Cbr15bingo on the air
I like Elton John’s music. I know people who are super fans, and I am not one of those, but growing up in the 1970s with older siblings, I heard his music all the time on the radio or on our stereo at home. Between my sibs and me, we probably had most of his albums from the 1970s, and then with the ’80s and MTV, you couldn’t miss his videos. Recently, I heard part of Marc Maron’s interview with Bernie Taupin, Elton’s lyricist for decades, and thought that his new memoir Scattershot would make for interesting reading. I was looking forward to hearing about the songwriting process, inspirations, the making of albums, etc., but that is not what you are going to get with Scattershot. The memoir is aptly named; Taupin is all over the place with his recollections of his life growing up in rural England, meeting Elton and getting to work. I found it to be a frustrating read, and the writing more than a bit bloated, particularly since my last review was of a Julie Otsuka novel, she of the minimalist and gorgeous prose. Scattershot is like an all-you-can-eat buffet — some good things here and there but mostly filler that doesn’t satisfy and leaves you feeling a bit let down.
Scattershot reads like an old guy rambling about the good old days. I’d be hard pressed to tell you how the book is organized, because organization does not seem to be Taupin’s strong suit. He loves to name drop and describe the party scene of the 1970s and 1980s. The guy had a drinking problem and married several times (and cheated) before finding his true love at the end of the 1990s. He has diverse interests: music, food, art and perhaps most interesting, horse riding/rodeo-type stuff. He’s a cowboy and competed in shows. The chapter where he talks about that is probably the most coherent in the book. I found it very annoying that he jumps around in time so much without indicating he has left, say, 1974 to discuss something that happened ten years later, and then is going to go right back to ‘74 again. Taupin also seems to be of “more is more” rather than “less is more” school of descriptive writing. I might find that useful if he were describing his actual work as a lyricist (which he only does a bit in the book); when it comes to describing non-important and uninteresting stuff the offices where he and Elton first worked or his favorite dive bars, I couldn’t help but write “who cares?!” in my notes.
I’m not sure who the intended audience is for this book. Elton fans will be disappointed, something I think he realized and noted at the beginning of the book. I guess if you are super interested in one man’s rock’n’roll lifestyle through the decades, and what it’s like to get rich and be connected to one of music’s most iconic figures, this will be appealing. I was underwhelmed.