 He had the start of something good. He spent two hours repeating it to himself over and over again until he arrived and could finally write it down. Many saw the song as a ripoff of David Bowie's Space Oddity, though Taupin says he actually took inspiration from Ray Bradbury's 1951 short story, The Rocket Man. I got to think of what was the first verse. All right, what was the first verse?