history.Īnd what can he recall of the updated words? Not a syllable. Then, in 1997, after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, he rewrote the words in 30 minutes. It reached number five in the charts and became one of Elton’s defining songs.
In 1973, Bernie Taupin wrote the lyrics for Elton John’s music for “Candle in the Wind”, a ballad that was a eulogy to Marilyn Monroe.
