Rocketman: Half the Story, But Excellent

What better way to start my 2020 reviews with Rocketman - after all, Elton John and I were literally born on the same day (my Wikipedia page, Elton John's Wikipedia page).  And we both make music - though Elton John's exponentially more successful than mine.  And I remember going around to record companies in New York City in 1970 with some rough mixes of Twice Upon a Rhyme, and hearing Elton John's "Your Song" playing in one of them, with everyone in the office standing around and listening to it and loving it.  I did, too.

The movie, of course, doesn't have that scene.  But it has a lot from the first half of Elton John's life, from his rise to extraordinary and well-deserved fame, to going off the rails, to coming back to the world and his life.   I would have rather the movie continued into something closer to the present, with Elton singing at Diana's funeral, writing the music for Lion King, but, hey, that was not the movie director Dexter Fletcher and writer Lee Hall wanted to make, and they did a fine job with this one.  As did Taron Egerton as Elton John - in acting as well as singing - and everyone else in the movie.

If the story seems a little trite - and yet another star deeply unhappy, sometimes getting it back in control, sometimes not - that's because it apparently happens lots of the time.  And the cinematography was especially excellent - as is the stagecraft of Elton's in-person concerts (see my review of a concert my wife and I went to and loved in October 2018 - where he sang all of his songs).  But, speaking of concerts, I wish Rocketman had included a bit of the concert Elton did with John Lennon in 1974 at Madison Square Garden, where they sang Lennon's superb "Whatever Gets You Through the Night" - here's a not-the-greatest quality video of that performance.

But the songs that Taron as Elton sang in the movie were done with panache, and, as long as you don't expect to see and hear everything, you'll really enjoy it.



Welcome Up: Songs of Space and Time soon to be released, CDs now available

Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music