The date is August 1970. The place, the Troubadour club in Los Angeles. Elton John is locked in the club's toilet too scared to come out. The reason? He's crippled with stage fright.

It's the first night of his week-long booking at the club. The publicity has been so upbeat that the audience is filled with rock royalty including Neil Diamond, members of the Beach Boys, David Crosby and Graham Nash.

Eventually, Elton is coaxed out of the toilet. Dressed in star embossed cowboy boots and a pair of funky overalls he makes his way onstage and takes the place by storm. The concert becomes part of rock legend and breaks Elton as a major star in America.

It's also a key moment in a new bio-pic Rocketman to be released later this month.

Fantasy blockbuster or tell-all?

The question here is simple. Is the movie an unvarnished portrait of one of rock's most complex and contradictory characters?

Or is it, in the style of Bohemian Rhapsody, another glossy, plastic, larger-than-life tale of a music superhero?

Facts are shredded early on as Elton, sweeping up all before him at the Troubadour, sings Crocodile Rock — a song that he hadn't even written yet. Not simply a lie, it also downgrades the far more potent rock music he played that night.

According to the film's director Dexter Fletcher, who also worked on Bohemian Rhapsody, the grit is there. By that he means the sex and the drugs. He explains that Elton John has been co-operative and told the makers he wants an honest portrait. To ensure this, Elton has given the writer Lee Hall access to his diaries, to let the good and the bad shine through.

Taron Egerton as Elton John in a scene from Rocketman. ( Paramount Pictures: David Appleby via AP )

Elsewhere, though, there are all the signs of a blockbuster.

Loading

Taron Egerton, who plays Elton, let the cat out of the bag, calling the film a "musical fantasy". Elton himself says, "it's a surreal look at my life, not just factual".

This may play well at the box office — and don't forget when it's released later this month it will be up against the latest Godzilla movie — but for some, the idea of a "musical fantasy" is scary.

Why? Well, Elton John in his early career really did revolutionise rock music. As his biographer Tom Doyle notes, "it's generally forgotten that Elton was both as cool and musically influential (in the '70s) as Bowie, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin."

He was also a walking contradiction. A gay man fearful of revealing his sexuality. A shy boy who could don a chicken suit and win over a crowd of 50,000. A truly great song-writer who by and large couldn't write lyrics to save himself.

The man behind Elton

In truth, had he not met his co-writer and lyricist Bernie Taupin, he might well have become a footnote in musical history. And this key part of Elton's story is often overlooked.

Taupin was the ace up Elton's sleeve. He met him in 1967 almost by accident. The lyricist's mother had the foresight to respond to an advertisement in a music paper looking for songwriters. In Taupin, who focused almost exclusively on the words, our soon-to-be Rocketman found his perfect co-conspirator.

Elton John with song-writing partner Bernie Taupin, who he found through an ad in the paper. ( 7.30 Report )

While Elton, left alone, could be infuriatingly saccharine, Bernie was darker. As he told Rolling Stone, "I think it's far more interesting to investigate the seamier side of things, the underbelly of life, the heartbreak".

As writer Tom Doyle explains it, "they are absolutely crucial to each other". There is no Elton John without Taupin.

If you listen to their early output, the songs cover a dizzying range of subjects and musical styles. Few songwriters have been able to write in so many genres: folk, rock, blues, Americana, soul and pop.

It's mesmerising to watch an early documentary made about them, where Elton explains how he came to write Tiny Dancer — he read the lyric, sensed a musical style and set to work, finishing the song in just a few hours.

Loading...

Their magic partly comes down to their shared history, which would make a movie in itself.

Having met by chance, they laboured for years writing hits to order for Dick James Music. Dissatisfied with working for others, they decided in 1969 to write and record their own material. The album, Empty Sky, wasn't a hit but it led them to the door of producer Gus Dudgeon and arranger Paul Buckmaster, who would help them record the album Elton John, containing Your Song.

Co-opting an unknown band called Hookfoot, they began playing literate rock music quite unlike any around them.

Over time the musicians changed but the pace didn't. In just four years they delivered six albums. All ground-breaking. All hits.

The 'Elton dilemma'

What the movie focuses on, perhaps understandably, is the Elton dilemma. How a shy kid could fulfil his dreams only by becoming someone else so utterly outrageous and excessive that it tore the inner man apart, ignoring how that excess slowly bleached the true colour from his art.

Elton John at the 1975 Rock Music Awards. ( Wikimedia Commons: CBS Television )

Ultimately, Rocketman will tell the now hackneyed story of another rocker gone wrong.

The young man with dreams of stardom and an infinite wardrobe, who finds fame but loses himself and then of course wins through. It is after all the ultimate tale of sin and redemption. A sort of real-life superhero.

I suspect though we won't get the far more subtle story, that reveals how two people captured magic in a bottle or in this case on vinyl. And more than that, how Elton John, the self-described "fat boy from nowhere", learned to live with himself and the vast contradictions he has carried through life. As he told his biographer Tom Doyle in a candid interview:

"I thought I was getting rid of that shy boy. But you know what? You're still stuck with that shy boy inside you."

That is quite a story — not so much triumph but acceptance. Not a superhero or a fantasy but a real person. It's the basis for a pretty good song too, don't you think?

Rocketman is released on May 30.