Dressed in a strass-studded coat and wearing red-lens glasses, British star Elton John concluded his career with a musical performance he presented in the Swedish capital, Stockholm, on Saturday, attended by fans from different countries.
“Performing for you was my raison d’être, and you were absolutely amazing,” the 76-year-old singer told a jubilant audience.
Thus, the artist concluded a long journey during which he toured the theaters of the world for nearly half a century.
The seventy-year-old star sat at the piano shortly after 8:00 pm (18:00 GMT), to the applause of the audience, to present his farewell concert, which he started with one of his most famous songs, “Bennie and the Jets”.
He then performed a series of songs, including “Philadelphia Freedom” and “I Guess Thats Why They Call It The Blues,” to an enthusiastic audience wearing shimmering blue or red glasses.
For more than two hours, Elton John performed some of his most famous songs, with a few pauses in which the artist stepped away from his piano and rose to thank his fans as well as his musicians and band members, some of whom have been performing for more than 40 years.
He said, “I want to salute these musicians. They are really amazing (..) They are the best.”
Shortly after the performance of “Border Song” dedicated to Aretha Franklin, “I’m Still Standing” enthralled the nearly 30,000 audience at Tele2 Arena.
Before closing, Elton John had broadcast a message from the band Coldplay, who also performed on the same evening in the Scandinavian country, specifically in the city of Gothenburg (Göteborg) in western Sweden, where the band’s singer Chris Martin thanked him for his career and his commitments.
“We almost cried for him.”
“The offer was amazing,” said Anton Bujonen, a 25-year-old Finnish banker.
As for Kony Johansson, a Swedish teacher who bought tickets for the concert four years ago, he said: “We almost cried for him.”
The audience was expecting an emotional evening even before the curtain was raised.
“It’s going to be very emotional,” said Kate Bogai, a 25-year-old Polish student, who delayed her master’s exams to attend her star’s concert and waited outside the stadium for several hours before the show began.
Jenny Kinser, a woman in her fifties from Kentucky, wanted to attend the farewell tour “because I was so young” when Elton John performed his first concerts more than half a century ago.
For the occasion, she wore red strapless shorts and a red, yellow and brown T-shirt, an almost exact copy of the outfit Elton John chose during his first concert in Stockholm in 1971.
And the newspaper “Expressen” confirmed that the last concert in Elton John’s career “closes an important chapter in the history of rock and roll.”
Saturday marked the second consecutive evening of a concert for the British star at the huge Swedish stadium.
The two concerts were held in front of an audience that filled the stands at the end of the farewell tour that began five years ago and was partially disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic and the star’s hip surgery in 2021.
By the end of the “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour, Elton John will have played 330 concerts, which before Stockholm covered many cities in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada, and attracted 6.25 million spectators.
Source: France 24/AFP
