Rocket Man

Rapp wrote it, and it is track three of The Use of Ashes at 3:06. It was the B-side of "The Jeweler", Reprise 0949. Ralston Creek Review reads it as based on Ray Bradbury's 1951 story "The Rocket Man" in The Illustrated Man, told by a boy whose astronaut father is killed by the Sun, and says Rapp wrote it on July 20, 1969, the day of the Apollo 11 landing; Wikipedia's account is that most songs on the album were written in the Netherlands after These Things Too. The two are compatible but not reconciled.

Bernie Taupin has been quoted as saying of Elton John's "Rocket Man": we stole it from another guy, called Tom Rapp. John's song, produced by Gus Dudgeon and recorded on January 16, 1972, was also inspired by the Bradbury story and reached 2 in the UK and 6 in the US. Rapp recorded the song again for Familiar Songs (1972), so our upload may be either version. Pierce Turner covered it on Terrible Good (2022). Setlist.fm holds 51 Pearls Before Swine setlists but we could not verify a per-song count, and found no chart or video.