(Re)Discovering the Rocketman

Holy crap, why did no one clue me in about Elton John?  I was five when he began having hit songs, so of course I know his music. I grew up with it. But like so much of the music I grew up with, it was just a background soundtrack. There were songs I enjoyed hearing on the radio and sang along with, but none that made an impact in my musically uneducated brain, none that made me buy any of Elton's records, none that made me really listen.  The music that made an impression on me when I was old enough to follow my own direction was anything that could not be lumped in with my parents' music, music that would make them shake their heads.  Isn't that what so many kids choose, when they reach the age of choosing? I realize now that I just didn't know how to hear music back then.  

So I went to see Rocketman today more out of curiosity about how the film was constructed and a need for some spectacle, not because I was actually interested in learning anything about Elton's music. Boy, were my ears opened.  

 

Right off the bat, Taran Egerton was a brilliant casting choice. He's a bit prettier than Elton was in those years, which makes him quite engaging. What's really impressive, though, is that he sang all of the songs in the film himself. The Elton voice I remembered had the strident tone of Pinball Wizard, not the softness of Egerton's performance of Your Song. I'd heard Your Song hundreds of times growing up and just did not remember that voice.
 
Beyond that, the film is both an epic fantasy and a fairly factual telling of Elton's life, with colorful and surprisingly enjoyable choreographed musical numbers instead of straight stage performances.  And, of course, those costumes. 


 
It was all so very good that I walked out of the theater and drove straight to the nearest record store to pick up a 3-cd set of Elton's greatest hits, then drove a long route of backroads home so that I could get all the way through the 15 songs of the first of the three discs, totally gobsmacked.  I have memories of most of the songs from way back when, but feel absolutely no nostalgia listening to them. They're familiar, and yet the way I'm hearing them now makes them completely brand new.  And it's clear from hearing that compelling softness in Elton's early voice just how well Egerton nailed his performances in the film.  Between the things in Elton's life that I could relate to in the film and the experience of hearing these songs in such a way, I ended up crying my eyes out in the car over Elton's original version of Rocketman. 

You can spend your whole life peeking through doors but not stepping through, and then suddenly something comes along that just throws one of those doors open and shoves you through.  As Marc Maron says about any music that he suddenly "discovers" after it's been around for years, you're never late to the party.   You just have to get there sometime.

Go, see Rocketman.