ELTON JOHN Candle In The Wind/Rocket Man quotes

[rhill@netrun.cts.com (ronald hill)]

        I wrote to the Elton John mailing list and asked if anyone 
could provide any quotes from Elton/Bernie about Rocket Man and Candle 
in the Wind.  A nice fellow named Ron McBay sent me these.


RE: CANDLE IN THE WIND 
 
(From the TWO ROOMS book) - BERNIE: I never get tired of hearing 
"Candle In 
The Wind."  There are some of our songs that are the perfect mesh of 
lyric and 
melody and I think "Candle In The Wind" is one of them.  The only thing 
that 
bothers me about the song is that as a result people tend to think that 
I have 
a raging obsession with Marilyn Monroe which was not the point of the 
song. 
The point of the song was how the media distorts people's lives.  It's 
a bit 
like "Daniel," people are not left alone, and that's really what 
"Candle In 
The Wind" was about.  It's a song about media abuse.  How we abuse the 
living, 
how we abuse the dead.  I'm not saying she wasn't talented, but 
sometimes it 
pays to die -- that's what that song's about. 
 
(From THE MANY LIVES OF ELTON JOHN book) - ELTON: It was so hard to 
record. 
The only way I recorded that in the end is that we put the piano on 
afterward. 
It was the first vocal I'd ever recorded standing up, and after that 
the piano, 
guitar, drums were put on.  It was such a hard song to do because it's 
not a 
typical piano number and I actually sang the number leaping around the 
microphone and going crazy. 
 
(From the ELTON JOHN biography) - BERNIE: I wanted to say that it 
wasn't just 
a sex thing.  That she was someone everybody could fall in love with, 
without 
her being out of reach. 
 
(From same) - ELTON: When I think of Marilyn, I just think of pain.  I 
can't 
ever imagine her being that happy. 
 
RE: ROCKET MAN 
 
(From the ELTON JOHN biography) - BERNIE: The words just came into my 
head: 
"She packed my bags last night, pre-flight.  Zero-hour is nine am."  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." 
 
(From same) - When asked whether they stole "Rocket Man" from David 
Bowie's 
"Space Oddity," BERNIE: Oh no.  We didn't steal that one from Bowie.  
We stole 
it from another bloke, called Tom Rapp [leader of the American cult 
band, 
Pearls Before Swine, who had released an earlier song also called 
"Rocket 
Man."] 
 


---
rhill@netrun.cts.com (ronald hill)
NetRunner's Paradise BBS, San Diego CA