Beyond the lyric: Bob James turns “Rocket Man” into a trio performance

A song steps beyond its lyric

Elton John and Bernie Taupin wrote “Rocket Man” as a song with a story carried in words. Bob James approaches the material without a singer. His official artist channel calls this exact performance a trio reimagining and names James on keys, Michael Palazzolo on bass and Billy Kilson on drums.¹

HFI used the 96 kHz/24-bit evosound edition of Feel Like Making LIVE!, released on 29 October 2021.

The shift from song to instrumental trio supplies the article’s musical question: how can a familiar identity remain clear when the lyric is absent and piano, bass and drums carry the complete performance? It is an invitation to follow the tune as music in the present, not to score the trio against the original record.¹

Three players carry the familiar line

Let the first pass belong to James’s statement of the melody. Notice where a phrase remains immediately recognizable and where the piano opens space around it. The point is not to supply the missing words in your head, but to hear how much of the song’s identity the line itself can hold.¹

On a second pass, move outward to Palazzolo and Kilson. Follow the bass as harmony and motion, then the drums as pulse and punctuation, before returning to the trio as one performance. Each change of attention reveals a different share of the work without assigning a winner among the parts.¹

What volume control means inside the L10

The KD Sound playback chain used a CH Precision X1 external power supply, T1 10 MHz time reference, C10 digital-to-analog converter and L10 line preamplifier. Two M10 stereo power amplifiers were each used as a monoblock to drive Göbel Divin Majestic loudspeakers.

CH Precision gives the L10’s volume setting a specific circuit architecture. The company describes a current-domain R-2R ladder with 0.5 dB steps across a 141 dB range, followed by a dedicated current-to-voltage conversion stage. That account defines how level is set inside the preamplifier before the signal reaches the M10 pair.²

Recorded at KD Sound

HFI recorded the system at KD Sound in Seoul on 14 September 2025. A matched pair of DPA-4011 microphones fed a Zoom F8n Pro through Vertere microphone cables at 192 kHz/32-bit float. A laser distance meter matched the microphones’ distances from the loudspeakers at the position where that pair most closely captured the sound heard at the sweet spot.

Set a comfortable headphone level and take your own sweet spot. Begin with the melody you know, then let the trio show how a familiar song can continue without its lyric.¹