Bernie Taupin on anonymity, Elton John and life as 'the credit card guy'

Bernie Taupin has written lyrics for the bulk of the 300 million records Elton John has sold, and he says he's "the luckiest man in the world" because almost nobody recognises his face.

The songwriter, now releasing a solo album he describes as wistfully grouchy, has a name for his peculiar station in fame. "I am," he says, "what I call the credit card guy. I go somewhere, like a shop or a restaurant, and it's fine. I can be me, no one notices. Then I pay with my credit card and they see the name and go — 'You're that guy!'"

He isn't complaining. "I absolutely, positively, 100% love my anonymity, the fact I can walk down the street," Taupin says. It's a strange payoff for someone who is, statistically, one of the most successful lyricists in pop history.

How invisible is he, exactly?

Invisible enough that even fellow stars draw a blank. At Americanafest in Nashville recently, Taupin went to see Robert Plant play. Plant sent word that he wanted to meet up. Taupin walked over — and got the look. "'Oh God, who the hell's this?'" Taupin recalls. "'Hey, Robert, it's Bernie!' 'Oh my gosh!'"

The two had dinner the next night. The episode makes Taupin's point for him: the man who supplied the words to "Rocket Man" and most of John's catalogue can still approach a rock legend as a stranger.

What does that anonymity change for Taupin?

In practice, it buys him an ordinary life in public and total freedom to work without celebrity's friction. Half of one of the most successful songwriting partnerships in history, Taupin has never exactly hidden — his photo appears on the sleeve of nearly all of John's most famous albums. On 1975's Rock of the Westies, he appears in fringed leather chaps and a shirt open to the navel.

Yet the face never caught up with the name. Not every song on those 300 million records carries Taupin's lyrics, but the vast majority do — and the writer behind them moves through restaurants unnoticed until the bill arrives.

What else is on his plate?

The new interview, timed to his solo release, touches on more than fame. Taupin discusses his LA drinking gang, his taste for what he calls hellraising vampires, and his life competing in full-blown rodeos — he owns a prize-winning bucking bull.

"At my age, I can rant!" he says — a fitting thesis for an album he himself frames as wistfully grouchy. The man who spent five decades writing other people's verses has now turned the pen on his own late-career irritations.

For a lyricist who measured his success in someone else's voice, the solo record marks a quiet inversion: the words, for once, are his to deliver — and, if his credit-card theory holds, most listeners will have no idea who's singing.