EXCLUSIVE: Elton John Nearly KILLED Songwriting Partner Bernie Taupin During Crazed Drink Bender — After Years of Physical and Verbal Abuse

Sir Elton John nearly drowned his songwriting partner Bernie Taupin to death during one of his infamous drink benders while the lyricist was stricken by a crippled arm.

RadarOnline.com can exclusively reveal Taupin – who has helped make Elton his $574million fortune by penning the words to his hits since the 1960s – was also bitten on his thigh by one of the singer's "studio dogs" before he had to be be yanked from a swimming pool and rushed for medical attention.

The songwriter revealed John almost killed him after years of physical abuse dished out by the diva – which he claims deepened as his boozing and coke-snorting deepened.

He said the incidents went from burning him on the hand with roasting teaspoons and farting on him to slapping him full-force in the face at a celebrity hotspot.

Taupin, 74, said the swimming pool incident came when he was recording with John, 77, in the Caribbean while the Rocket Man singer was still in the depths of his drink and drug addictions.

The pair were in Beatles producer George Martin's Air Studios on the island old Montserrat at the time, where John recorded albums including 1983's Too Low For Zero after ending his partnership with Bernie for four years.

Taupin said the near-drowning incident came amid a hellish stay at the studio.

He had his belongings nicked within the first two days, just before his arm was paralysed by a sting from a hellish Caribbean wasp known as a Jack Spania.

Taupin added: "With my writing arm incapable of function and my wallet empty, I attempted to make the best of my recovery.

"Of course, I made good on hanging out with the gang and especially spending time with Elton.

"I'm not really sure what my friend was imbibing at the time, but it was most assuredly something that had him amped up to the max.

"One night after work in the studio was completed, or at least Elton's input was, we retired to the pool for a little extracurricular aquatic recreation.

"Elton being Elton (intoxicated and possibly as high as Saturn), he tried to drown me… the two of us were thrashing away like a pair of combative porpoises.

"His strength being far superior to mine and my arm only now recovering from rigor mortis, I attempted to scramble out of the water."

Taupin added he was then left a bloody mess when a dog that was in the pool with them sunk his gnashers into his thigh.

He said: "The studio dog, a very large, yet normally complacent German shepherd, decided to join in the fun.

"Imagining me to be some discarded pool toy, he locked his ample jaws around my flailing leg, clamping down on my thigh with precise intent.

"It didn't really hurt, but then again, like my friend, I was seriously blitzed and numb by way of intoxication.

"The puncture was deep and obviously in need of medical assistance."

Taupin was in such a state staff at the studio leaped to save him.

He added in his memoir Scattershot: "Aware of my predicament, the altogether sober staff at the studio were on it in a jiffy.

"I wasn't even dry before they’d tossed me in the back of a jeep, wearing little more than a pair of shorts and nursing a bottle of Wild Turkey.

"With the latter in my hand, I alternated by taking slugs from the bottle while simultaneously dousing my wound with generous splashes of the rapidly dwindling bourbon.

"Whether or not this dramatic form of vintage sterilisation was something I’d picked up from too many westerns or in reality it really worked was inconsequential since the wound was starting to sting considerably and I was freezing my a** off."

Taupin said he ended up being carted to the local "sawbone" doctor who he said resembled Frankenstein’s monster actor Boris Karloff.

He was laid in his mess of an office, which he said was filled with "random jam jars" and "teetering piles of journals and files" before he was fixed up and jabbed with a rabies shot.

Taupin said: "If you've ever had a rabies shot, you'll be aware that the needle looks like it's three feet long and hurts like a son of a b***h.

"The implementation of it into your leg, especially administered by someone you’re not completely sure is actually in the medical profession, is frightening at best.

"So much fluid was injected into the locality of the wound that it caused my quadriceps to spasm and my leg to kick uncontrollably. It was not, I can assure you, a pleasant experience.

"Burglarised, paralysed, and now punctured, I wondered how things could get worse."

Taupin added that bizarrely, his trip back to the studio after his agonising rabies jab ended with a Biblical plague of frogs – with "chicken"-sized frogs sitting in the potholed-ridden roads who had been attracted out by the rain.

He was then confronted by a swarm of cockroaches in his room.

The songwriter added about how John had spent years abusing him: "These sort of jousting tournaments between the two of us went all the way back to the days when he took great pleasure in placing a hot teaspoon on the back of my hand at any given opportunity.

"This along with farting silently in back seat of a car and awaiting my reaction with a silly grin on his face were early juvenile but harmless party tricks.

"They, however, tended to get a little more aggressive as we aged, and when alcohol and drugs came into play."

Taupin went on about how a drunk but "Herculeanly strong" John once bashed him in the face at a posh eaterie: "Point in fact was an evening at LA's Le Dome restaurant when after a bucketful of martinis he slapped me so hard across the face that I almost fell over.

"I might add that Elton was Herculeanly strong and built like a proverbial brick s**thouse.

"So, liberally soused and not knowing his own strength, what was meant as a loving tap felt like a sucker punch. "When he called me the next day, he had no recollection whatsoever of the incident and was so sincere in his apology."

Fans have shared extracts from Taupin’s book to show John had a brutal side as he is flooded with sympathy after revealing he is stricken with a string of health issues including sight loss, crumbling bones and anxiety over his mortality.

John and Taupin's album Too Low For Zero recorded at Air Studios contained the hits I’m Still Standing and I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues and marked a comeback for the singer.

But he wouldn't get totally clean for another seven years after its release.

After a two-decade battle with coke and booze, he finally kicked both by checking himself into Lutheran General Hospital and joined an AA group.

Despite the pair taking a break from working together from 1976 to the early 1980s, Taupin has called their relationship a "non-sexual love affair".

John’s Rocketman biopic starring Taron Egerton as the singer shows him falling out with Taupin as his boozing and coke snorting sparked meltdowns, blackouts and egomaniacal tantrums.

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