In the 1977 movie Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, an ARP 2500 plays the notes that summon the aliens. Hentschel got the call again on the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album when Dudgeon had him create the opening section to “Funeral For A Friend / Love Lies Bleeding” on the ARP. When Dudgeon found out they had the synth, which was introduced in 1971, he had Hentschel play it and ended up using it in the final mix. Hentschel operated an ARP 2500 synthesizer at Trident Studios in London, where producer Gus Dudgeon did overdubs and mixing for the album. Elton didn’t dabble in synths, so a studio engineer named Dave Hentschel played it. In 2019, a biopic (billed as a “musical fantasy”) called Rocketman was released starring Taron Egerton as Elton John.Īround the 2:20 mark, some synthesizer comes into the mix, accentuating the space motif. In 1973, he started a record company called Rocket Records, which was the label that released Neil Sedaka’s comeback songs. As song-based nicknames go, it’s a good one, and Elton embraced it (Madonna hates the “Material Girl” moniker). “Rocket Man” became a nickname for Elton John. It’s a “cold” place, being an addict and larger than life when you want to be “Normal” and a “Rocketman” at the same time. “Mars” – “The place he is when he’s high don’t need to be raising children when you’re an addict. “Higher than a kite” – Feeling outside the box called normal. “I’m burning out his fuse up here alone” – Rocketing through space on stage. Some lyric analysis as part of the rock star isolation theory: The song can be interpreted as a symbol of how rock stars are isolated from their friends, family and from the real world by those with power in the music industry.

Zero hour, 9 a.m., and I’m gonna be high as a kite by then.”įrom there he came up with the song about a man who is sent to live in space as part of a scientific experiment. Taupin has said that he has to write his ideas down as soon as they show up in his head, or they could disappear, so he drove though some back roads as fast as he could to get to the house where he could write down his thought: “She packed my bags last night, pre-flight. The opening lyrics came to Bernie Taupin while he was driving near his parents’ house in Lincolnshire, England.

In the Pearls Before Swine song, a child can no longer look at the stars after his astronaut father perishes in space.

Taupin says that song gave him the idea for his own “Rocket Man” (“It’s common knowledge that songwriters are great thieves, and this is a perfect example,” he said). Space exploration was big in 1972 the song came out around the time of the Apollo 16 mission, which sent men to the moon for the fifth time.īradbury’s story was the basis for another song called “Rocket Man,” which was released by the folk group Pearls Before Swine (fronted by Tom Rapp) in 1970. The song peaked at #6 in the Billboard 100, #8 in Canada, and #2 in the UK in 1972. 1 Hits, 7 Top 10 Hits, and 67 Songs in the Billboard 100 so far. Elton practically owned the early seventies. This was produced by Gus Dudgeon, who worked with David Bowie on his 1969 song “Space Oddity.” Both songs have similar subject matter. It was published as part of the anthology The Illustrated Man in 1951. The sci-fi author’s tale is told from the perspective of a child, whose astronaut father has mixed feelings at leaving his family in order to do his job. The inspiration for Bernie Taupin’s lyrics was the short story The Rocket Man, written by Ray Bradbury. The most commonly misheard lyric in this song is “ Rocket Man, burning out his fuse up here alone.” I would mumble words through that until I caught a word somewhere down the line. Like Bennie and the Jets there are some words that I had no clue in what he was singing. Great single by Elton John released in 1972.

Elton john rocket man original version