Elton John has a fresh set of lyrics from Bernie Taupin, and “can’t wait” to get into the studio and put them to music.
In a new interview with Variety, the legendary musician said his songwriting partner had recently sent him lyrics for seven new songs, describing them as “really, really good.” John added that he was excited to get into the studio with producer Andrew Watt “and just write and see what happens.”
If these songs do mark the start of new album for John, it could be his first solo LP with all new material from Taupin since 2016’s Wonderful Crazy Night. In recent years, John has focused largely on collaborative projects, like 2021’s The Lockdown Sessions, which featured a mix of covers and original material co-written with the various artists John was working with. (Taupin’s only writing credit was on “Cold Heart,” the Dua Lipa collab that reinterpreted and sampled four old John/Taupin songs, including “Rocket Man.”)
And while John did open up about his dwindling vision, he said his musical abilities have never been stronger.
“I’m singing better than I’ve ever done before, and I’m playing really well, and I’m enjoying it, and that is helping me a lot,” he said. “Music has been my whole life and has given me so much and takes me on journeys that I never thought I would ever go on — and it’s still doing that. I just like doing the odd thing. It pays the rent very well, and it keeps me musical. I just can’t wait to go into the studio now and write some new songs and go from there.”
Bernie Taupin recalls the story of Elton's Rocket Man.
“With ‘Rocket Man,’ the first two lines came to me when I was driving along, and by the time I’d gotten home, I’d written the song in my head,” Taupin told Rolling Stone. “I got inside and had to rush and write it all down before I’d forgotten it.”
The U.S. landed its first manned mission to the moon in July of 1969, and the last landed back on Earth in December 1972. Within that timeframe came three iconic songs about traveling the stars: “Rocket Man,” David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” and Harry Nilsson’s “Spaceman.” With Bowie’s song hitting first (just a scant 10 days before the actual moon landing), it’s been assumed that “Oddity” inspired Taupin’s bolt of inspiration while driving.(ultimateclassicrock.com)
thought Don’t Shoot Me would get ripped apart– Because I think it’s a very happy album, very ultra-pop, if you look at any of our other albums it’s very poppy, just very straight pop.
Elton: I get fucking pissed off at people saying, “Their songs always sound the same.”How can you say “Have Mercy on the Criminal” sounds like “Daniel” or “Daniel” sounds like “High Flying Bird.”Bernie: Somebody once said that “Burn Down the Mission” sounded like “Friends.”[Laughter]. That’s true, that’s an actual quote from a paper.
People identify it, unfortunately, with David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity,’” Taupin said in an interview for John’s YouTube channel. “But it was actually inspired by a story 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 kind of took that idea and ran with that.”
Like the rest of Honky Chateau, “Rocket Man” was recorded with the core of John’s touring band at the time, the first time he’d taken them into the studio as his core group of musicians.
Maybe it’s the humanity in Taupin’s lyrics. Rather than focusing on the sci-fi trappings of space travel, he zeroes in on the mundane reality of a man who has to pack his bags, leave behind his family, and trek off into the inky void, as casually as one might grab a taxi into the city. Where Bowie aims for the surreal and Nilsson plays for laughs, Taupin finds a quiet loneliness in his “Rocket Man.”
That was cold comfort to Bowie, who was none too happy to see his re-released “Space Oddity” leapfrogged on the charts by “Rocket Man” in 1973. But it’s hard to feel too bad; as his wife Angie noted at the time, “Other people can sing about space travel, too.”
