I then went away and changed the lyric.” 4. That’s about as much as happened at that particular point. “I visited him one day and he was sitting at the piano – which is very unusual because he hates playing piano in the house – and he just had this idea of an opening section… He just played this riff and it just came into my head, sorry seems to be the hardest word. “The only time I can ever recall anything of that nature is the song Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word,” says Taupin. John and Taupin have always worked in the same way, with Taupin writing lyrics, then John writing a melody to fit them.
Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word is unique among his work with Elton John
“He’d done an audition but didn’t have any songs to sing… but Ray saw something in him and gave him my envelope of lyrics.” John took the lyrics and wrote music to them, then a meeting was organised. “I didn’t know what the construction of a lyric meant.” His attempts were enough to get Ray Williams, the record producer who placed the ad, to pair him with John. “I had no idea how to write songs,” Taupin says. A record company was looking for new talent. His fateful meeting with Elton John, then Reg Dwight, came after they both responded to an advert in NME in 1967. He liked Elton John because he wasn’t cool Bernie Taupin on first meeting a young Elton John 2.
