S10
THE ENVELOPE LOS ANGELES TIMES THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2019
T
HE LAST TIME mu-
sic producer Giles
Martin and Elton John
worked together, they
produced what re-
mains one of the most
successful singles of
all time. But you won’t
hear “Candle in the
Wind 1997,” John’s stirring tribute to Prin-
cess Diana, on the soundtrack to Pa-
ramount’s “Rocketman” — a loose biography
of John’s life.
What you will hear is an unusually dense
selection of John’s and Bernie Taupin’sother rousing hit songs, each dissected, re-
arranged, uniquely orchestrated and per-
formed to fit the film’s story and underscore
in a nearly continuous thread.
Martin spent 18 months on the project
from concept to final dub, one that he and
his colleagues — including director Dexter
Fletcher, composer Matthew Margeson,
rerecording mixer Mike Prestwood Smith
and supervising sound editors Danny Shee-
han and Matthew Collinge — consider
among the most collaborative efforts in their
collective experience. “There are literally
wall-to-wall songs at certain points in the
film,” says Martin. “We all worked as a tagteam the entire time.”
That 1997 hit, recorded by Martin and his
father, George Martin, the legendary Beatles
producer, may explain why John trusted the
younger Martin implicitly with his music.
For Martin, though, it was a leap of faith.
“I had no experience doing anything like
this before,” he says, save for some docu-
mentaries and uncredited flourishes in the
“Kingsman” films directed and produced by
Matthew Vaughn, his old friend from board-
ing school and a producer of “Rocketman.”
“This was obviously going to be a complete
farm-to-table approach for me. If it doesn’tSonic landscaping
The music team creating the
soundtrack to ‘Rocketman,’
the story of Elton John’s
life, took a collaborative
journey through the
pop star’s biggest hits.
BY BETH MARCHANT
TARON
Egerton as
Elton John
rocks Dodger
Stadium in
“Rocketman.”David ApplebyParamount Pictures[See‘Rocketman,’S12]THE CRAFT