Day 299 | Like A Rocket Man

The first provocation of this song is its name, obviously a reference to the Elton John song. It’s hard not to view “Rocket Man” as having at the very least having been influenced by “Space Oddity,” in fact how was Elton John with his costumes and general aesthetic simply not bringing Bowie’s act to a general 1970s audience? I almost get the sense that the emergence of John was one of Bowie’s motivating factors to change up quickly or become a self-parody. But this song doesn’t start out about anything like that- it starts out about “Little Wendy Cocaine.” Must be a metaphor, right? It quickly becomes clear that no, this song is about cocaine addiction. Wendy is either a pusher, an enabler or cocaine itself. Bowie doesn’t get to his behavior as being “like a rocket man” until much later in the song, when, if you’ve been paying attention to the lyrics, you know what the song is about. So he’s covering the same ground as “Ashes to Ashes,” but the Elton John reference is deliberate. So my theory of the song is that Bowie, who went through the 1970s as a walking taboo, is revealing to the world that cuddly Sir Elton was not just a copy-cat, but a strung-out fraud. Album: The Next Day Extra