Recently, Elton John and his long-time songwriting partner, Bernie Taupin, sat down to discuss their successes over the years when we, and even Elton John himself, learned something about one of their biggest hits.
“‘Rocket Man’ was our first-ever Number One record I think,” John said. “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.”
Continuing with the “space” messaging, Taupin actually chimed in, “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.”
John even admits he never knew that was what it was about this entire time!
