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ELTON JOH, Part 1
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Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting
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The song:
"Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" is a song originally recorded by Elton John, who composed it with his long-time songwriting partner Bernie Taupin (music: Elton John; lyrics: Bernie Taupin). It was released on John's best-selling album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1973) and as the first single.
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Video:
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Lyrics selection:
It's getting late, have you seen my mates?
Ma, tell me when the boys get here
It's seven o'clock and I wanna rock
Wanna get a belly full of beer
My old man's drunker than a barrel full of monkeys
And my old lady, she don't care
My sister looks cute in her braces and boots
A handful of grease in her hair
Oh, don't give us none of your aggravation
We had it with your discipline
Oh, Saturday night's alright for fighting
Get a little action in
Get about as oiled as a diesel train
Gonna set this dance alight
'Cause Saturday night's the night I like
Saturday night's alright, alright, alright, ooh
Well, they're packed pretty tight in here tonight
I'm looking for a dolly who'll see me right
I may use a little muscle to get what I need
I may sink a little drink and shout out, "She's with me!"
A couple of the sounds that I really like
Are the sounds of a switchblade and a motorbike
I'm a juvenile product of the working class
Whose best friend floats in the bottom of a glass
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Back Story:
The lyrics discuss a night out in town in which the narrator plans to "get about as oiled as a diesel train". Taupin has said that the song was meant to be an American rock and roll song set in Britain. It was inspired by his raucous teenage days and in particular, the fistfights in his local pub, the Aston Arms in Market Rasen.
The Aston Arms Pub
As pictured in the 1975 Captain Fantastic album sleeve.
The Aston Arms today
This is where a teenage Bernie Taupin and his friends played snooker and drank ale before they were of legal age. Although Taupin grew up several miles away in the village of Owmby-by-Spital, his secondary school was located here in the larger town of Market Rasen, where the Aston Arms is located.
Taupin's experiences helped inspire the lyrics for the 1973 Elton John song Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting. There was a pub in Normanby right next to Owmby, but Bernie preferred The Aston Arms because there was more action, including the inevitable fistfights on Saturday nights. A framed newspaper article on the wall inside commemorates the pub's role in creating a hit song.
Many of Taupin's songs are written to relate to Elton's life, but not this one - it's unlikely that Elton would be fighting in a club.
In the liner notes to Elton John's boxed set, it explains that he recorded his vocal while leaping around and "going crazy." It was the first time Elton recorded a vocal standing up, and he made the most out of it.
Elton would sometimes let fans come onstage and gather around his piano when he performed the song. That ended on March 1, 2018 when an overanxious fan kept touching him when he played it at a concert in Las Vegas. Elton stormed off the stage, and when he returned, declared, "No more coming on stage on 'Saturday Night.' You fucked it up."
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Rocket Man
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The song:
"Rocket Man" was written by Elton John and songwriter Bernie Taupin and performed by John. It was originally released on 17 April 1972 in the US, as the lead single to John's album Honky Château.
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Video:
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Lyrics:
She packed my bags last night, pre-flight
Zero hour, 9 a.m.
And I'm gonna be high as a kite by then
I miss the Earth so much, I miss my wife
It's lonely out in space
On such a timeless flight
And I think it's gonna be a long, long time
'Til touchdown brings me 'round again to find
I'm not the man they think I am at home
Oh, no, no, no
I'm a rocket man
Rocket man burnin' out his fuse up here alone
And I think it's gonna be a long, long time
'Til touchdown brings me 'round again to find
I'm not the man they think I am at home
Oh, no, no, no
I'm a rocket man
Rocket man burnin' out his fuse up here alone
Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids
In fact, it's cold as hell
And there's no one there to raise them if you did
And all the science, I don't understand
It's just my job five days a week
A rocket man
A rocket man
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Back Story:
The song was inspired by Ray Bradbury's short story "The Rocket Man" in The Illustrated Man, about a professional astronaut whose work keeps him away from his anguished family for months at a time.
It echoes the theme of David Bowie's 1969 song "Space Oddity". Taupin has denied that the Bowie song was an inspiration, but has acknowledged borrowing from Pearls Before Swine's 1970 "Rocket Man", written by Tom Rapp, which was also influenced by the Bradbury story. According to an account in Elizabeth Rosenthal's book His Song: The Musical Journey of Elton John, the song was inspired by Taupin's sighting of either a shooting star or a distant aeroplane.
Taupin says that the Pearls Before Swine song gave him the idea for his own "Rocket Man" - "It's common knowledge that songwriters are great thieves, and this is a perfect example," he said.
In the Pearls Before Swine song, a child can no longer look at the stars after his astronaut father perishes in space.
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About:
The song describes a Mars-bound astronaut's mixed feelings at leaving Earth to do his job. Rosenthal's account goes on to relate that the notion of astronauts no longer being perceived as heroes, but in fact as an "everyday occupation", led Taupin to the song's opening lines: "She packed my bags last night, pre-flight. Zero hour: 9 a.m. And I'm gonna be high as a kite by then."
Space exploration was big in 1972; the song came out around the time of the Apollo 16 mission, which sent men to the moon for the fifth time.
The opening lyrics came to Bernie Taupin while he was driving near his parents' house in Lincolnshire, England. Taupin has said that he has to write his ideas down as soon as they show up in his head, or they could disappear, so he drove though some back roads as fast as he could to get to the house where he could write down his thought: "She packed my bags last night, pre-flight. Zero hour, 9 a.m., and I'm gonna be high as a kite by then."
From there he came up with the song about a man who is sent to live in space as part of a scientific experiment.
"Rocket Man" became a nickname for Elton John. As song-based nicknames go, it's a good one, and Elton embraced it (Madonna hates the "Material Girl" name). In 2019, a biopic (billed as a "musical fantasy") called Rocketman was released starring Taron Egerton as Elton John.
When Elton played the Soviet Union in 1979, this was listed on the program as "Cosmonaut."
This was Elton's biggest hit to that point, outcharting his first Top 10 entry, "Your Song." It had a huge impact on his psyche, as it gave him the confidence to know that he could sustain his career in music.
Trump is a fan of the song, and often played it at his campaign rallies. However, Bernie Taupin disapproved of the president's usage of the title. "The context bothered me," he told the Wall Street Journal. "The thought that World War III could start over the use of my song title was disturbing. I also was uncomfortable that something of mine that was culturally iconic could be used in such a way.” "But what could I do? Sue him for cultural appropriation?" Taupin continued. "As a songwriter, you're powerless to stop something like that. However, if the use of 'Rocket Man' results in peace, I will be very happy to take full credit for it."
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Song for Guy
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The song:
"Song for Guy" is a mainly instrumental piece of music by English musician Elton John. It is the closing track of his 1978 album, A Single Man.
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Video:
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Lyrics:
Life isn't everything
Isn't everything
Isn't everything
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Back story:
As I was writing this song one Sunday, I imagined myself floating into space and looking down at my own body. I was imagining myself dying. Morbidly obsessed with these thoughts, I wrote this song about death. The next day I was told that Guy [Burchett], our 17-year-old messenger boy, had been tragically killed on his motorcycle the day before. Guy died on the day I wrote this song.
— Elton John, from the sleeve notes of the 7-inch single.
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About:
It stands as one of the few pieces written by Elton John alone and the only instrumental he made and released as a single.
His subsequent instrumentals were released only as B-sides, notably "Choc Ice Goes Mental" (A-sides: "I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues" and "Kiss the Bride") and "The Man Who Never Died" (A-sides: "Nikita" and "The Last Song").
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