Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Life is a distraction filled with the sometimes endless search for acceptance, love and experience; it should never be about fear, about wondering if you are going to go out and come home alone, that the music might suddenly stop in a heartbeat or if the lights will one day turn out because of someone else’s intolerable beliefs.
Elton John’s return to the Liverpool Echo Arena was one that perhaps was overshadowed by recent events in Orlando but it was one that was summed up perfectly by one of Britain’s great entertainers as he performed the hit Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me to great and respectful adoration and applause. The world rightly has moved on so much in 30 years, appreciation and admiration for the LGBT community is such that to have an elder statesman such as Elton John highlight the cause once more, to show just what different actually means, very little when all we want to do is get along in this world, there is after all no difference, we all breathe the same air and we all have hearts that be broken or made to soar higher than any dove in full flight. In typical Elton John fashion, the words made the night complete.
The music that filled every sinew of the Echo Arena, that crept delicately into every fibre of being of those in attendance for the fabulous entertainer, was one that was punctuated by the most recent album Wonderful Crazy Night and the sensational, and some will argue strongly in favour of it being the man’s finest body of work, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.
The night could only start with the whisper of a cool breeze, the sound of a haunting melody which set the scene for the piano based rock operatic feel that was to engorge itself onto the stage; it was the whisper of Funeral For A Friend and Love Lies Bleeding, a simple enough refrain but one that instantly showing where the night was heading.
With tracks such as Bennie and The Jets, I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues, Daniel, Looking Up, A Good Heart, Tiny Dancer, the compelling and possibly the defining song of Elton’s career Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Blue Wonderful all grabbing the attention in the same beautiful fashion as the showmanship and very cool approach he seemed humbled by the adoration shown to him, this was a night of outpouring and love, of showing that world is a good place when we can learn just to accept that it doesn’t matter what may define us in the eyes of some, what matters is how we love them.
A great night of Classic Elton John, of new songs brought out into the open, Liverpool was treated to the time of their lives.
Ian D. Hall