Elton John ... Tour Info 2009

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Set list:

Elton solo

The One
Sixty Years On
The Greatest Discovery
Border Song
The Ballad of the Boy in the Red Shoes
The Emporer's New Clothes
Rocket Man
The Weight of the World
American Triangle
Skyline Pigeon
House
Tiny Dancer
Original Sin
Blues Never Fade Away
Your Song

Elton with percussionist Ray Cooper

Funeral for a Friend/Tonight
Better Off Dead
Come Down In Time
Levon
Indian Sunset
I Think I'm Gonna Kill Myself
Daniel
Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word
Take Me To The Pilot
Carla Etude
Blessed
Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me
Honky Cat
Crazy Water

Encore

Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting)


Review: Ouest France

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Set list:

Elton solo

The One
Sixty Years On
The Greatest Discovery
Border Song
The Ballad of the Boy in the Red Shoes
The Emporer's New Clothes
Rocket Man
The Weight of the World
American Triangle
Skyline Pigeon
House
Tiny Dancer
Original Sin
Blues Never Fade Away
Your Song

Elton with percussionist Ray Cooper

Funeral for a Friend/Tonight
Better Off Dead
Come Down In Time
Levon
Indian Sunset
I Think I'm Gonna Kill Myself
Daniel
Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word
Take Me To The Pilot
Carla Etude
Blessed
Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me
Honky Cat
Crazy Water

Encore

Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting)


Review: The Times
ny David Sinclair

Elton John at the Albert Hall

Sir Elton John is often in the news. He joined the chorus of pop stars calling for a crackdown on internet file-sharing this week; before that it was his failed bid to adopt a Ukrainian orphan.

This month and next he tours Europe, including arena dates in Britain and Ireland. Last night he demonstrated his philanthropic side with a special concert to raise funds for the purchase of a new organ by the Royal Academy of Music. Not just any old organ, but a 14-tonne, Swiss-engineered monster that will cost £1.2million to install, a sizeable chunk of which will be met from the proceeds of this long, commanding and expensive performance.

Tickets in the stalls, which were £175 at face value, were changing hands outside the venue for £400. And even though there was no band to accompany him, Sir Elton was determined to provide value for money. Resplendent in a penguin suit with pink lettering down the lapels, he sat down at a black grand piano and embarked on a marathon set that incorporated songs from every nook and cranny of his repertoire.

Beginning with the title track of his 1992 album The One, he hammered the keys of the piano with the precision and authority of a classical player, while singing in his distinctively frayed tenor. At the end of the song he stood and received the first of countless standing ovations. And that was just one number. Gathering momentum, he swept through versions of Sixty Years On, The Greatest Discovery and Border from the Elton John album of 1970 and even Skyline Pigeon from his long-neglected first album, Empty Sky. He prefaced Blues Never Fade Away with a moving eulogy to his keyboard player Guy Babylon, who died this month of a heart attack at the age of 52. And he performed Your Song with a tremendous vigour.

This was Elton John not only unplugged but miraculously unvarnished, although during numbers such as The Emperor's New Clothes and a rambling version of Rocket Man, the piano was augmented by the sound of strings for which no provenance was visible.

The percussionist Ray Cooper arrived during Funeral for a Friend and weighed into a set of six drums, hurling his mallets across the stage when he had completed his part. He then accompanied Sir Elton on a vast array of instruments: tubular bells, conga drums, timbales, wind chimes, a huge gong, and assorted cymbals, shakers and tambourines. Precise yet flamboyant, Cooper's contributions proved the perfect foil for the rolling piano parts of numbers including Take Me to the Pilot, Daniel and Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word.

After an encore of Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting Sir Elton signed a few autographs and left the stage having performed for just under three hours without written lyrics, sheet music or any other prompts. It was a hardcore and highly impressive display of the piano man's craft.

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Set list:

The One
Your Song
Sixty Years On
The Greatest Discovery
I Need You To Turn To
Border Song
Ballad Of The Boy In The Red Shoes
Daniel
Honky Cat
Rocket Man
Tiny Dancer
Nikita
Philadelphia Freedom
Don´t Let The Sun Go Down On Me
O Sole Mio/Song For Guy/Take Me To The Pilot
Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word
Candle In The Wind
I Guess That´s Why They Call It The Blues
Carla Etude
Tonight
Bennie And The Jets
Crocodile Rock

Encore

I'm Still Standing
Circle Of Life/Can You Feel The Love Tonight

Review: Ansa.it

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Set list:

(Joel/John together)

Your Song
Just The Way You Are
Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me
My Life

(Elton John)

Funeral For A Friend
Love Lies Bleeding
Saturday Nights Alright For Fighting
Levon
Madman Across The Water
Tiny Dancer
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Daniel
Rocket Man
Philadelphia Freedom
I'm Still Standing
Crocodile Rock

(Billy Joel)

Angry Young Man
Moving Out
Allentown
Zanzibar
She's Always A Woman To Me
Scenes From An Italian Restaurant
River Of Dreams
Highway To Hell (AC/DC, sung by roadie Chainsaw)
We Didn't Start The Fire
Still Rock 'n' Roll To Me
Only The Good Die Young

(Joel/John together)

I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues
Uptown Girl
The Bitch Is Back
You May Be Right
Bennie & The Jets
Candle In The Wind
Piano Man


Review: Delaware Online
by Ryan Cormier

The Piano Men

After Thursday night's Billy Joel/Elton John double bill at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, fans gushed about the performances and whispered about whether Joel was drunk during the show.

For Saturday night's 3-1/2 hour show, an extremely loose Joel was back, with a slight slur when he spoke in between songs. Was Joel self-medicating himself after canceling shows last week with the flu or is he still sick? It's hard to tell.

Joel, who looked downright exhausted by the end of his set, told the crowd he was at 98.5 percent, adding defiantly, "I'm gonna give you every bit I got left."

And he did.

Joel's gritty set painted him as the blue collar answer to the royalty that is Sir Elton John. Joel even let a beer-bellied roadie - a Chester, Pa. native named Chainsaw - come out to sing AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" with Joel on guitar.

Behind his piano, Joel was at his best. Running his hands across the keys for "Angry Young Man," giving the iconic shout-outs to Allentown, Pa. and the Jersey Shore during "Allentown" and joking, "I should have learned by now," in his introduction to "She's Always A Woman To Me."

Joel looked every bit of his 60 years when he took center stage for two songs. During "We Didn't Start the Fire," Joel twice forgot the lyrics, but quickly recovered each time. Then during "It's Still Rock 'n' Roll To Me," Joel spun his microphone stand before throwing it in the air and catching it. Instead of being dazzled, the crowd seemed to cringe a bit, holding its breath in hopes Joel wouldn't hurt himself. (The same goes for when he climbed, while grimacing, onto his piano and jumped over to John's piano during the encore.)

Even so, Joel was flat-out entertaining, even sarcastically introducing "Zanzibar" as what they used to call "an album cut" and adding, "You might feel the urge to go to the bathroom during this one."

Joel also surrounded himself with the ghosts of rock's biggest names during his set by adding the chorus of The Beatles' "Oh! Darling" to the middle of "River of Dreams," dancing like Elvis Presley with the mic stand in his hands during "It's Still Rock 'n' Roll To Me" and dropping into a cartoonish vocal impression of Bob Dylan during, "Only The Good Die Young": "They saaaaaay there's a heaaaaaven for those who will wait/Some saaaaaaay it's better but I say it aaaaaaain't."

The earlier set by John was a much more restrained performance, which is surprising given John's over-the-top past. (It was hard not to think of a younger John possibly coming out and singing at his piano dressed as the Phillie Phanatic.)

John's show, which was more Las Vegas than blue collar, was a pleasant mix, heavy on the hits. John played nice, even saying, "I have to say this is an incredible ballpark. You should be happy about that." It came across as totally disingenuous, which I personally found funny.

As John's set began, I saw a lot of activity in the fourth row, three rows in front of my seats. It was Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal, along with Witherspoon's two children with New Castle's Ryan Phillippe, Ava and Deacon. (Here's a photo of Deacon on Gyllenhaal's shoulders during John's set.)

The happy family danced to "Crocodile Rock" with Witherspoon and Gyllenhaal bumpin' their butts together and John even dedicated "Tiny Dancer to Witherspoon, saying, "Reese, this one's for you, girl." (Witherspoon is in town filming the new James L. Brooks movie, "How Do You Know.")

The real highlight of the show was the encore as the two heavyweights went back-and-forth, singing on each others' songs and giving each a unique twist - especially when John sang about he was in love with an uptown girl.

Sure, both artists are past their prime with neither one releasing a rock album that matters in years. At this point, their only current musical relevance is their back catalog. And thankfully that's what they delivered.

The packed stadium got what they wanted - hit after hit from two of the best selling rock artists of all time - in the form of a distinctive pairing that I'm sure we'll see again

Elton John performs Tiny Dancer

"Tiny Dancer" features a well-remembered piano-based melody during verses, typically inscrutable Taupin lyrics during the chorus, and an arrangement that at the start features pedal steel guitar and light percussion but, transitioning subtly halfway through one of the choruses, by the end is driven by Paul Buckmaster's dynamic strings, along with a barely heard backing choir. Clocking at 6:13, it was one of the longer radio singles of that period.

The song was written about Maxine Feibelmann, a dancer on Elton John's tour who later married Taupin. (Later, the song from the Elton John album Blue Moves called "Between Seventeen and Twenty" referred to the divorce of Bernie and Maxine Taupin and the fact that so much had changed from when they first met when he was aged twenty and she was aged seventeen.)

A non-starter as a single at the time (reaching only No. 41 in the U.S. pop chart and not charting at all in the UK), "Tiny Dancer" did not fade away, but instead slowly became one of Elton John's most popular songs. A fixture on adult contemporary radio stations, but played by rock stations as well, the song simply grew in popularity.

It was ranked #387 on the 2004 List of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

"Rocket Man (I Think It's Going To Be a Long, Long Time)" is an English language song composed by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, and popularized by John. It is loosely based on the short story "The Rocket Man" in Ray Bradbury's book The Illustrated Man, and shares a similar theme to the David Bowie song "Space Oddity". It first appeared on John's 1972 album Honky Château and became a hit single and popular album track. As Taupin once noted, "It became very popular among the listeners."

The lyrics in the song, written by John's longtime collaborator Bernie Taupin, describe a Mars-bound astronaut's mixed feelings at leaving his family in order to do his job. Musically, the song is a highly arranged pop ballad anchored by John's piano, with atmospheric texture added by synthesizer and processed slide guitar.

In the climax of the song's chorus, it is notoriously difficult to understand what John is singing. The true lyric is "burning out his fuse up here alone".

It was ranked #242 in the 2004 List of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Another "Rocket Man" song (also based on Bradbury's short story) was released by the musical group Pearls Before Swine on their 1970 album The Use of Ashes. In an interview in Billboard magazine, Taupin acknowledged that the original Pearls Before Swine song, written by Tom Rapp, had been a direct inspiration for his own lyrics.