Elton John's label. 'Music Week' of the 23rd of September 1972 reported that Rocket was being formed by Elton John, with Bernie Taupin, Gus Dudgeon, Steve Brown and John Reid as partners. Its address was given as 23 Old Burlington Rd, London W1, and at that point no distribution for the new label had been arranged. Matters firmed up early in the next year, and 'MW' of the 3rd of February 1973 was able to reveal that the new company had signed a manufacturing and distribution deal with Island; EMI would have manufactured the singles and would have shared in the distribution, as it did for the other Island labels at that time. Rocket stayed with Island until September 1975, when it signed a long-term licensing deal with EMI ('MW', 6th September). 1976 saw Gus Dudgeon resign as a director ('MW', 13th November). When the licensing deal with EMI ended, in September 1978, it was not renewed, and Rocket signed with Phonogram; it stayed with that company into the 1980s.
Rocket seems to have gone in for 'Pop' music with a touch of class - as supplied by Blue, Longdancer and Stackridge, to give but three examples - but Kiki Dee was the only artist to represent it in the Singles Chart until 1976. At that point Elton's contract with DJM expired and he was free to record for his own label. Initially, when it was with Island, Rocket started out with a steam train on its label (1); following the licensing deal with EMI the train changed direction and started facing in the direction in which the records were turning (2). Steam was replaced by diesel (3) with ROKN-521, in February 1977. After the move to Phonogram / Phonodisc injection-moulded labels were adopted (4), though some copies of Elton John's 'Song For Guy' (XPRES-5; 11/78) were custom-pressed by RCA and thus had paper ones (5). Three numerical series were used in the '70s: a PIG-0 one in the Island days was followed by a ROKN-500 one at EMI, while at Phonogram it became XPRESS-0. Some EMI demos were overprinted (6), some just had stickers put on them (7). The discography below only covers the 1970s. Reportedly, Rocket was finally shut down in 1999, but Elton John had been the only artist on it for some years.
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.