03/07/2025
Sometimes the world stops, and you don’t get off, you just sit on the carousel ride and watch the circus show in full swing.
This year I have been fortunate enough to meet several of my heroes, and three of those on the same day. It matters not where, but only who. Most of my heroes are writers and , lyricist to Elton John’s hit parade, is one.
I could not bring myself to approach Bernie for an introduction. Instead I bought his book, Scattershot, a Kerouac account of his and meteoric rise and experiences traversing a music art history of R&B, country, jazz, rock n roll and psychedelia while devouring libraries of books that would inform and inspire some of the greatest songwriting of our time.
I am the mid-generation between the sonic revolution of the 60s and 70s that launched Elton and Bernie and our digital age now. Mine was the era of advertising and in a strange way Bernie’s pioneering accounts of the gunslingers of the music industry during that time are echoed across the 80s and 90s of an advertising industry whose arteries flowed with the lifeblood of creativity and our own rising stars shone in a galaxy of art directors, copyrighters, photographers and their muses. My own early days in advertising were imbued in the music of the 60s and 70s representing legendary photographers who had captured the legends of the day, from and The Band, Colin Jones and The Who, Hendrix psychedelia and Rolling Stones and the man himself, (Yardbirds) portrait on Led Zeppelin (1) through to Morrissey, Blur and S*x Pistols to Oasis and Verve album covers.
As a closet writer, aspirations are ignited when you are taken on a high speed rail-ridership of a book that one day you would like to come close to creating yourself - if only you could gather enough content.
Bernie Taupin claims Scattershot is his proudest accomplishment to date. There can be no higher accolade than that.
Buy it. Read it. Reignite a Creative Revolution.