It’s a fitting space for the artist who is “big on throwing things around,” as he says. Today Taupin lives in the country north of Santa Barbara, California where he’s transformed an old racquetball court into a painting studio. Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still rose to be his idols, and after settling down from a musician's itinerant life on the road in the 1990s, he traded the pen for the paintbrush. But, outside of the incredibly productive partnership, Taupin also nurtured an acute visual sensibility and infatuation with the revolutionary developments of Modernism. The harrowing incident, together with the low temperatures and the feeling of being a stranger in a strange place, drove the then-20-year-old Taupin to seek solace in the city's galleries and museums-particularly the Museum of Modern Art, where he discovered unexpected crossovers between the Modernist aesthetic and his own songwriting.Ī 15-year-old dropout with no formal musical or artistic training, Taupin remains best known for his over 40-year collaboration with the "Rocket Man" singer that resulted in platinum albums like “Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player” and “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” launching the pair to stardom. On a winter’s night in 1970, police shot down a suspect outside the midtown hotel where songwriting partners Bernie Taupin and Elton John spent their first night on tour in New York.
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