And sometimes farewell seems to be the hardest word.

Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour made its way to Gila River Arena in Glendale on Saturday. And for nearly three hours, he treated the fans to a blast from their collective past while striking a bittersweet balance between what amounts to a victory lap and an emotional acknowledgment that most of us will never see the man perform again.

Which is to say it offered everything you could’ve hoped for going in. And then some.

Strolling on stage in a rhinestone-studded tux, the legend took his seat at the piano, setting the tone for the night with the opening chord of “Bennie and the Jets,” the most successful single from his most successful album, on which the title of this tour is based – “Goodbye Yellow Road.”

And then, he all but redefined the boundaries of a pregnant pause before settling into that dramatic groove at an even more deliberate pace than the original recording, which only added to the power of the moment. 

Then, he welcomed the crowd to the show with “Hey kids, shake it loose together / The spotlight’s hitting something that’s been known to change the weather.”

True.

After following through with “All the Girls Love Alice,” a deeper cut from that same album, John confessed to having had a hard time putting a set list together for the tour. 

“There’s so many songs that I wanted to play,” he said. “But we’d be here for a very, very long time. We’re gonna be here for quite a long time anyway, so I just want to apologize if I left out your favorite song of yours.” 

With a catalog as vast as John’s, it’s doubtful anyone heard all their favorite songs. It’s also doubtful many people had a problem with the song selection, which favored the decade his music did much to define – the ’70s.

“Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” alone was responsible for no fewer than six songs in the 24-song set. 

He also squeezed in any number of his biggest-selling singles, from “Your Song” and “Tiny Dancer” to “Rocket Man,” “Crocodile Rock,” “Daniel,” “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” “Philadelphia Freedom” and, from the ’80s, “I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues.”

That last one was accompanied by one of the visually stunning performance’s most emotional uses of video. Most scenes reinforced the melancholy nature of the lyrics with portraits of people, mostly older couples, captured in moments of not necessarily having the time of their lives, which only made it that much that sweeter when they showed an older couple holding hands.

The war-torn video to “Daniel” was designed to give a better understanding of the lyrics to the song, which John confessed to having undermined by choosing not to sing the final verse Bernie Taupin had written. 

“Candle in the Wind” brought Norma Jean to life in a bittersweet re-staging of a legendary photo shoot, with plenty of close-ups of a wine-swilling Marilyn Monroe looking lonely and sad. 

But the night’s most deeply moving video accompanied a soulful “Tiny Dancer,” with scenes of a woman who clearly did not want to take that box of her belongings to the pawn shop and another woman carrying an urn of someone’s ashes to the beach. 

Not all the videos were heavy. “Philadelphia Freedom” was a smile-inducing celebration, a group of dancers showing off their best and/or goofiest moves to a song that was clearly written to be celebrated on a dance floor.

There were plenty of playful moments (and goofy costumes) captured in the highlight reel that accompanied “I’m Still Standing,” a single serving notice that this “true survivor” was still standing better than he ever did in 1983.

That was 36 years ago.

And he’s still standing. 

The passage of time was a recurring theme in Saturday’s performance. 

Introducing “Border Song,” he told the crowd, “It came out in 1970, which to me seems about five minutes ago. And time goes quickly, especially when you’re getting old.” 

Then, he talked about how six months after the album came out, their music publisher called to say Aretha Franklin had covered the song. 

“I loved her dearly,” he said. “And we shared the same birthday. She gave her final performance at the Elton John AIDS Foundation, and although she was frail, incredibly frail, it was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen and also one of the most upsetting things because you will never see the likes of that again.”

It would be hard to not to notice the passage of time in John’s performance. You could see it in the way he walked to the piano. You could hear it in the notes he didn’t even try to hit, ceding the falsetto chorus of “Crocodile Rock” to the audience and reassigning the loftier notes in a song like “Daniel” to a range much better suited to a man now in his 70s.

But he’s found a new way to be great as a singer. His voice may be a little raspier than it was in his youth, but he used that extra grit to his advantage in the concert’s more expressive moments, of which they were many. 

John’s piano playing was as brilliant as expected. And his backing musicians gave each song exactly what it needed, led by musical director Davey Johnstone, whose guitar tone was the stuff of legends, with John’s longtime drummer Nigel Olsson joined by two additional percussionists.

It could be argued that they could’ve squeezed a few more hits into that same amount of time if they’d trimmed the arrangements on some of the longer pieces.

But allowing his fellow musicians the room to stretch out resulted in some of the concerts most inspired moments, from the gospel-flavored climax of “Levon,” which featured Johnstone inserting the riff to “Day Tripper,” to that extended jam on “Rocket Man,” and a suitably epic performance of “Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding.”

Individual highlights of the concert more than likely varied depending on a person’s favorite song when they entered the building, but my all-time favorite Elton John song, “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” was a profoundly moving thing to witness.

But then, so was “Daniel.” And “Levon.” And “Rocket Man,” of course. And “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me” seemed extra poignant in this context.

By the time he brought the two-song encore to a close with a rousing rendition of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” I was reminded of the words a wise man once used to describe the sensation of having seen Aretha Franklin sing one final time. 

“You will never see the likes of that again.”

Setlist

• “Bennie and the Jets”
• “All the Girls Love Alice”
• “I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues”
• “Border Song”
• “Tiny Dancer”
• “Philadelphia Freedom”
• “Indian Sunset”
• “Rocket Man”
• “Take Me to the Pilot”
• “Someone Saved My Life Tonight”
• “Levon”
• “Candle in the Wind”
• “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding”
• “Burn Down the Mission”
• “Believe”
• “Daniel”
• “Sad Songs (Say So Much)”
• “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me”
• “The Bitch Is Back”
• “I’m Still Standing”
• “Crocodile Rock”
• “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting”
• Encore:
• “Your Song”
• “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”

 

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