The Story Behind Elton John's Unknown Rocket Man Writing

Elton John (Instagram @eltonjohn)

JAKARTA - Sir Elton John was shocked after discovering the real inspiration of the hit song Rocket Man in 1972.

The legendary songwriters sat with the song's co-author, Bernie Taupin, in a recent interview where the two revealed that Sir Elton never knew the story behind his own hit song.

Sir Elton and Taupin met in 1967 after they both agreed to a song-writing ad. Forward five years later, the duo released their first hit song - Rocket Man.

"Socket Man is our first record number one in my opinion - and it's on the Honky Chateau album," said Sir Elton.

"It's a song that's easy enough to write the melody because it's a song about outer space so it's a pretty broad song."

This is where Taupin explained the source of his original inspiration when writing the song, and revealed that Sir Elton did not know the true meaning of the song.

"That's actually a song Ray Bradbury inspired from a short science fiction story book called The Illustrated Man," he explained.

"In the book, there's a story called The Rocket Man, about how future astronauts will be a kind of everyday job... so I took that idea and put it in."

For this, Sir Elton replied: "Do you know, I never knew that..."

Since its release, Rocket Man has earned double platinum certification, and is listed on Rolling Stone's list of 500 best songs of all time.