The Man With the Words

Bernie Taupin is among the most private figures in pop music, a lyricist so media-shy that he makes Bob Dylan look like an extrovert.

While his flamboyant songwriting partner Elton John travels the world singing their hits (and they’ve had more than anyone except Elvis Presley), the reclusive Taupin lives on a 30-acre cutting-horse ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley, caring for his horses and turning out lyrics for more songs.

The Englishman is even further in the background than usual in the music video for the latest John-Taupin composition, “I Want Love,” because there are two people between him and his words. As usual, it’s John’s voice we hear, but the only person we see on screen is actor Robert Downey Jr., who lip-syncs the lyrics.

Like much of the rest of John’s new album, titled “Songs From the West Coast” and due in stores Tuesday, “I Want Love” was inspired by the breakup 31/2 years ago of Taupin’s third marriage. But the album also touches on other topics, including the various victims of hate crimes and a slap at the Reagan administration’s slow response to the AIDS epidemic.

Not only does the album contain the most consistently touching set of tunes that John and Taupin have given us in years, but the arrangements also offer a stripped-down feel reminiscent of the character and warmth of John’s most prized ‘70s albums.

Taupin, 51, is so pleased with the new album, his first with John in five years, that he agreed to speak about the album, his partnership with John and the art of songwriting.

Question: “I Want Love” is such a bitter song that it doesn’t make you seem like a very attractive person. Or are we making a mistake about judging the songwriter by his song? How close is that song to the truth?

Answer: It’s very close, but you have to remember that most of the songs you write are only moments of time. You might feel the emotion of the song just for a few hours or a few days, then feel totally different by the time the song is finished or recorded. When you listen to it then, you might go, “My God, I don’t feel like that anymore. It’s so bitter.” But if everyone edited themselves like that, we would have lost some of the greatest songs ever written.

Q: Why so much bitterness in that and other songs on the album?

A: I could go into the specifics, but they are irrelevant because everyone feels pain at some point in their life and some people feel pain at many points. It would just be indulgent for me to go into the details of my own situation. All that matters is what’s said in the songs.

I certainly don’t own the patent on divorce. Sometimes you break up because you are too young. Sometimes you make a mistake and marry the wrong person, but sometimes the marriage works, and that’s the hardest breakup of all--the case in which you really, really love each other, but you can’t live together. That’s the kind of relationship some of these songs are about, and that’s as far as I can go with it.

Q: A lot of your most memorable music with Elton has been dark or depressing. Is that your nature, or is it just easier to write about disappointment and despair?

A: I think you can be far more interesting and introspective when you are dealing with dark or serious matters. When you’re working on a “fun” song, there isn’t that much ammunition to work with and you are always, always in danger of just being superficial. That’s why we have so much shallow pop music on the radio these days. The music I find worth listening to isn’t easy to find on the radio--people like Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Emmylou Harris, Tom Waits and, always, Bob Dylan.

But I think the fact there isn’t a lot worth listening to on the radio served as a bit of a challenge for us. When Elton and I finally got around to doing something again, I think we both wanted it to be something special. We didn’t just want it to be the next record, if you know what I mean.

Q: A lot of people are going to be saying this album is a deliberate return to the sound of the early Elton John records. How deliberate was it?

A: For years I’ve wanted to make a back-to-basics album. When I say that, I don’t mean to say we wanted to sound like an old Elton John record. It wouldn’t be healthy to try to re-create your old sound. We just wanted to recapture the honesty of those early records.

I think Elton realized that for a long time he might have been chasing trends in music, not necessarily setting them like he once did. After writing all those songs for Broadway and movies, I think he wanted to get his hands dirty again and do something without thinking about the marketplace or whether it is going to get on the radio or what is most likely to sell.

Q: Did you actually talk about trying to recapture that intensity?

A: Before we made the record last year, we had some pretty intense discussions about what this record should be. I was very adamant that we make this record very simply. I think he was also listening to a lot of the artists who were operating in a simpler style, like Ryan Adams. I think he saw the beauty in the simplicity and realized that that is where we really came from.

He encouraged me to try different things too. He said just write what you want, it doesn’t matter how long the songs are or what form they are in. The music is very piano-dominated. In the early days, Elton often had these orchestral situations going on behind him, but the forefront was a very, very limited rhythm section and it was very piano-dominated. Elton even wrote the music this time at the piano. He didn’t use any click tracks or drum machines the way he had been doing in recent years.

Q: Given all the success you’ve had, was there a point over the years where you simply didn’t care about writing songs anymore? You love the ranch. Did you ever find that was enough in your life?

A: I never lost interest in the writing, though I did lose faith in where the writing was ending up. I’ve become very disillusioned with the music scene in general.

Q: What is it about the business that troubles you?

A: It’s everything. I would hate to be starting out now because young artists, for the most part, aren’t really given a chance. There is such an emphasis on immediate results. Labels don’t work with bands and give them time to grow over a period of albums. I wonder if bands like U2 or R.E.M. would be given the time to develop if they came along today.

People forget, but their first albums didn’t do that much, or even their second or third. But they grew and they eventually flourished. Bands and artists today aren’t allowed to do that. When a record comes out now, it is all about, “Can we get a song on the radio?” It’s about a hit single. There’s not a lot of emphasis on artistry, which sends the wrong signal to bands.

Q: Let’s talk about “American Triangle.” The song grows out of the Matthew Shepard murder, but there is really a lot more going on in the song than his death, isn’t there?

A: Yes, I like to encompass more than one theme in a song. Take “Candle in the Wind.” The song isn’t just about Marilyn Monroe. It’s about fame. The truth is I was never a particular Marilyn Monroe fan. I see her as somewhat of an icon, but she wasn’t really a very good actress, was she? The song could have just as easily been about James Dean.

“American Triangle” is a bit like “Candle in the Wind” in that sense. It’s not just about one thing. It’s about how three people lost their lives. Matthew Shepard literally lost his life, but two other lives were also ruined. That’s what happens in hate crimes. Everybody loses in that situation because everyone is the product of their environment and hate corrupts everyone it touches.

Q: How do you deal with gender in a song? Do you avoid using gender because Elton is gay? There is no gender in “I Want Love” for instance. But there is gender in “Love Her Like Me.”

A: There was one point years ago where Elton came to me and said, “Can we be more sexually ambiguous [on this song],” but mostly it’s not something I think about. I didn’t consciously write any of the songs for this record with that in mind.

Q: What’s your favorite Elton album?

A: I don’t know if I have favorite albums. I have favorite songs, of course, and they don’t necessarily tend to be the ones from what everybody dubs the classic years. If I were to write down a list of my favorite songs with Elton, I guarantee you that over half of them would be from albums after 1976, which is where a lot of people think everything ended for us. [Laughs.]

I agree the albums in general maybe haven’t been as good as a whole since [“Blue Moves” in 1976], but within those albums there were always a couple of songs that I loved. I think “Sacrifice” [1989] is one of the best songs we’ve written. I also love “The One” [1992], and I’d think about putting “Simple Life” [1992] and “Empty Garden” [1982] on that list.

Q: Any of the hits make you shudder now?

A: Oh, sure. I can’t stand, “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” and I’m not a big fan of something like “Crocodile Rock.”

Q: But “Crocodile Rock” was such a glorious celebration of good-time rock ‘n’ roll. It was a hit from the moment it hit the radio. Why would you single out that one?

A: Well, it is a fun song. I just don’t know if it holds up.

Q: Despite the frequent gloominess of the new album, you seem to be upbeat yourself. Do you consider yourself an optimistic person these days?

A: I like to be optimistic. I am certainly in a different frame of mind than when I wrote the songs for this album. That’s why the album is both an exorcism and a baptism for me. In light of what happened on Sept. 11 [in the terrorist attacks], I consider myself a very lucky and very happy man. I really enjoy my life these days. I like being on my own. I like being on the ranch. Time does heal the wounds.

As I get older, I find myself becoming slightly more reclusive, not that I am becoming a hermit. I just like to be with my dogs and watch my kids [two teenage girls] grow up. The odd thing is that after all these years and all that has happened to me, I have very much reconnected to the things that I grew up loving in England, which is the country life and the things that go along with it.