The Story Behind Elton John’s 1969 Single “Empty Sky” and Its Link to the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil”

In 1967, Elton John and Bernie Taupin started working together after responding to the same ad in NME magazine to work as songwriters for Liberty Records. John said he couldn’t write lyrics but could provide the music, and Bernie wasn’t much of a musician but wrote plenty of songs. After they were hired by Dick James (of DJM Records), they began writing songs for Lulu, Roger Cook, Edward Woodward, and more artists under the label. It was the beginning of their nearly 60-year collaboration, and by ’68, they started working on John’s debut album Empty Sky.

Recorded at the Dick James Studios at 71-75 New Oxford Street in the Soho area of London, Empty Sky came together as a “natural progression,” according to Empty Sky guitarist Caleb Quaye. “Dick [James] was like a father to us,” he said. “He gave us the opportunity to learn our craft in that little studio. And that’s what we did. We couldn’t wait to get into the studio to do our demos or whatever. We couldn’t wait to work this stuff out.”

John added, “It’s difficult to explain the amazement we felt as the album began to take shape, but I remember when we finished work on the title track. It just floored me. I thought it was the best thing I’d ever heard in my life.

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‘If I Could Only Fly’

Opening the album, “Empty Sky” is the longest track, running nearly eight and a half minutes long, and centers around the story of a prisoner mourning the loss of their freedom.

I’m not a rat to be spat on locked up in this room
Those bars that look towards the sun
At night look towards the moon
Every day, the swallows play in the clouds of love
Make me wish that I had wings, take me high above

And I looked high and saw the empty sky
If I could only, could only fly
I’d drift with them in endless space
But no man flies from this place

At night I lay upon my bench and stare towards the stars
The cold night air comes creeping in and home seems, oh, so far
If only I could swing upon those twinkling dots above
I’d look down from the heavens upon the ones I love

And I looked high and saw the empty sky
If I could only, I could only fly
I’d drift with them in endless space
But no man flies from this place

The Rolling Stones

When the Rolling Stones released their seventh album, Beggars Banquet, and among their classics “Street Fighting Man” and “Salt of the Earth,” it was “Sympathy for the Devil” that caught Taupin’s ear while they recorded “Empty Sky.”

“The title track was quite interesting,” said Taupin in a 1989 interview. “I actually wouldn’t mind re-recording that song because it was done in a two-track studio. We were basically trying to do ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ with that introduction. So that one track really stands out for me, and, in fact, Elton used to do that song onstage until sometime in the mid-seventies. I think it would be really interesting to do that song again.”

Opening with congo drums and piano, “Empty Sky” had a similar intro to the Stones’ “Sympathy” but took different turns.

“A great rock and roll track,” said John in 2013 of “Empty Sky” and its recording. “I love it to death. I remember doing the vocals in the stairwell to get that echo in a very small studio in London. [Caleb Quaye’s] guitar solo was done in the stairwell as well. It came together so brilliantly and still sounds so good. It’s hard for a piano player to write a rock & roll song. It sounded like a Stones song. I thought, ‘I can do this.’”

Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images