REVIEWED THIS MONTH
WHAT was it like being Bernie Taupin, the selfdeprecating half of the Elton John songwriting partnership? Eventful, apparently. “At one time or another,” Taupin writes in Scattershot, “I’d sat up until dawn watching old movies with Boz Scaggs, thrown out Chevy Chase for playing my piano and being a total dick, and watched Timothy Leary spend the best part of the evening talking to my jukebox. On one occasion, the wonderful English actor John Hurt stood on my coffee table reciting the gravedigger scene from Hamlet using a snow globe as Yorick’s skull. Christopher Reeve, fresh off his first blockbuster, crashed in my guest bedroom one night, compelling me to have a plaque made for the headboard that read ‘Superman Slept Here’. Through Christopher, I met Robin Williams.”