“Rocketman” – Movie vs. Reality

By Steven P. Wheeler

When it comes to the life and career of legendary singer-songwriter Elton John, fantasy really is more reality than fiction and now Rocketman, a cinematic overview of his life has been brought to the Silver Screen in a glitzy over-the-top Broadway fashion as envisioned by director Dexter Fletcher, with Taron Egerton in the title role. This musical-meets-drama approach should surprise no one as Captain Fantastic himself has spent a half-a-century splashing himself across global concert stages and tattered tabloids with all the subtlety of a Fourth of July nighttime sky.

Fans of Elton and his longtime lyricist Bernie “The Brown Dirt Cowboy” Taupin (portrayed by Jamie Bell in the movie) may cringe at the historical goofs laid out in Fletcher’s film, but casual fans will pay no heed to such trivial outrage. Both factions can (and should) just sit back and enjoy this musical celebration of the former Reginald Dwight’s meteoric rise, hedonistic fall, and Phoenix-like rebirth that is at the center of this amazing life story.

Those of us who already know the real story will just have to let go of the factual inaccuracies and climb aboard for a roller coaster ride of emotions buoyed by the John/Taupin catalog of songs that is unparalleled in the annals of pop music, both in terms of quality, quantity and longevity.

As Elton recently wrote of his 52-year relationship with Taupin: “Outside of my husband and children, [Bernie is] the most important relationship in my life, we really love each other and the film captures that. There’s a scene in Rocketman where he comes to visit me in rehab, and that started me sobbing again. It happened just the same way in real life. Bernie was one of the people who tried to tell me to stop doing drugs. I wouldn’t listen until years later, but he stuck by me, he never gave up on me, and he was so relieved and happy when I finally got help.

“Bernie was apprehensive about the film. He read the script and he didn’t like the fantasy aspects of it. ‘But that didn’t happen, that’s not true’–very Bernie. Then he saw it and completely got it. I don’t think he actually burst into tears, but he was incredibly moved by it. He understood the point of it, which was to make something that was like my life: chaotic, funny, mad, horrible, brilliant and dark. It’s obviously not all true, but it’s the truth.”

For those who have seen Rocketman (and those who have yet to), here’s just some random fun to help celebrate the 50+ year career of Elton John and his lyrical partner Bernie Taupin, without whom Elton John would not exist.

“I don’t think you can get two people who are more different than Elton and I. We’re like brothers and we love each other dearly, but we’re both just very, very different people. I think the music is the thread that binds us together, and our love for it. We give each other enough space to conduct our lives, and we come together for the pure enjoyment of writing songs.”
– Bernie Taupin on his 50-year songwriting partnership with Elton

(interview by Steven P. Wheeler)

The Legendary Troubadour Show

It was in late August of 1970 that an unknown singer-songwriter from England named Elton John made his American concert debut at the famous Troubadour club in Los Angeles for a six-night engagement. With nothing more than a piano and the brilliant rhythm section of drummer Nigel Olsson and bassist Dee Murray, the tiny, spectacled and bearded John would launch an unparalleled superstar career now entering its 50th year.

August 25, 1970 was an otherwise mundane Tuesday night in West Hollywood, but the opening night performance of Elton’s now-legendary stint at Troubadour would become the thing that dreams are made of. Promoting his self-titled debut album, which was a moody and heavily orchestrated album of ballads (“Your Song,” “Sixty Years On”), rockers (“Take Me to the Pilot,” “The Cage”) and epics (“The King Must Die”), no one could have predicted what happened next.

In truth, Elton fought against coming to America at this early juncture in his career as the album was not selling, but Russ Regan, the head of his stateside record label, Uni, would not take “no” for an answer. Reluctantly, Elton, Bernie, Nigel and Dee arrived in Los Angeles where none other than Neil Diamond introduced the fledgling talent to the packed club. Regan and publicist Norman Winter had turned up the hype machine and the celebrities were out in force, from Quincy Jones and Elton’s personal idol Leon Russell to Neil Young and members of the Beach Boys.

The word was out but no one really knew what to expect from this unknown talent and many felt this would be a subdued and introspective performance from a ballad-centric, piano-playing, singer-songwriter. Instead they were treated to a raucous performance that Rolling Stone would ultimately put in its list of “The Top 10 Most Important Concerts in Rock History.”

“We just made a lot of noise [at that Troubadour show]. It was new. Elton was experimenting. Plus, [Nigel and I] had to make up for the lack of an orchestra [so prominent on the album]. We just socked it to them.”
– Dee Murray, bassist

(Rolling Stone interview, 1987)

The totally unique three-piece outfit of John, Olsson and Murray (yep, no guitarist in sight, and certainly no “Crocodile Rock” as depicted in Rocketman as that pop ditty wouldn’t be written until two years later) literally ripped the roof off the Troubadour and two days later, on August 27, Robert Hilburn of the L.A. Times literally declared Elton to be rock’s next superstar. Hilburn culminated his influential review with these words: “By the end of the evening, there was no question about John’s talent and potential. Tuesday night at the Troubadour was just the beginning. He’s going to be one of rock’s biggest and most important stars.”

By January of 1971, “Your Song” would crack the Top 10 and the rest is pop music history.

My Gift is My Song

Released in 1970, “Your Song” was the song that turned the tide for the little-known songwriting duo of Reginald Dwight and Bernie Taupin, who had been failing at getting their songs covered by recording artists for two full years. That all changed when Reg Dwight the composer became Elton John the recording artist. Penned by the teenage poet at the breakfast table in Elton’s mother’s flat, where the two songwriters shared bunk beds, this was the first Top Ten hit for the John/Taupin team.

“‘Your Song’ has got to be one of the most naive and childish lyrics in the entire repertoire of music, but I think the reason it still stands up is because it was real at the time. I was 17 years old and it was coming from someone whose outlook on love or experience with love was totally new and naive. Now I could never write that song again or emulate it because the songs I write now that talk about love usually deal with broken marriages and where the children go [laughs]. You have to write from where you are at a particular point in time, and ‘Your Song’ is exactly where I was coming from back then.”
– Bernie Taupin

(interview by Steven P. Wheeler)

Someone Saved My Life Tonight

While Rocketman points out Elton’s 1975 suicide attempt two days before the two biggest concerts of his career at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, the film doesn’t reference Elton’s first suicide attempt in 1968. This first one inspired Bernie to pen the lyrics of the 1975 hit, “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” the epic cornerstone of the John/Taupin autobiographical chart-topping album, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy.

This brilliant album detailed, in chronological order, the lives of the Pinner pianist and the Lincolnshire lyricist from their first meeting up until their little-known British debut album, Empty Sky, covering the years 1967-69. (Empty Sky wouldn’t be released in America until 1975 capitalizing on Elton’s fame at the time.) In 2006, Bernie and Elton released their phenomenal autobiographical follow-up, The Captain and the Kid, which covered their story from their arrival in the States in 1970 to the present day. Both albums are must-haves for John/Taupin fans and you can read a detailed song-by-song account of The Captain and the Kid here, which truly serves as the true musical bio of John and Taupin’s incredible life together. But I digress…

Made with only a passing reference in the film, which shows Bernie imploring the then-Reginald Dwight to break off his marriage engagement at a time when his musical career had yet to begin. Here’s the real story…

In 1968, struggling composer Reginald Dwight (the name Elton John or even the notion of becoming a performer were not even a thought at this point) and his lyrical partner Bernie Taupin were living together in the East End of London, along with not-yet-out-of-the-closet Reg’s fiance Linda Woodrow.

Reg and Linda were almost two years into their relationship and only a few weeks from their marriage ceremony when Taupin and Reg’s mentor Long John Baldry (who is ridiculously excised from the entire film) went out drinking one fateful night. Taupin and Baldry were adamant in telling Dwight that he had to call off the marriage.

Baldry going so far as saying, “You’re more in love with Bernie than you are with this woman.” In Taupin’s lyrical recollection, Baldry is the life saving “Sugar Bear” made famous in the song. Elsewhere, Taupin is scathing in his lyrics towards Woodrow on behalf of his musical brother: “You almost had your hooks in me, didn’t you dear / You nearly had me roped and tied / Altar-bound, hypnotized / Sweet freedom whispered in my ear”

In terms of Elton’s first suicide attempt that followed this breakup, according to Taupin, it was more comical than anything else. Awakened by the smell of gas coming from the kitchen, Taupin assumed that someone had left the stove on. Upon examination, Taupin found his roommate with his head near the gas oven. Instead of panicking, Taupin laughed at the sight before him as Elton had not only carefully placed a fluffy pillow under his head for comfort, but he also left the windows open.

John & Taupin Split Up

While it’s true that Bernie Taupin and Elton John put their songwriting collaboration on hold following 1976’s Blue Moves album, the split only lasted one album, Elton’s uneventful A Single Man in 1978, in which Elton paired up with lyricist Gary Osborne. Taupin took that time to collaborate with his longtime friend Alice Cooper on 1978’s From the Inside, an excellent concept album dealing with drug abuse and rehab, which included the hit single “How You Gonna See Me Now.”

By the time of their hiatus, Elton and Bernie had released 14 albums(!) in only six years in order fulfill a backbreaking contract that called for two albums each and every year (not three as stated in the film). Between 1972-75, they would release seven consecutive #1 albums, and Elton and his band–guitarist Davey Johnstone, drummer Nigel Olsson and bassist Dee Murray–would embark on a non-stop touring schedule around the globe.

As Johnstone told me in discussing the height of Elton-mania back in 1995: “It was an extremely outrageous band. I have no idea how we survived. The funny thing is, Elton and the band had an image of making good music, so we never really had a reputation for being a hard-partying band. But in actual fact, it was completely nuts.”

It was amidst this madness that Taupin felt the need to pull himself out of the crazy water they were engulfed in. “That period of time is a little foggy,” he told me during one of our interviews. “We were at the high point there of abusing ourselves to the max. It was Jack Daniels and lines on the console.

“What was happening at that time, and probably the reason we were so screwed up, is that we had done everything,” the lyricist recalls. “There was no mountain to scale or to conquer anymore. We had filled the biggest stadiums. We had seven consecutive #1 albums and you know that every album you do from now on is not going to go to #1.

“At that point in time, Elton John farting would have sold,” Taupin says without a hint of a laugh, “and that’s intense pressure to be under because you suddenly realize that there’s no place to go, but down. And after the Blue Moves album in 1976, I had to get away. I moved to Mexico for six months to dry out, because I think we were all killing ourselves.”

Over the ensuing six years, Elton would include a handful of Taupin lyrics on each of his next three albums, choosing to still include words from other lyricists. But that all changed with 1983’s Too Low For Zero, the first album since 1976 to feature exclusively John/Taupin material throughout, including new classics “I’m Still Standing” and “I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues” which introduced Elton to the MTV generation. Since that reunion 35 years ago, Elton’s 15 official studio albums have featured only the words of Bernie Taupin.

Outside of his work with Elton, Taupin has released several solo albums, including the brilliant 1996 album, Last Stand in Open Country, with his band Farm Dogs. He also co-wrote such #1 hits as “These Dreams” (intended for Stevie Nicks, but recorded by Heart) and “We Built This City” for Starship. In 2003, Taupin’s “Mendicino County” won a Grammy for the duet by Willie Nelson and Leann Womack, and a few years later, Taupin picked up a Golden Globe for his lyrics to “A Love That Will Never Grow Old” from the film Brokeback Mountain.

“Rocketman” Nerd Patrol

As noted previously, Elton himself said of Rocketman: “It’s obviously not all true, but it’s the truth.” And here are just a handful of untruths that are littered throughout the film…

1. The Name Game

Elton took his stage name from two early musical associates–saxophonist Elton Dean and renown British band leader Long John Baldry, with whom our unknown Reginald Dwight played keyboards for. He did not take the “John” from his future friend and Beatle John Lennon as insinuated in the film.

2) Songs Not Yet Written

When Elton auditions for a songwriting deal in 1967, he plays snippets of songs for the Beatles’ publisher Dick James, including “That’s Why They Call It the Blues,” which Bernie didn’t even write the lyrics for until 1983 for his second wife, Toni Russo (sister of actress Rene Russo). Great song, silly song placement. He also plays “Daniel” and “Sad Songs (Say So Much)” in this scene, years and even decades before they were written. These types of song placement will bother the nerd patrol, but not the casual fans.

3. Reg & Sheila

Elton’s mother Sheila is portrayed as uncaring and non-supportive of her son throughout the movie. In truth, the two were very close up until 2008 when Elton refused to speak to her any longer after she continued to have a friendship with Elton’s former manager/lover John Reid and Elton’s longtime personal assistant Bob Halley whom the star had severed ties with. Mother and son did not speak again for nearly a decade, reconciling at the time of her 90th birthday. Sheila passed away in 2017 at the age of 92.

4) Lovers, Associates & Truth

4) Elton’s firing of his hot-headed manager John Reid didn’t happen until 1998, a decade after he got sober in 1990. Reid, who was known–and arrested on occasion–for physical altercations and assaults with members of the press, is not known to have slapped Elton in the face as depicted in the movie. The real reason for the dissolution was over what Elton felt were financial improprieties, approximately 20 million pounds unaccounted for. In truth, Elton lost his virginity to Reid at the age of 23 and they would remain lovers until 1975, but their business relationship would last another 20 years. The ultimate court case was settled out of court between Elton and Reid, who have not spoken since. Despite the settlement, the judge admonished Elton for his insane spending habits; something that the film humorously notes is the one addiction Elton has yet to conquer.

Final Thoughts…

Despite the previously mentioned historical quibbles (and many others), Rocketman is a compelling cinematic hybrid of a colorful musical celebration and a dark and often bleak glimpse into one man’s soul. An uncensored and relentless portrait of one’s need for love, this engaging film is ultimately a tale of redemption and survival.

Fortunately for his fans, as the 72-year-old legend bids the concert stage goodbye on his current Farewell Tour, Elton John ultimately decided 29 years ago to change the trajectory of a tragic destiny and indeed found himself wishing to be living Sixty Years On.