I sort of gave up on Elton John in second half of the eighties. His music had been around the house during childhood, I had a few of those early albums as well as, by the time I was record buying age, ‘Too Low For Zero’ and ‘Breaking Hearts’ around the time they were released. After that, things went very downhill it seemed, the second half of that decade especially was a lean time and my interest did not pick up at all throughout the nineties. By then I just associated him with middle-of-the-road soundtracks, behind-the-scenes documentaries which rather soured his image with hard-to-relate-to temper tantrums and of course, he represented irrefutable evidence that no amount of money in the world could fix hereditary hair loss.

Now this is not to say that I have suddenly reversed by opinion because I’m older and music that had once seemed bland nowadays resonates. No, far from it, I still cannot stand ‘Circle Of Life.’ The current re-runs of 1993 ‘Top Of The Pops’ have recently featured a syrupy Christmas song with Kiki Dee that I have no recollection of at all. However, in 2001 I did get back on board the Elton John train, the EJ express locomotive that seemingly ran full time was stopping at my station once more. That happened with the ‘Songs From The West Coast’ record, a set on which Elton definitively re-connected with the thing he does best; exemplary piano led singer-songwriter pop with a strong melodious grain. At the time I seem to recall he credited Ryan Adams as the catalyst for plugging himself back in, but wherever the impetus came from a re-engagement was beyond doubt. And the remarkable thing is that, as the 21^st century has unfolded, he has worked hard to retain this groove. For the past twenty years, admittedly at a slower pace than before, Elton John has been making great albums again.

Inevitably, there is truly little evidence of this in a 2022 live setlist. I watched the live broadcast of his final concert at the Los Angeles Dodger Stadium this month, a last play at a venue which helped elevate his stardom in the US when starring there in 1975. You can fully understand of course why artists like Elton and Paul McCartney give their audiences nothing but the classics. That is what they paid for I guess and certainly Elton can fill a two-hour set merely dipping a toe into the vast selection of hits he could pick from. I was impressed by this show in a way you would not expect from such a vintage ensemble. His band, featuring mainly members who have been by his side for decades, were utterly amazing and Elton played shit-hot piano throughout. That was notable, this guy works hard for your entertainment. In fact, the only flat moment, for me as a TV viewer, was the rendition he did with Dua Lipa of the recent PNAU song cut-up mix ‘Cold Heart.’ They sang it together at stage front to what I assume was a backing track emphatically highlighting the wallop the band bring to proceedings, simply by removing them for one song.

It has been his Achilles heel over the years, that never-ending fascination with pop music and the charts. Elton is probably one of the few people left who could actually tell you without looking what the current number one single is. That desire to stay relevant has, perhaps, resulted in some collaborations and associations which pull him away from the thing that makes him so great in the first place. You listen to him talk and it is obvious Elton John is a super-knowledgeable music aficionado with a record collectors drive that us similarly addicted vinyl junkies can easily relate to. John Peel once said on air in the early 2000’s that he felt Elton was someone he could have been great friends with, but his level of fame removed that potential. That Dodger Stadium show did spotlight his star quality with all it’s inherent sense of theatre and taste for the extreme. After the final ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ he was elevated by cherry picker, waving farewell to the crowd before disappearing into darkness as the video screens played film of him wandering off down the yellow brick road to the next, domesticated if his onstage announcements are anything to go by, phase of his life. Are we producing music stars like Elton nowadays? It is hard to think of one simultaneously so extravagant, grand, ridiculous and yet musically so enduringly brilliant and talented. If this is the end, he will leave a space that is ridiculously hard to fill.