Taron Egerton’s model of “Rocket Man” on the soundtrack of the musical fantasy primarily based on Elton John’s life, Rocketman, was the most recent endorsement of one of the treasured songs in Elton’s jewel-encrusted catalog. It prompts this have a look at the historical past of a composition that has impressed a number of different notable interpretations, and has certainly lasted an extended, very long time.
Egerton’s interpretation, enthusiastically endorsed by the celebrity himself, follows an imaginative transforming of the 1972 hit by nation notables Little Huge City, on the 2018 all-star album Restoration: The Songs Of Elton John and Bernie Taupin. The unique had a visible makeover of its personal in 2017, because of a brand new video by Iranian filmmaker Majid Adin.
Zero hour, 9am for the Elton unique of this vivid story tune arrived on March 31, 1972. That’s when “Rocket Man” was launched as a UK “maxi-single,” additionally that includes “Holiday Inn” and “Goodbye,” forward of his fifth studio album Honky Château. The A-side was produced, as was the LP, by Elton’s common studio confidant Gus Dudgeon, who had additionally overseen David Bowie’s 1969 breakthrough hit on the identical theme, “Space Oddity.”
Area age singles
As public fascination in house flight reached fever pitch, that Bowie single got here out a matter of days earlier than the launch of Apollo 11, which dramatically achieved the primary manned lunar touchdown. By 1972, the “space age” as we then knew it was coming to an finish, with the ultimate moon launch in this system, Apollo 17, making its touchdown that December.
Taupin’s lyric for “Rocket Man” drew inspiration from considered one of 18 brief tales in 1951’s The Illustrated Man, by the revered science fiction author Ray Bradbury. The ebook reached a brand new era when it was changed into the 1969 characteristic movie starring Rod Steiger and Claire Bloom. The story described the lifetime of an astronaut who goes on three-month sojourns into house.
As Elton’s “Rocket Man” first climbed into the chart stratosphere, the still-emerging Bowie described the affect of his earlier hit on the brand new one — at the same time as he admitted to Disc journal that he already considered his tune as an unwelcome novelty. “It would be nice to eradicate ‘Space Oddity,’” he stated, “but I’m flattered in the nicest way, that Elton John took so much out of it for ‘Rocket Man.’ I think perhaps it was premature. If that single had come out now I would be ‘part of the scene’.”
Zero hour, 9am
In 1998, Taupin instructed Musician journal: “The first verse of ‘Rocket Man’…was in my head as I was driving to my parents’ house in England many years ago. I drove like crazy down these backroads trying to get there in time so I’d remember it, and rushed in the door to write it down. I had the whole opening bit: ‘She packed my bags last night, pre-flight/zero hour, 9am, and I’m gonna be high as a kite by then.’ That all came to me at once.”
“Rocket Man” peaked at No.2 within the UK within the first week of June 1972, overwhelmed to the highest solely by “Metal Guru,’ by Elton’s friend Marc Bolan and T. Rex. It hit No.6 on Billboard’s Hot 100 in July, the very month that American writer-artist Harry Nilsson’s Son Of Schmilsson album was released, containing “Spaceman,” which described how the lunar programme was not the inspiration it had been. “I wanted to be a spaceman, that’s what I wanted to be,” he sang. “But now that I am a spaceman, nobody cares about me.”
Burning out his fuse…
One of many first covers of “Rocket Man” was for the 24th version of the Prime Of The Pops sequence, which supplied funds compilations of latest hits, swiftly recorded by anonymous musicians. The irony wouldn’t have been misplaced on Elton, who himself performed on some albums in that sequence in his pre-fame years of the late Sixties.
The tune was meat and drink to most of the gentle leisure orchestras of the day, however got here into its personal once more a pop era later when Kate Bush paid tribute to it in her 1991 rendition. “Rocket Man” was her alternative for that yr’s multi-artist set, Two Rooms: Celebrating The Songs Of Elton John & Bernie Taupin. Launched as a single, it reached No.12 within the UK and No.2 in Australia.
Many additional covers accrued within the Nineteen Nineties by such teams because the Brown Derbies and Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, in addition to British guitar hero Hank Marvin, on his Heartbeat album. In 2003, Neil Diamond’s 1978 model was included on his dwell field set Phases, collected from exhibits of his between 1970 and 2002 onto 5 CDs and one DVD.
2004 introduced the looks of a late Nineteen Nineties model minimize within the early days of My Morning Jacket, belatedly launched on the gathering The Sandworm Cometh. In 2011, Elton himself duetted on a medley together with “Rocket Man” and “Mona Lisas And Mad Hatters,” its Honky Château bedfellow, with American singer, actor and dancer Matthew Morrison.
Electro-pop pioneers Heaven 17 gave the tune a particular replace for the 2015 varied artists compilation ’80s Re-Coated, on which artists of the Nineteen Eighties lent their sound to a wide range of hits. “Rocket Man” can also be a staple within the dwell set of Liverpool-born nation singer-songwriter Laura Oakes, twice named the British Nation Music Affiliation’s Feminine Vocalist of the Yr.
‘A colossal hit’
“Elton John for me has always been king,” Oakes says. “[His] was the very first dwell present I ever noticed once I was 14, and that was what made me go ‘Oh my god, I want to do this for a living.’ ‘Rocket Man’ is such a colossal hit and it shows completely all the pieces that’s genius and sensible about Elton and Bernie’s songwriting, which is why I needed to cowl this one particularly.
“Listening to it growing up when I was getting into country music, I always thought ‘This could be a great country song,’” she explains. “So that’s exactly what I did with it and it’s one of my favorite points in my live set — because not only do I get to remind the audience of one of the greatest writing partnerships ever, I get to remind myself why I love Elton’s music so much, and how I felt at 14 hearing him live for the first time.”
Right here’s Oakes performing the tune for the Beneath The Apple Tree acoustic session sequence; we additionally advocate her model of a later Elton tune, the Blue Strikes observe “Cage The Songbird,” which is on her Nashville Stole Your Lady EP.
Take heed to the very best of Elton John on Apple Music and Spotify.
“Rocket Man” was then reinhabited by considered one of nation music’s largest names, Little Huge City, with lead vocals by Jimi Westbrook and a suitably futuristic and glamorous video. The group introduced it to life as they took the stage at Europe’s 2018 C2C (Nation to Nation) Competition and through their ensuing efficiency on the ACM Awards. Latterly, the tune sits in Egerton’s palms, and on the soundtrack of considered one of 2019’s largest musical movies. For “Rocket Man,” it stays a timeless flight certainly.
Purchase or stream “Rocket Man” on the Honky Château fiftieth anniversary editions.
