When it came time to name the 2019 film about the life of Elton John, there were a few of his songs worthy of being the title — I'm Still Standing, Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me, Sad Songs, Your Song.
But really, when it came down to it, it had to be Rocket Man, the closest thing John has to a signature song.
Released 50 years ago this month, Rocket Man came at a vital time in John's then-burgeoning career, saving him from being written off as a one-hit wonder.
There's also a fitting similarity between the song's main character and the singer — over the years John definitely risked it all and flew too high before "burning out", Icarus-like, and crashing back down to Earth.
That's the notion that Rocket Man conjures up, even if its actual meaning is somewhat more prosaic.
'Zero hour, 9am…'
Bernie Taupin began writing lyrics for Elton John in 1967, kicking off one of the most unique and fruitful songwriting collaborations in music history.
But by 1972, their partnership had produced only one major hit — the 1970 single Your Song, which went top 10 in the US and the UK, and number 11 in Australia.
Follow-up singles Friends, Levon and Tiny Dancer fared less well, with the latter a top 20 hit in only Australia and Canada.
In the wake of a hectic 1971 in which John released three albums (the studio effort Madman Across The Water, live recording 17-11-70, and the soundtrack to little-seen film Friends), Taupin and John, along with John's touring band, decamped to Château d'Hérouville near Paris in January 1972 to make what would become the album Honky Chateau.
In his autobiography Me, John explained that the genesis of Rocket Man was as regular and everyday as almost every other collaboration he and Taupin had — the same bizarre mix of the mundane and the magical.
"Bernie writes the words, gives them to me, I read them, play a chord, and something else takes over, something comes through my fingers," John wrote.
"I've never sat down with one of Bernie's lyrics and nothing has come out.
"I don't know why. I can't explain it and I don't want to explain it."
At Château d'Hérouville, Taupin would sit at his typewriter in a room by himself, "bash out his lyrics", as John put it, "and leave them for me on the piano" for John to find in the morning and put to music over breakfast.
On the first morning in the chateau, John had turned three sets of Taupin lyrics into songs before the band awoke.
Among them was Rocket Man.
Taupin's lyrics were inspired by a Ray Bradbury short story titled The Rocket Man, in which an astronaut has to regularly leave his wife and child to make trips into space, with Taupin taking the novel approach of imagining the life of an astronaut as "just [a] job, five days a week", as opposed to the heroes of the time.
New guitarist Davey Johnstone was sceptical that John and Taupin could work so fast, so John played the three songs for him.
Rocket Man immediately jumped out to Johnstone, who asked John to play it again.
"He didn't add a solo or do anything that a regular lead guitar player might do," John wrote of that moment.
"He used a slide and played odd, lonely notes that drifted around and away from the melody — it was great."
John told Rolling Stone that Rocket Man felt different to anything he'd done previously.
"It had an acoustic guitar on it … it was a simpler sound," John said.
'Such a timeless flight …'
Keyboardist Richard Tankard, who has played with the likes of Jimmy Barnes, Richard Clapton, Things Of Stone & Wood, and Albert Lee, remembers Rocket Man standing out to him amid the bevy of great tracks on John's first Greatest Hits compilation, which was released in 1974 and part of the record collection in his grandma's house.
Tankard was already learning piano when he first heard that album and found myself playing along to it as part of a musical awakening that included watching John's early performances on the ABC's music program Countdown.
"I was trying to listen to what everyone on Countdown was doing, and trying to make sense of it on the piano, so I guess Elton was part of a larger thing," Tankard said.
"But on that collection of the Greatest Hits, [Rocket Man] seemed like a really special track — it's definitely got a flavour, it's got an atmosphere that's different."
Tankard said the instrumentation and arrangements help it stand out; nice yet unexpected use of slide guitar, understated spacey drums that don't play for much of the verses, melodic bass-playing, and prominent acoustic guitar.
But it also stands out among the pop music of its era.
Tankard noted the song uses "jazz-tinged" chords in its verse, giving the song a melancholy mood before shifting to the relative major of B flat for "a more optimistic chorus".
"That key of B flat, it's not overly common [in pop music] so it gives it a different flavour," he said.
While that detail might not resonate with most listeners, they definitely pick up on the hypnotic back-and-forth of its two-chord verses and outro.
"It's quite hypnotic, and that outro is gorgeous," he said.
"It's a great vocal performance and the bit at the end where he hits his falsetto, it's just great."
Like many pianists, Tankard "cut his teeth playing in piano bars", which means that, by default, he was going to end up playing Elton John songs.
"You're going to do I Guess That's Why They Call It Blues, you're going to do Your Song, and you're going to do Rocket Man," he said.
While he doesn't play piano bars much these days, Tankard is currently busy playing with Goanna, Broderick Smith, Geoff Achison & The Souldiggers, and his own project Tank Dilemma, he still finds himself playing Rocket Man when he does.
"It always stands up. People stop and listen to Rocket Man, and you'll finish it and they're singing the outro," he said.
Tankard said seeing John play it live on his farewell tour of Australia in 2019 was a highlight in a gig that showcased what made John so good in the first place.
"I didn't hear him play a single wrong note, his timing was impeccable and vocally he was great too," he said.
"His concert was a sheer delight … and then he disappeared in a helicopter above us.
"He's a serious piano player, he's a serious musician. I think sometimes that gets brushed over.
"It's really important not to underestimate his musicianship. Yes, he's got his flamboyance and the helicopters and all that, but he does back it up."
'And I'm gonna be high as a kite by then …'
Rocket Man changed John's career almost overnight.
"Everything seemed to [get] bigger, louder, more excessive," John wrote in his autobiography.
The song went to number two in the UK, and number six in the US where it was triple-platinum. In Australia, it was number 13, and it was his best-selling single to date in Germany, Ireland and New Zealand.
"We'd stumbled onto a different kind of commerciality, and its success changed our audience," he wrote.
"Screaming girls started appearing in the front rows and outside the stage door, tearfully clinging on to the car as we tried to get away.
"It felt really peculiar as if they'd gone to see The Osmonds or David Cassidy but taken a wrong turn and somehow ended up at our gig instead."
It kicked off an incredible purple patch for John. His next seven singles went top 10 in either the UK or the US or both, and John began playing bigger and bigger venues as he sold more and more records.
He matched this new-found level of fame by wearing increasingly elaborate stage costumes and living a lifestyle that matched one of the key lyrics of the song — "burning out his fuse up here alone".
'I think it's gonna be a long, long time …'
Rocket Man was one of four John songs to make Rolling Stone's 2021 list of the 500 greatest songs, with the "soaring anthem" coming in at number 149 — only Tiny Dancer was higher at number 47.
While Tiny Dancer also has its own cinematic moment via the bus singalong in Cameron Crowe's 2000 film Almost Famous, Rocket Man leant itself to one of the key scenes in the film of the same name, in which he goes from overdose and suicide attempt to playing at Dodger Stadium via a heart-breaking yet theatrical transition.
The song's legacy is also entwined in its covers.
Kate Bush famously took it to number two in Australia and number 12 in the UK with a reggae version complete with uilleann pipes and concertina, while William Shatner infamously performed an unintentionally hilarious spoken word version in 1978 that has been a source of parody for more than 40 years.
Rocket Man also formed part of the mash-up track Cold Heart, in which Aussie dance music trio Pnau combined a bunch of John songs with some new Dua Lipa vocals, sending John and part of Rocket Man back to the top of the charts for the first time in more than a decade.
It seems that 50 years on from its release, the song detailing the "timeless flight" of its astronaut narrator is just that — timeless.
