Wishing Bernie Taupin a Very Happy Birthday!

As lyricist Bernie Taupin turns 68 today, he continues to enjoy the fruits of his latest labour – ‘Restoration: Reimagining the Songs of Elton John & Bernie Taupin’, for which he served as executive producer.

By John F. Higgins

With a tracklist of 13 songs, plucked from Elton and Bernie’s 404-volume library, the country music companion piece to Revamp spans four decades of their collaborations – from 1970 (The Brothers Osborne cover Take Me To The Pilot and Willie Nelson closes the album with a poignant Border Song) to 2001 (Chris Stapleton nails I Want Love and This Train Don’t Stop There Anymore takes on a new life thanks to Rosanne Cash & Emmylou Harris).

This incredible scope of creative years can also be measured by the ages of the album’s artists: from 25-year-old Miley Cyrus to Willie Nelson, at 85.

Revamp and Restoration

Available on vinyl, June 22.

Bernie also drew on his ‘other’ career as a visual artist to create the artwork for ‘Restoration’.

“For me, there’s an irony about the American flag,” he says of one of the album cover’s primary elements. “It’s been battered and beaten and burned, but it’s resilient. It’s always come back. I incorporate it with other things, and lately I’ve done a lot of pieces with deconstructed guitars and other found materials: barbed wire, broken bottles, things that people identify with on an everyday level. If it’s on the floor and it works, I’ll put it into the artwork. But it all goes hand in hand with my belief in America and my interest, I would say obsession, with Americana.”

Restoration received 4 stars from Rolling Stone’s Jody Rosen, who said, “It’s a revelation. Tyros (Maren Morris) and legends (Dolly Parton) mine deep cuts to reveal in John’s songs a very country strain of stoic melancholy.”

I think in the past I've possibly been very cavalier about the songs, and just accepted them as they are. I accepted the kudos and whatever anybody had to say about them — good, bad or indifferent. But when you hear all of those songs, back to back on both albums, you do kind of pat yourself on the back a bit and say, 'Wow.' I actually feel myself with them going around in my head when I go to bed, or I walk around singing them in my head during the day, and I've never done that in my life.
LA Times interview with Bernie Taupin - 2018

Bernie (left) with Elton in a Los Angeles studio – April 2015. (Photo: Joseph Guay)

In speaking about both Revamp and Restoration, Bernie said, “It’s a celebration. We wanted to find ways of celebrating 50 years together and so it’s a kind of nice idea to have other people celebrate us. One of the things that I wanted to do [with Restoration] was to try and think a little bit outside of the box on the tracks that we used. I wanted to go a little deeper than the obvious and I think we managed to do that really well. There’s a good cross-section of tracks that people are really familiar with and then some that people might not be so familiar with. I think that’s what makes it interesting.”

Bernie spoke about the song Please with Bluegrass Today: “I was absolutely adamant we have a bluegrass track on there and if we were going to have a bluegrass track, it had to be genuine. I didn’t want it to be watered down, I wanted it to be the real deal and I felt like there’s only one person to do it and that’s Rhonda [Vincent]. The fact that we got Dolly [Parton] to join in was the icing on the cake.”

We hope you will join all of us at EltonJohn.com in wishing Bernie a very happy birthday…and please be sure to follow him on his Instagram page!

Follow Bernie on Instagram