Thoughts on Rocket Man

The influence of the Bradbury short story "Rocket Man" can be heard in both the Elton John song of the same name as well as David Bowie's "Space Oddity," songs that depict loneliness as a conflation of success and failure.

As the narrator in "Rocket Man" feels the effects of leaving home as horribly mixed, space also becomes a place with neither past nor future. He is not the man he was back home and it is not a place he can stay, because he can't raise children there.

I always thought the line "It's going to be a long long time" should be it's going to be a lot of time, but I guess it's really the same thing.

A version of the song shows up again by Neon Blonde on their first record.