Sir Elton John had no idea what his mega-hit ‘Rocket Man’ was about until just recently.
The 1972 pop classic was co-written with the 75-year-old music legend’s long-time songwriting partner, Bernie Taupin, who has shared with the ‘I’m Still Standing’ hitmaker the astronaut story that inspired the space-themed song, some five decades after its release – and Elton confessed he “never knew that”.
In a clip shared on the ‘Tiny Dancer’ hitmaker’s Instagram page, Elton said: “‘Rocket Man’ was our first-ever number-one record I think. And it was on the ‘Honky Chateau’ record.
“It was a pretty easy song to write a melody to because it’s a song about space so it’s quite a spacious song.”
Bernie, 72, then shared: “It was actually a song inspired by Ray Bradbury from his book of science-fiction short stories called ‘The Illustrated Man’.
“In that book, there was a story called ‘The Rocket Man’, which was about how astronauts in the future would become sort of an everyday job so I kinda took that idea and ran with it.”
A surprised Elton replied: “Do you know, I never knew that…”
Bernie’s ‘Rocket Man’ revelation comes after it was revealed he is set to lift the lid on his career with Elton in a new book.
Elton previously wrote about their songwriting partnership in his 2019 autobiography ‘Me’, and now, Bernie is to tell his side of the story in ‘Scattershot: Life, Music, Elton, And Me’, which is described as a ‘nonlinear’ recollection of his time in the music industry.
Bernie said of the book: “It was never my intention to write a traditional A to Z autobiography. I began a few years back composing essays and observations on my life that ultimately gained momentum and started to look like a book. From then on, it became a long, arduous task that was both exhilarating and liberating. It was also a lot of fun and immensely beneficial in blowing the dust off a lot of what I’d forgotten about.”
He added of the finished product: “Hopefully, there’s something in it for everybody. It’s contemplative, self-assessing, and attempts to stay off the beaten path in not regurgitating what’s already been written. Nonlinear, it’s an exploratory trip bouncing back and forth along the decades.”
His publishers added in a statement: “Readers visit Los Angeles with Bernie and Elton on the cusp of global fame. We spend time in Australia at an infamous rock ‘n’ roll hotel in an endless blizzard of drugs and spend late-night hours with John Lennon, Bob Marley, and Frank Sinatra. And beyond the world of popular music, we witness memorable encounters with writers like Graham Greene, painters like Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali …
“And of course, even if they’re not famous in their own right, they are stars on the page, and we discover how they inspired the indelible lyrics to songs such as ‘Tiny Dancer’, ‘Candle in the Wind’, Bennie and The Jets’, and so many more.”
The tome is due for release in September.