![]() ![]() But if by chance you don’t have endless patience for trainwreck-y album promotional rollouts from 42 years ago, please skip ahead to the 35:30 mark and enjoy Elton’s saucy “Six Flags” joke and the subsequent anecdote about a particular kind of English sausage. ![]() (Based on Elton’s demeanor, I’m guessing he downed around 27 cans of Bud before the cameras started rolling.) I recommend watching everything that happens afterward. ![]() A second can mysteriously materializes minutes later. This is also the point where he cracks open his first can of Budweiser. He’s the most consistent, and most consistently inconsistent, man in show business.īy the nine-minute mark of this video, he has charmed you into thinking that The Fox might very well by the second coming of Tumbleweed Connection. This very combination of pop professionalism and personal calamity has helped keep Elton in the public eye for more than 50 years. Three, he is almost always both of these things at the same time. You learn three important things about Elton John from watching the approximately 49-minute clip. The result is a fascinating time capsule of a period in the music industry when there were limitless budgets for every extravagance save for razors. The idea was to drum up excitement for Elton’s 15th studio LP, which the singer-songwriter admits early on his “not my best” record while nevertheless insisting, not quite convincingly, that it does contain a certain “spark.” To get this “spark” across, a long-form commercial was presented to the public in the mode of a low-rent talk show hosted by Elton and guested by his handsome and deeply tanned lyricist Bernie Taupin, plus a cadre of extremely hairy and palpably sweaty record-label execs. First, some background: Before the album’s release, Geffen set up this “telepress conference” presumably for media and retailers. I am, however, including this promotional video for The Fox, as it conveniently captures a lot of what I love about Elton John. But generally it’s lumped in with the scores of forgettable albums he released in the gaping wilderness period between 1976 and his Lion King-assisted resurgence in the mid-’90s. (For the other 98 percent of you, I assume this is the first time you have been made aware of an Elton John album named after an omnivorous mammal.) His early ’80s debut with Geffen Records - released years before David Geffen finally ditched the superstar pals from the previous decade that he originally banked on and proceeded to make millions with scruffy Gen-Xers like Guns N’ Roses and Nirvana - has its partisans. For those who go deep with Elton, this may or may not register as a disappointment. Spoiler alert: There is nothing from The Fox on this list. It seems to me he lived his life like a … well, you know the rest. Here are my top 50 favorite Elton John songs. A man whose gift for melody is rivaled in the world of rock only by the likes of Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson, Elton is also a style icon and one of the first openly gay rockers ever, ever since he came out to Rolling Stone in 1976 during a stridently macho era. In light of Elton’s retirement - or perhaps semi retirement - it seems appropriate to look back on his career and follow his path from lonely adolescent music nerd to internationally famous superstar. When you have played the game as long as Elton has, and as successfully, how can you just walk away? Over the course of many decades, he always seemed to find a way to get back to the top. His penchant for memorizing statistics continued into adulthood, as the name Elton John came to dominate those very same charts. At home, he obsessively collected records and studied the sales charts. Well into his senior years, he bragged about playing more than 100 shows a year, the result of a tireless work ethic that started during his teen years when he would knock out “Danny Boy” for drunks in local pubs. Even after all these years, the demand is still there for more Elton.įrankly, it’s hard to imagine Elton John stopping, and not only because of that hefty haul. After all, this tour made just under $940 million, the highest grosser of all-time, at least until Taylor Swift concludes her Eras tour. Maybe in the future he will do the occasional one-off show or even a residency in a place like London or Las Vegas. ![]() Though he also hinted that this might not actually be the end of his live performance career. The concert took place in Stockholm, and the 76-year-old was reportedly emotional as he bid adieu. Earlier this month, Elton John played the last date of his five-year, 330-show “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour. ![]()
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