“Hyde Park!” shouts Reginald Kenneth Dwight – or rather, Sir
Elton John– to the crunching sound of The
Bitch Is Back’s opening riff. He climbs onto his stool – at almost seventy,
jumping up is out of the question – and seats himself atop the grand piano, where
he mugs for the cameras cheekily, a dazzling white perma-grin illuminated under
bright lights. There can be no doubting the man’s showman credentials – one,
after all, does not play a decade-spanning residency in Las Vegas to over a
million and a half people without knowing how to play a crowd – and for this
type of performance, a festival show for the BBC, live on air, such effortless
gestures serve to reinforce the knowledge that arguably Britain’s greatest
export of the past forty-five years is a born entertainer.
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| Elton John performs live in Hyde Park in 2016. (Credit to Alan D West Photography.) |
Following in the footsteps of Rod Stewart and a reformed
Electric Light Orchestra, John has his work cut out for himself headlining
Radio 2’s urban Festival in a Day, a rather sedate, pleasant and slightly
schmaltzy affair slap bang in the middle of the capital. Restricted to a
ninety-minute set, the Rocket Man has to find time to cram in all his hits, tip
his hat to his new album Wonderful Crazy
Night and pay lip service to the station putting him up in one of London’s
most prestigious open-air venues (illness forced him to cancel a show in 2013
as part of the British Summer Time festival).
In John, the station has found the perfect artist for such
an event and he rewards their faith with his easy-going approach and
charismatic performance. Like a warm cup of tea, he is innately part of the
country’s musical furniture, a national treasure. His songs are as iconic as
fish and chips, or the Queen. When he plays Philadelphia
Freedom, set to a background image of a gently-waving US flag, it’s almost disappointing
that the Union Jack isn’t flying instead (though on the anniversary of 9/11, it
probably would be insensitive). Upon producing a stirring rendition of I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues,
the hairs on arms involuntarily stand up before he even sings a word. His
timeless classics are so ingrained into popular culture, they are practically
state property. Even his new stuff – Looking
Up and A Good Heart, dispatched
early on– slot seamlessly into his vast catalogue of copper-bottomed hits.
John himself hasn’t aged as well as his songs however, his
range hampered somewhat by throat surgery in 1987. He still makes a good fist
of it – the husky deepness he infuses into Your
Song transforms it from beautifully lovelorn to something more primitive
and despairing – but on tracks such as Goodbye
Yellow Brick Road, he strains painfully and still falls below the notes
required. He is not helped by a typically hit-and-miss festival soundmix either
– sludgy and quiet at points, in keeping with the Hyde Park noise curfew. It
renders the nuances of Bennie and the
Jets pointless, lost in reverberating echo. And some of his song choices
leave a little to be desired – in an hour-and-a-half set, is there really time
for a ten-minute rendition of Levon,
particularly with the absence of hits such as Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word and Candle in the Wind?
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| Elton John performs live in Hyde Park in 2016. (Credit to Alan D West Photography.) |
But the fabulous musicianship of his band – including veterans
Nigel Olsson and Ray Cooper – more than compensate, particularly on
spellbinding takes on Rocket Man and Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me, their gentle
flourishes fleshing out John’s piano work. He ramps up the party atmosphere for
the finale – a bombastic I’m Still
Standing and rollicking rendition of Saturday
Night’s Alright for Fighting. At its conclusion, John consults with a
stage-hand and discovers he only has two and a half minutes left. “It’s been a
blast,” he shouts, “And I love you!”, before he tears into a rapid-fire
rendition of glam-stomper Crocodile Rock,
played at a breakneck pace, and evading the curfew by a mere second. He may not
retain the power and range to command songs as he once did – but it’s
undoubtable that John can still command audiences and deliver a feel-good blast
six decades on. Long may he continue to do so.
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