Bernie Taupin has said it is an “urban legend” that he wrote Sir Elton John’s classic hit Your Song in 10 minutes – admitting it may have been 15 minutes or half an hour.
The beloved track, released in 1970, remains one of Sir Elton’s biggest hits and is one of scores of classics Taupin wrote with the Rocketman star.
The lyricist told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “When you talk about a song being written in 10 minutes or 15 minutes, there’s a slight bit of urban legend to that.
“I’m not sure that I wrote Your Song in 10 minutes, it may have been 15 minutes or half an hour, all I can tell you is that it was a short time period.”
'I think it was something that was destined, it was just meant to be.'
Lyricist Bernie Taupin talks about his phenomenal partnership with Elton John and being the first person to see Elton after he came out of rehab. pic.twitter.com/400HsB3Nbw
— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) December 6, 2023
He added: “But for the most part it takes me a while, I’ll come back and revisit songs and some songs have been written over several years.
“I’ll come up with bits and pieces, put them away and pull them out again after some time and revisit them so they’re all approached in a different fashion and a different time frame.
“As everybody knows, you know, I complete the lyrics first and then Elton works on the music.
“Candle In The Wind wasn’t written in five minutes or 10 minutes, it was probably approached again and again over several weeks or several months.”
The Oscar-winning songwriter’s long-running collaboration with Sir Elton is one of the most successful and prolific in modern music and he recounts their meeting in his new book Scattershot: Life, Music, Elton and Me.
Taupin told GMB: “We basically got on from day one, it was just Kismet. It was meant to be and we got on like a house on fire.
“We bonded on music and just a love of all things from literature to movies.
“He’s always said I was kind of the brother that he was looking for.
“I think music was the common denominator. It was the bond that put us together, but I just loved him from day one and I think he felt the same way about me.
“We were kind of loners. And think it was just something that I was destined, it was meant to be.”