The last show John Lennon ever played was with Elton John at Madison Square Garden in 1974. It was to settle a bet between the two men, who over the course of the 70s had become occasional songwriting partners and fast friends. When Lennon had several times publicly proclaimed Elton John and Bernie Taupin the “greatest songwriters since the Beatles”, it wasn’t the heroin talking. Elton John put out something in the order of one record a year in the 1970s, records which spawned such indelible pop rock gems as ‘Rocket Man’, ‘Bennie and the Jets’, ‘Pinball Wizard’, ‘Your Song’, ‘Don’t Let The Sun Go Down on Me’, ‘Daniel’, ‘Tiny Dancer’, ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ and about a dozen more which took his single units sold to over 100 million. Add to that 250 million album sales and there isn’t much to argue with the genius of that 70s output. That said, had Lennon lived to see the Lion King, Adia, Billy Elliott and the remaining mire of mid 90s tripe that Elton John released, perhaps his praise would not have been so effusive.
However! On the balance of things, we should value Elton Hercules John and his determination at the age of 60, to continue touring the world and playing sets over two and a half hours long, criss-crossing his back catalogue to his heart’s content. I really don’t care that he is now a rotund, batshit crazy, old man who looks like a lesbian. He wrote Rocket Man, and until such a time as when you have written a bonafide slice of pop genius like it, you can shut the hell up.
Ah, ‘Rocket Man’. This is where things went awfully wrong at Acer Arena. A terrible, overblown arrangement, tawdry backing tracks and delay soaked repeat refrains of “Rocket MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN” over and over the coda for two minutes. It was so awful I almost cried. But for every horrid arrangement/ murdering of your favourite classic, there was a great, spare arrangement of ‘Mona Lisa’s and Mad Hatters’. Or Elton busting out ‘Take Me To The Pilot’, ‘Roy Rogers’ or ‘Tiny Dancer’, filling the giant space with nothing but his virtuoso piano and his huge, emotive baritone. Some rare tracks from Elton John and Caribou. Amazing. Though these were muddled with extended excerpts from Billy Elliott and a raft of nineties filler noone cares about.
So, let us be honest, noone – or hardly anyone – was there because they thought ‘Songs From The West Coast’ was a great record, or because they were hoping to catch a sans Eminem version of ‘Stan’. Elton John is about nostalgia – great, hulking bucket loads of nostalgia. Seeing him live in 2007 is a bit like a mixture of Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones: you revere them, they come to your town, you have to go. Bob Dylan may without warning change the key/tempo/lyric of ‘Tamborine Man’, and the Stones haven’t made a great record since 1972. But you’d kick yourself to miss them live. So when Elton John tears magnificently into ‘Philadelphia Freedom’ every single person in the place is reliving whatever time in their life it was the soundtrack to: be it your first divorce, key parties, or if you’re me, listening to the tape in the car with your dad on the way to the beach when you were six. It’s glorious, and people shred skin off their hands trying to applaud loudly enough.
So I could have done without about half the set, and the sight of Elton John’s huge, pudgy fingers projected onto the screens only served to illustrate that his wedding ring will need to be cut of with pliers if he ever wants to remove it. The best parts of the night were when he jammed on the keys, recalling Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis and showing off the kind of musicianship which rarely exists anymore in rock. His voice, though it lost its top two octaves somewhere in 1986, is brimming with conviction, and roaringly takes off whenever he really hits his straps. It’s inspiring, really.
We want rock stars to stay young forever, hopefully even to die off young. And if they don’t, in the least we want them to retire gracefully. Conversely, if they’re still making albums, we want them to continue to tour. Artists are damned if they do and damned if they don’t, forever stuck on the Moebius strip of criticism. Elton John said himself in a Rolling Stone interview in 1976: “I mean, who wants to be a 45-year-old entertainer in Las Vegas like Elvis?” Well that, and much else Professor Hindsight never predicted, turned out to be true.
After all is said and done, I’d say I’m glad I saw this show. Elton John is one of the few left standing of a dying breed: the 100% dedicated to showmanship, eccentric-rockstar-genius-songwriter. He’s done more blow, had more sex, bought more art, flowers, houses, clothes and football clubs than anyone. He’s sold out Madison Square Garden 60 times. He proved you could be fat, depressed, bald, gay and play an instrument as out of favour and unwieldy as a piano and still become a bonafide legend. I wish he hadn’t murdered my favourite song, however, it was worth it to see ‘I’m Still Standing’, which though tubbily, he is.
(You can read my Brag review of the gig – somewhat taking the piss – here: http://www.thebragmag.com/reviews/kirsty-and-elmo-live-review-el.php)
