Elton John – Rocket Man (Piano solo) with sheet music
Excerpt from the book: “Me, Elton John (autobiography)” (also available in the Library)
When the farewell tour was announced, a number of journalists had written pieces suggesting that there was absolutely no way I would really retire. They supported this argument with extensive knowledge of my history and impressive psychological insights into my character: tried to
retire before, addictive personality, born entertainer, music obsessive.
They could have supported it even more strongly by repeating what I’d said at the press conference, which was that I had no intention whatsoever of actually retiring from music, or even live performances. All I said was that I wasn’t going to schlep around the world anymore: one last huge tour – 300 gigs over three years, covering North and South America Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australasia, the kids getting a tutor and coming with us – and that’s that.
It isn’t the end. I was excited by the fact that stopping touring would give me more time to do different things. I want to write more musicals and more film scores. I want to spend time working with the AIDS Foundation, especially in Africa. I want to stand up for the LGBTQ community there, to try and talk to politicians in Uganda or Kenya or Nigeria and do something to change the way people are treated. I want to
collaborate with different artists.
I want to stage a huge exhibition, covering my whole career, maybe even think about opening a permanent museum, so people can see some of my
art and photography collections. I want to spend more time making albums, and to make them in the way I used to at the start of my solo career: get Bernie to spend time writing a lot of lyrics and develop a stockpile of material.
I haven’t gone into the studio with a big hoard of songs to choose from since Madman Across the Water, forty-eight years ago – I’ve just turned up and written on the spot, like the musical version of a painter with a blank canvas.
I want to go back to writing without recording what I’m doing, the same way we made Captain Fantastic, memorizing what I come up with as I go along. I want to play live, but much smaller shows, where I can concentrate on playing different material.
If there’s a problem with writing songs like ‘I’m Still Standing’, or ‘Rocket Man’, or ‘Your Song’ it’s that they become so huge; they develop a life of their own and overwhelm everything else you do. I love those songs to death, but I’ve written other songs I think are as good as them, that exist in their shadow, and I’d like to give those other songs a moment in the spotlight.
But most of all, I want to spend time being … well, normal, or as normal as I can ever hope to be. Less time on the road means more time doing the school run, more Saturday afternoons taking the kids to Pizza Express, or round Daniel’s, the department store in Windsor – things the boys enjoy,
I live and have lived an extraordinary life, and I honestly wouldn’t change it, even the parts I regret, because I’m incredibly happy with how it has turned out. I obviously wish I’d just kept walking when I saw John Reid chopping out coke in the studio, rather than sticking my nose in – in every sense of the phrase – but then, maybe I had to go through all that to
end up where I am now. It’s not where I expected to be at all – married to a man, a father of two, both things that seemed impossible to me not that long ago.
But that’s the other lesson my ridiculous life has taught me. From the moment I was ushered out of a failed audition and handed an envelope of
Bernie’s lyrics as I got to the door, nothing has ever really turned out how I thought it would. My history is full of what ifs, weird little moments that hanged everything.
What if I’d been so upset by failing my audition that I’d dumped Bernie’s envelope in a bin on the way to the station? What if I’d stood firm and not gone to America when Dick James told me I should? What if Watford had beaten West Bromwich Albion that Saturday afternoon in the early nineties and lifted my spirits, so that I didn’t feel the need to call a friend and beg him to bring some gay men to dinner?
What if I hadn’t noticed Lev at the orphanage in Ukraine? Where would I be now? Who would I be now? You can send yourself crazy wondering. But it all happened, and here I am. There’s really no point in asking what if? The only question worth asking is: what’s next?
Browse in the Library:
Artist or Composer / Score name | Cover | List of Contents |
---|---|---|
All Sondheim Vol IV Music and lyrics | All Sondheim Vol IV Music and lyrics | |
All That Jazz piano-vocal Arrangement | ||
All The Things You Are (Guitar And Tabs) | All The Things You Are (Guitar And Tabs) | |
All The Things You Are (Guitar And Tabs) (Musescore File).mscz | ||
All The Things You Are By Jerome Kern Guitar Transcription | ||
All The Things You Are Jerome Kern Oscar Hammerstein 2nd 1940 Jazz Standard (Vintage sheet music) | ||
All Time Standards (Songbook) Jazz Guitar Tablature Chord Melody Solos (Jeff Arnold) | All Time Standards (Songbook) Jazz Guitar Tablature Chord Melody Solos (Jeff Arnold) | |
All Time Standards Piano (Arr. Gabriel Bock) | All Time Standards Piano (Arr. Gabriel Bock) | |
All You Need Is Ears George Martin with Jeremy Hornsby 1979 (Book) The story o the recording genius who created The Beatles | ||
Allan Holdsworth Just for the curious book Guitar with Tablature | ||
Allan Holdsworth Melody Chords For Guitar | ||
Allan Holdsworth Super Guitarist with TABs | Allan Holdsworth Super Guitarist with TABs | |
Alle prese con una verde Milonga (Paolo Conte) | ||
Allevi, Giovanni – Back To Life | ||
Allie Wrubel – Gone with the Wind | ||
Allman Brothers Guitar Songbook | Allman Brothers Guitar Songbook | |
Allman Brothers, Best Of The (Piano, Vocal, Guitar) | Allman Brothers, Best Of The (Piano, Vocal, Guitar) | |
Allman Brothers, The – The Definitive Collection For Guitar Vol 1 with Tablature | Allman Brothers, The – The Definitive Collection For Guitar Vol 1 | |
Alma Redemptoris Mater | ||
Almeno tu nell’universo (Mia Martini) | ||
Almir Chediak Ivan Lins Guitar Songbook Vol 2 | Ivan Lins Guitar Songbook Vol 1 by Almir Chediak | |
Alok – Hear Me Now Sheet Music | ||
Alone together (Howard Dietz & Arthur Schwartz) | Alone together (Howard Dietz Arthur SchwArtz) | |
Alone Together (Musescore File).mscz | ||
Alone Togheter Guitar Solo Transcription Jazz Standard | ||
Alphaville Forever Young (piano & Guitar) | Alphaville Forever Young (piano & Guitar) | |
Also Sprach Zarathustra Op. 30 – Richard Strauss (Musescore File).mscz | ||
Alternative Rock Sheet Music Collection | Alternative Rock Sheet Music Collection | |
Always on my mind – Elvis Presley – easy arrangement for piano, with fingering | ||
Amadeus – W.A. Mozart (film score arr. for piano solo by D. Fox) | Amadeus – W.A.Mozart | |
Amadeus (original soundtrack piano solo arrangements) | Amadeus (Film score book) Piano Solos | |
Amalia Rodriguez FADOS Melodias De Sempre (GUITAR) | Amalia Rodriguez FADOS Melodias De Sempre (GUITAR) | |
Amando amando (Renato Zero) | ||
Amar Pelos Dois (Salvador Sobral) | ||
Amarcord (Nino Rota) | ||
Amazing Grace – Tradicional (Piano ) | ||
Amazing Grace Traditional (Jazzy ver. sheet music) | ||
Amazing Phrasing – Guitar 50 Ways to Improve Your Improvisational Skills (Guitar TABs Amazing Phrasing) (Tom Kolb) | Amazing Phrasing – Guitar 50 Ways to Improve Your Improvisational Skills (Guitar TABs Amazing Phrasing) (Tom Kolb) | |
Amelie Poulain – 6 pieces for piano – Yann Tiersen – Yann Tiersen | ||
America (My Country ‘Tis of Thee Easy Piano Level 2 | ||
America Greatest Hits Piano Vocal Guitar chords | America Greatest Hits Piano Vocal Guitar chords | |
America Greatest Hits (piano & Guitar) | America greatest | |
America Horse With No Name Piano vocal | America Horse With No Name Piano vocal | |
America’s Songs The Stories Behind The Songs Of Broadway, Hollywood, And Tin Pan Alley (Philip Furia, Michael Lasser) Book | ||
American Folk Songs For Guitar with Tablature | American Folk songs | |
American Folk Songs, My First Book of – Bergerac | ||
American Indian Melodies A. Farwell Op.11 (1901) | American Indian Melodies A. Farwell Op.11-min | |
American Pie (sheet music) | ||
American Popular Music (Book) by Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman | ||
Americana – Alegre, Magín (Guitarra) | Americana – Alegre, Magín (Guitarra) | |
Amici Miei (Carlo Rustichelli) | ||
Amor mio (Battisti) | ||
Amore bello (Claudio Baglioni) | ||
Amy Beach – Op.15 Four Sketches in Autumn | ||
Amy Grant – Breath Of Heaven | ||
Amy MacDonald This Is The Life | AMY MACDONLAD | |
Amy Winehouse – Valerie | ||
Amy Winehouse – Valerie (sheet music) | ||
Amy Winehouse Amy Amy Amy | ||
Amy Winehouse Back To Black Songbook | Amy Winehouse Back To Black Songbook | |
Amy Winehouse Frank Songbook | Amy Winehouse Frank | |
Amy Winehouse I Heard Love Is Blind | ||
Amy Winehouse Just Friends | ||
Amy Winehouse Rehab | ||
Amy Winehouse You Know Im No Good | ||
An affair to remember (Harry Warren) | ||
An American In Paris An George Gershwin (Concert Band)An American In Paris An George Gershwin (Concert Band) Arr. by Naohiro Iwai | ||
An American Tail – The Marketplace – James Horner | ||
An Introduction To Bach Studies (eBook) | ||
An Irish Blessing (Musescore File).mscz | ||
An Irish Blessing (SATB) Choral | An Irish Blessing (SATB) | |
Analisis musical claves para entender e interpretar la Música (M. y A. Lorenzo) Español | ||
Analysis Of Tonal Music An Schenkerian Approach Allen Cadwallader and David Gagné (Book) | ||
Analyzing Bach Cantatas by Eric Chafe (eBook) | ||
Analyzing Schubert by Suzannah Clark (Cambridge Un. Press) (eBook) | ||
Anastacia Not That Kind Songbook | Anastacia songbook | |
Anastasia Once Upon A December arr. by John Brimhall (Piano Solo 2 Versions Easy And Intermediate) | ||
Anastasia Sheet Music songbook Piano & vocal | Anastasia Sheet Music songbook Piano & vocal | |
Ancora ancora ancora (Mina) | ||
Ancora qui (Django Unchained) Elisa – Ennio Morricone | ||
And the Waltz goes on (Anthony Hopkins) | ||
Andante (from String Quartet op. 22) P. I. Tchaikovsky | ||
Anderson Freire – So Voce Piano | ||
Andras Schiff – Music Comes Out Of Silence Book | ||
Andre Gagnon – L’air Du Soir | ||
Andre Gagnon – Le Reve De L’automne (sheet music Collection) | Andre Gagnon – Le Reve De L’automne (sheet music Collection) | |
Andre Gagnon – Les Jours Tranquilles | Andre Gagnon – Les Jours Tranquilles | |
Andre Gagnon – Meguriai | ||
Andre Gagnon – Nelligan | ||
Andre Gagnon – Petite Nostalgie | ||
Andre Gagnon – Reves D’Automne | Andre Gagnon – Reves D’Automne | |
Andre Gagnon – The Very Best Of Andre Gagnon (Sheet Music Songbook) | Andre Gagnon – The Very Best Of Andre Gagnon (Sheet Music Songbook) | |
Andre Gagnon Ciel D’Hiver | ||
Andre Gagnon Entre Le Boeuf et l’Ane Gris Musique Traditionelle | ||
André Gagnon L’air Du Soir | ||
Andre Gagnon Neiges | ||
André Gagnon Nelligan | ||
André Gagnon Origami | ||
André Gagnon Pensées Fugitives | ||
Andre Gagnon Pensées Fugitives | ||
André Gagnon Piano Solitude | Gagnon, André Piano Solitude | |
Andre Gagnon Prologue | ||
André Gagnon Selection Speciale de chansons (partitions musicales) | André Gagnon Selection Speciale de chansons (partitions musicales) | |
André Gagnon Un Piano Sur La Mer (Piano Solo Partition Sheet Music) | Gagnon André Un Piano Sur La Mer (Piano Solo Partition Sheet Music) | |
Andre Popp Paul Mauriat Love Is Blue Piano Solo Arr. | ||
André Previn – Play Like André Previn no. 1 | Andre Previn sheet music | |
Andre Previn – The Genius of (Piano Solos sheet music) | The genius of André Previn | |
Andre Rieu La Vie Est Belle (Songbook Collection As Performed By André Rieu) | Andre Rieu La Vie Est Belle (Songbook Collection As Performed By André Rieu) | |
Andrea Bocceli – Time To Say Goodbye | ||
Andrea Boccelli – Time To Say Goodbye | ||
Andrea Bocelli Romanza songbook (Guitar & Voice) | Andrea Bocelli Romanza songbook | |
Andrea Bocelli – Anthology (songbook) | ||
Andrea Bocelli – Con te partiro (Time to say Goodbye) Piano Solo arr | Andrea Bocelli – Con te partiro (Time to say Goodbye) Piano Solo | |
Andrea Bocelli – Con te partiro (Time to say Goodbye) Piano Solo.mscz | ||
Andrea Bocelli – The Best Of Songbook | Andrea Bocelli best of | |
Andrea Bocelli Celine Dion The Prayer Easy Piano And Vocal By David Foster, Carole Bayer Sager, Alberto Testa And Tony Renis | ||
Andrea Bocelli Celine Dion – The Prayer – Easy Piano and Vocal by David Foster, Carole Bayer Sager, Alberto Testa and Tony Renis.mscz | ||
Andrea Bocelli Cieli Di Toscana (Piano, guitar & Vocal) | Andrea Bocelli Cieli Di Toscana | |
Andrea Bocelli Sogno Songbook | Andrea Bocelli sogno | |
Andrea Bocelli The Prayer |