Back in December of 2017 one of my work friends let me know tickets for Elton John’s farewell tour were going on sale through the fan club she was a part of and asked me if I wanted in. Stupidly I said no because the concert was not going to be for over a year and just thought I would figure it out when the show got closer. Well it turns out Elton John’s last tour ever was a bigger deal than I gave it credit for. The San Diego show sold out and the cheapest tickets on the secondary market were going for $400 each! Yikes! I like Elton John but I don’t like Elton John that much. Once I saw that he was playing two shows at the Forum in L.A. as well as a handful of shows at Staples Center and coming back to Anaheim in September I began to dutifully look at those options, reasoning that I could probably find two tickets and a hotel room for the price of one ticket in San Diego. Fortunately I was right. After much back and forth we finally decided to pull the trigger on the February 1st show at the Forum. This allowed us to get loose since it was on a Friday and as an added bonus we discovered that we had a free hotel night to use from hotels.com.
We left at 11:30 am to avoid the dreaded L.A. traffic and much to our surprise ended up getting to Inglewood in a record hour and 45 minutes. Inglewood is not a nice area…yet. I say yet because the brand new stadium being built next to the Forum for the Rams is a monstrosity and looks to be coming along nicely. With this I assume will come higher rents that will drive out some of the lower rent tenants.
After a short Uber ride we loaded up on $15 beers and found our seats which were off to the side of the stage. With all the shows I have been to I don’t know why it took me so long to realize that cheap seats to the side of the stage are way better than cheap seats that are dead center but at the back of the arena. Not only are you closer so you can see better but it also still sounds freaking amazing.
The familiar opening piano chords of “Benny and the Jets” kicked this party off and for the next three plus hours Elton John was damn near flawless. I was astounded and impressed at how amazing his voice sounded. He did not just sound great “for a 71 year old;” he sounded great period. His voice was powerful and he is the only “aged” vocalist I have seen maybe ever that did not have any dedicated backup singers. After some guy behind us kept yelling “sit down” even though nearly everyone else was standing up (it’s a concert not your living room!) Ingrid and I decided to simply move to the aisle end of our row instead of fight with this idiot the entire concert. That worked out well until the proper owners of the seats arrived and looked thoroughly dumbfounded. I could tell that they were bothered but when you are in the “cheaper” seats who really gives a fuck? They must not have been bothered enough because they never actually said anything to us other than what they said to us with their body language.
I would consider myself a casual Elton John fan but there are at least a solid 10-15 songs of his that I love and he played nearly every one of them. Beyond his piano moving around the stage on a motorized track at certain points and confetti falling from the sky for the grand finale of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” there was not a lot of “glitz” to his show but the band just crushed it. Elton was very chatty and shared sincere, historical and funny anecdotes with the crowd throughout. This concert reaffirmed why I love going to concerts in the first place. There is something magical/primitive/otherworldly when you witness the naked power of just a guy and his piano wailing away. You hear the sounds with your ears but you also hear them in your soul. I am beyond ecstatic that I did not squander the opportunity given to me to see this living legend while I still had the chance.
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 (I Think It’s Going to be a Long, Long Time), 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, Sad Songs (Say So Much), Daniel, 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, Your Song, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
