2023-07-09 10:15:00
Surrounded by fans from all over the world to share with their idol the final concert of his final tour, Elton John gave his last concert last night in Stockholm, after more than half a century on the road.
“Playing for you has been my reason for living, and you have been absolutely magnificent,” he told a delighted audience.
Tailcoat enhanced with rhinestones, glasses with red lenses, the 76-year-old star sat down at the piano shortly after 8:00 p.m. (6:00 p.m. GMT) to the cheers of the public, to begin his farewell show with one of his songs. the most popular “Bennie and the Jets”.
He then continued with “Philadelphia Freedom” and “I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues” in front of a conquered audience who wore sparkling blue or red glasses.
For more than two hours, the songs followed one another, interspersed with moments when the artist, leaving his piano and getting up facing the pit, thanked his fans but also his musicians and his team, some of whose members have been following him for more 40 years old.
“I want to pay tribute to these musicians,” he said. “They are really incredible (..) and they are the best”.
Shortly after “Border Song” dedicated to Aretha Franklin, “I’m still standing” saw the approximately 30,000 spectators of the Tele2 Arena stand up as one man.
Before the recall, Elton John had broadcast a message from Coldplay who was also playing that evening in the Scandinavian country, in Gothenburg (west) in which the singer Chris Martin thanked him for his career and his commitments.
“It was amazing. I don’t have the words yet because I haven’t digested everything yet,” said Anton Pohjonen, a 25-year-old Finnish banker.
“We almost come to cry for him,” added a Swedish teacher, Conny Johansson, who had had his tickets for four years.
For the fans, the evening promised to be rich in emotions, even before the curtain went up.
“It’s going to be very emotional tonight,” predicted Kate Bugaj, a 25-year-old Polish student who delayed her master’s exams to follow her idol’s tour and waited outside the stadium several hours before the start of the show.
Jeanie Kincer, a 50-year-old from Kentucky in the United States, wanted “to be there for the end because I was too young to be there at the beginning”.
For the occasion, she wore red shorts with suspenders and a red, yellow and brown T-shirt, an almost perfect copy of the clothes that Elton John had chosen during his first concert in Stockholm in 1971.
With this last lap, “an important chapter in the history of rock’n’roll is coming to an end”, assured the daily Expressen.
Saturday was the second consecutive evening that the stadium hosted the British star sold out for the last leg of this final tour which began five years ago and which was disrupted by the Covid-19 and a hip operation in 2021.
With “Farewell Yellow Brick Road”, Elton John will have given 330 concerts before Stockholm, criss-crossing Europe, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada and the United Kingdom.
“For the most lucrative tour in the history of the world, + Farewell Yellow Brick Road + is strangely sober”, was surprised the daily Dagens Nyheter, which however welcomed the contagious enthusiasm of the artist with 300 million records sold.
The “reservations are easy to forget when Elton John, dressed in a harlequin sequined blazer and grinning from ear to ear, claps his grand piano like it all depends on it”.
In total, the 76-year-old artist will have played in front of 6.25 million fans during this tour.
“I’m sad that he’s retiring but it’s good that he can enjoy his last years,” said his American fan.
Before reassuring himself. “I know he’ll still be playing from time to time, he’ll be releasing new music so there’s still things to look forward to,” she said.
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