So long, Sir Elton
It doesn’t take long in Wankdorf before you’re addicted to the melody. Elton John is a master of big emotions that we cannot save ourselves from. He gave an overwhelming farewell concert.
–Elton John is for everyone – from young to old, across all generations.
Foto: Ben Gibson / HST Global Limited t/a Rocket Entertainment
After just a few minutes in the Wankdorf Stadium, it’s like lying in a hot bath. With a lot of foam, with a bottle of champagne and 21,000 fellow bathers. With Elton John – that happens immediately – you can let yourself go, you can feel good. Until the skin is wrinkled. And she will be. This concert will last a whopping two and a half hours.
Elton John is on his farewell world tour. And she’s a monster. It was supposed to last three years, but it will ultimately have been five due to the pandemic. In autumn 2018 he broke up. And now, around 220 concerts later, we’re sitting in Bern’s Wankdorf and we’re all looking at the huge stage with the black grand piano, the huge screens and waiting for him, now 75 years old, to play through everything that has long been in our brains has fixed.
Introvert extrovert
And of course nobody will be disappointed here. But not surprised either. 220 concerts, and yet they are all the same. Where Elton John is on the outside, Elton John is inside. A world tour concert is a mass product. Everyone gets the same. The set list has long been known – including encores. Anyone who has informed themselves beforehand knows that Sir Elton will play “Tiny Dancers” in about 20 minutes and “Rocket Man” after half an hour, “Candle in the Wind” after an hour and “I’m Still Standing” after two hours », the song that you take home with you in your head and hum over your breakfast egg the next morning.
The concert starts punctually at 7.30 p.m. with “Bennie and the Jets”, one of the hits from his best album “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”, released in 1973 and to which the name of the farewell tour refers: “Farewell Yellow Brick Road”. And after “Philadelphia Freedom”, Sir Elton John greets the Bern audience with “Good evening, Bern” and “Sorry about the weather”. In fact, just at the beginning of the concert, a light rain set in.
So the bathroom is let in, and in the intimate Wankdorf stadium it is immediately cozy, no one strangers, everyone sings and sways along, cheers. From young to old. Elton John is there for everyone – across all generations.
Of course, such a concert is pure nostalgia. A hit parade bouquet that is only there to review this incomparable career, with catchy and yet never cheap pop songs that he wrote mainly in the 1970s together with his friend and lyricist Bernie Taupin. Songs that meander between rock and pop, boogie-woogie, blues, country and rock ‘n’ roll and therefore never get boring.
–The rain soon cleared and then hit after hit followed.
Foto: Ben Gibson / HST Global Limited t/a Rocket Entertainment
It has long been known that Elton John could never write lyrics, but can conjure up melodies that eat into our brain convolutions. Elton John is a master of big emotions that we cannot save ourselves from. Someone once said that he was an introverted extrovert. One that everyone likes. He is open and honest and personal. And so are his songs. At best, Elton John takes away your fear of your own feelings.
The chubby boy from Pinner
After a good half hour, you realize how much this musician belongs to the soundtrack of your own life. How not a day goes by without an Elton John song being heard on the car radio, in a shopping center or in an elevator. He just seems to have always been there.
For those who had forgotten, director Dexter Fletcher’s famous biopic “Rocketman” should have reminded you how this unbelievable, incomparable career was possible in the first place. He must have seen once again how a chubby boy from Pinner, a small town near London, could become a pop and rock star, selling more than 300 million albums, releasing more than 50 albums and performing non-stop for 50 years world played.
A boy by the name of Reginald Kenneth Dwight, who grew up in poor circumstances in his grandmother’s house and could simply imitate what he had heard on the piano even as a child. Who later perfected his playing at the Royal Academy and by chance found not only a congenial songwriter in Bernie Taupin, but also a friend for life.
And of course the drug excesses are also unforgettable, the rock star life, homosexuality, later sobriety, the costumes, the glasses, the whole wild, colorful and shrill ride across the pop sky.
Big, pathetic gesture
You don’t have to ask yourself how he managed it all. After 90 minutes in Wankdorf you’ve long since become addicted to the melody, you feel an awful lot and aren’t ashamed of it in the slightest.
Sure, he no longer jumps around on his piano or bangs the keys with both feet like he used to do. Yet he has remained powerful, still smashing his chords with both fists, still playing an untamed boogie and singing with impressive panache. In between, he hobbles across the stage from time to time, letting the audience celebrate him. You can see a little bit of the hip operation from last fall.
The musicians at his side, however, who have accompanied him since the 1970s – Nigel Olsson on drums, percussionist Ray Cooper and Davey Johnstone on guitar – are as gritty as ever.
And of course Sir Elton John changes his outfit too, from a black gold sequined suit with pink rags to a light blue sequined veston with a pink ruffled shirt underneath and, of course, the matching glasses.
–He still plays an untamed boogie.
Foto: Ben Gibson / HST Global Limited t/a Rocket Entertainment
And you understand: the outfits, the glasses, the sequins, the extravagance, all of that is just a costume and yet it’s real. For Elton John they were always protection and a vehicle at the same time. A vehicle that helps him – and us too – to get to the point where the big, pathetic gesture is still possible. It is his ordinariness behind the mask that makes him immensely popular with everyone.
The rain soon stopped and the hits came, like a run up, ever more impetuously: “I’m Still Standing”, “Crocodile Rock”, “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting” and whatever they’re called. One after the other. And the 21,000 in Wankdorf sang along, danced, shouted and were – it seemed – happy. Sir Elton, it’s nice to have you back – it might actually be the last time.
Martin Burkhalter is a culture editor and writes about pop, rock and jazz music, pop culture and social issues. He likes to go to cultural venues and writes down what he hears and sees there.
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–Published: 06/01/2022, 22:12Found a mistake?Report now.
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