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Elton 07: lots of hits, great hair
Acer Arena, November 28
AS LAST weekend showed, you could reach your use-by date with the public after 60. Elton John turned 60 this year but he's hardly slowed down. His one-man show last night was a little under three hours long in a sold-out room of some 15,000 people.
Clearly generational change is less urgent when after two decades of rubbish you are seven years into a career resurgence based on writing the kind of songs which remind people why they loved you 30 to 35 years ago.
The breadth of Elton's appeal was evident all around. Behind me were four 50-somethings and a 30-something daughter and her teenage son. Along the road, dressed in black and with heavy kohl around the eyes was a couple looking like they arrived a week early for My Chemical Romance.
But everyone of them knew the words to the opening number, Your Song and recognised its aptness at a concert John dedicated to an old friend who died at the weekend, Ken East. It's been a week of goodbyes after all.
Not that John, in black tails festooned with flowers, a french blue shirt and diamond encrusted crucifix looking like it had been borrowed from the Crown jewels, not to mention the best head of hair he's ever had, looked in a hurry to say goodbye. There's no musical Maxine on this horizon, only Mona Lisas and mad hatters.
