Pearls Before Swine: the song Elton John ripped off for ‘Rocket Man’
The adage is that ‘talent borrows, but genius steals’. For as long as rock and roll has existed, artists have been adopting their favourite songs in their record collection as their own. While many up-and-coming artists made millions by ripping off acts like Chuck Berry and Little Richard back in the day, Elton John had a bit of a niche pick when putting together one of his biggest hits.
While Bernie Taupin is responsible for writing John’s best work, his inspiration for a tale of a lone astronaut exploring the cosmos came from another song called ‘Rocket Man’ by Pearls Before Swine. In the original, the roles are reversed, talking about the son of the titular rocket man feeling sad and lonely that his father isn’t there to share in his life. This version is a much sourer take on the character, thinking that the rocket man is using his job as an excuse not to spend time with his family.
Although Taupin heard the song’s concept, he took the entire tune in a different direction, choosing to tell it from the rocket man’s perspective, looking back down on Earth. Taupin did own to the similarities, though, saying: “It’s common knowledge that songwriters are great thieves, and this is a perfect example”.
After spending time with the concept in his head, the opening lines about the narrator’s wife packing his bags came to Taupin in one gulp, discussing in Classic Rock Stories that “the word just came into my head, ‘She packed my bags last night, pre-flight. Zero-hour is 9am.’ I remember jumping out of the car and running into my parents’ house, shouting, ‘Please, don’t anyone talk to me until I’ve written this down”.
In John’s take on the situation, what came off as spiteful in the original version of ‘Rocket Man’ becomes tragic. After years of spending time in space, the astronaut sees his job as a common way to provide for his family, knowing that it means he’ll never see his son as much as he’d like. Whereas Pearls Before Swine had lines about the family only going out when it rained so they wouldn’t see him, John’s rocketman is pining for home every day, acknowledging that it will be a long time before he crashes back down to Earth.
Although the space race may have been trendy due to the moon landing in 1969, John’s take on never seeing everyday life had obvious parallels to what he saw daily. Much like ‘Space Oddity’ by David Bowie, John had a certain mystique about him when he sang this song, either telling a story on some nights when playing this song live or letting himself open up to his fans in a more profound way.
In a sense, this song could be attributed as a tribute to the road warriors in rock history, ones whose ‘home’ takes place on the back of a touring bus, never finding the time to settle down. Pearl Before Swine may have written their version as a kiss-off to a deadbeat dad, but John’s take on ‘Rocket Man’ shows that one should never paint with a broad brush when looking at loneliness.
