With over 300 million albums sold, Sir Elton John reigns as one of the all time best selling recording artists. Starting out as a blues musician with his first band in 1962, his career would take a very positive turn when he met songwriting partner Bernie Taupin in 1967. They met when both responded to a classified ad seeking songwriters. While neither were hired, John was handed an envelope of poems written by Taupin when he told the interviewer that he could not write lyrics himself. It led to a collaboration that has spawned over 30 albums.
A 1991 documentary documents their writing style: Taupin creates the lyrics independently, then passes them to Elton John to compose the music and there is no further interaction. The pair were later hired by another publisher as a songwriting team, first penning songs for Roger Cook and Lulu. They were encouraged to write songs for John to record himself, and Elton John’s first solo record came in 1969. His second record generated his first top 10 hit in the UK and the US.
Elton John had his greatest success in the 1970s. In 1972, Honky Chateau was his first US number one album, starting a streak of seven consecutive number one albums. In 1973, he released the enormously successful double album set Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, which topped the charts for two months and established John as a glam rock star.
In 1977 Elton John released Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, the first album to debut at number one in the US. Following the record, John reconfigured his band and with the new group released Rock of the Westies, which also debuted at number one. In 1977, the streak of number one records ended. John announced that he would retire from performing and that he and Taupin were no longer working together. Neither statement proved to be true, as John and Taupin resumed collaborating in 1979 and John became one of the first Western artists to tour the Soviet Union in the same year.
