Elton John’s Rupp concert: Nostalgia-filled Saturday night was alright and then some
As pop music parting shots go, Elton John’s performance adieu on Saturday evening at Rupp Arena fell right in line for an artist known for epic stage flamboyance.
Having concluded his two-hour, twenty-minute show with a plaintive “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” the vanguard British pianist and song stylist wished the crowd of 16,000 well, ascended a makeshift staircase and exited through a door size opening in a massive video screen draped behind the stage. With that, the Lexington chapter in what has become a five-year farewell tour concluded, closing a direct conduit to one of pop’s most influential, prolific and colorful careers.
A bit lofty, perhaps? Not really. The grand exit capped a concert that otherwise was all business. No musical tricks. No stage gimmickry. No real theatrical indulgence, aside from a pair of costume changes. In short, everything that led up to John’s exit, stage up, was what made his career so storied and audience-friendly in the first place.
Specifically, the show offered a setlist of 22 songs, all but four of which came from the remarkable string of career-defining recordings John issued between 1970 and 1975. Bringing them to life was a keenly efficient six-member band, half of which – guitarist/band leader Davey Johnstone, drummer Nigel Olsson and percussionist Ray Cooper – were veterans of that early ’70s heyday.
Then there was Sir Elton himself. Having turned 75 last month, he displayed a vocal command that was surprisingly strong. Sure, the blemishes of age crept in at times, but John was in altogether heartier voice than at his last Rupp show, a March 2003 collaborative concert with Billy Joel. His piano work, though, has never sounded sharper, as witnessed by the gospel-esque jam that erupted out of one of the evening’s most arresting non-hit hits, “Burn Down the Mission.”
If audiences were drawn to John’s fourth and final Rupp show (given over a period of 42 years) strictly on the basis of nostalgia, they were not disappointed. The show-opening “Bennie and the Jets” grew out of fat, punctuated piano stabs into a pop parade with a studied but patient flow while the timely (given the show’s weekend booking) “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” was a different beast with a rustic, rockish slant that John and his band had no problem keeping pace with.
The hit that seemed to have aged the most gracefully? Well, that had to be “Rocket Man,” although the barrelhouse jam that capped off the tune on Saturday certainly helped refresh its boldly melancholy outline.
But John also dug a little deeper into his catalogue for those eager to hear music he and lyricist Bernie Taupin fashioned that didn’t become staples of rock radio. The aforementioned “Burn Down the Mission” was one fine example. So was a solo piano version of “Border Song” that John prefaced with a story of how surprised and flattered he and Taupin were upon hearing a version Aretha Franklin recorded and released of the tune just as the original rendering surfaced on 1970’s “Elton John” album. Still another was “Have Mercy on the Criminal,” where the full band provided a rugged electric drive built off string arrangements the late Paul Buckmaster charted for the song’s recorded version in 1972.
Of the four songs that escaped the ’70s, three were light pop exercises from the early ’80s delivered with good-natured gusto during Saturday’s performance – “I Guess That’s Why They Call it the Blues,” “Sad Songs (Say So Much)” and “I’m Still Standing.”
That left one tune from the here and now - an encore reading of the 2021 hit “Cold Heart,” but even that was a throwback. The song was essentially a disco-fied mash-up of four ’70s and ’80s songs John sang against a pre-recorded dance track with the video support of duet partner Dua Lipa.
From his newest single, John went to the hit that started it all, “Your Song.” Saturday’s reading aimed for all the same soft spots as the 1970 original, hitting every last one with a performance acumen that was as orchestrally sweet as it was stoically sentimental.
A footnote to this fine performance: The stage screen illuminated the program with a mix of blown-up imagery of the live events onstage and a series of music video-style footage that was often incongruous to the point of being distracting.
The live shots were winners, though, especially the billboard sized close-ups of John’s hands at the piano, hammering out chords, solos and jams that brought the rollicking soulfulness of one of his foremost inspirations, the late Leon Russell, to mind.
This night may have been all about life off of the fanciful Yellow Brick Road. But make no mistake: The lasting charm and invention of John’s music comes from something altogether earthier. The live video images confirmed where that creative spark starts from. Like a great magician, it’s all in the hands.
This story was originally published April 10, 2022 at 8:37 AM.