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Elton John and band performed at Leigh Sports Village on June 21, 2014
Sunday, June 22 2014 |
Fan report and interviews by Scott Johnson.
The anticipation, you might say, was palpable.
When I arrived at Leigh Sports Village (amidst the advertising banners hailing Saturday night’s concert) there was a gathering crowd, waving everything from glow sticks to inflatable guitars, and wearing anything from outrageous glasses to garish feather boas. As I watched them collecting outside the pubs and grassy knolls that peppered the outskirts of the arena, you could almost have mistaken this for Elton John’s 1970s heyday.
For Leigh, this concert – Elton’s first in both the town itself and the UK this year – was big news. It seemed improbable to many that a small northern town like this would play host to a global superstar of his standing. But stranger things have happened.
The relatively new Sports Village stadium welcomed with adoration a man who, whilst travelling the globe, has slipped with ease onto stages as far and wide as Caesars Palace, Madison Square Garden and London’s Wembley Arena. Tonight, though, it was like seeing Elton John coming back to his roots. The superstar was, as if channelling his recent single, home again.
Elton John’s fans are notoriously diverse, and his broad appeal was never more apparent than here: I spoke with a group who had seen him during his 1976 “Louder Than Concorde” tour, the eldest of their party telling me that no concert they’d been to since had ever quite matched that summer night in Earl’s Court at the pinnacle of John’s career. The younger generation were here too, their hearts and minds having been won by staples of the 1990s like Circle of Life and the Diana-inspired reworking of Candle in the Wind.
The audience at Leigh were, perhaps, not unique in their diversity. Swathes of the crowd were made up of casual concert-goers, drawn by the prestige of having a celebrity of Elton’s calibre playing their local rugby ground. Worse for wear, some of them gate-crashed the front seating area (much to the chagrin of those on the front row), and the venue’s security seemed, at times, ill-equipped to cope. Generally, though, it was sheer enthusiasm that was fuelling them (only one slight disturbance marred the night, when a drunken reveller was manhandled out of the arena after turning violent), and unrelenting chants of “Elton! Elton!” filled the silence between practically every song.
Not unsurprisingly, it was the more familiar material that this crowd (with some notable exceptions below) were yearning for. A group carrying a print-out of a possible set list published online earlier in the day were frantically searching the itinerary of songs, trying to identify the hitherto unknown "Hey Ahab," to which only the seasoned fans were singing along. When falling back on hits like "I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues" and "I’m Still Standing," Elton had a stadium full of backing singers!
Elton himself seemed to be feeding off the crowd’s high spirits; with the area in front of the stage filled before even a third of the concert had passed, and those who had crammed in showing no signs of dispersing, Elton looked across the stage to Kim Bullard and exhaled in wonder, Bullard returning the gesture with a wry shake of the head to convey his disbelief. No one was going back to their seat.
Before the show started, I followed the trail of the front row to speak to some of the fans who’d come out in the June heat wave to collect their thoughts for this report. (I bypassed the stag party, who were clutching several boxes of beer and a cardboard cut-out of Elton.)
I met Amanda Redbridge from Greater Manchester first. "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" was, she told me, the first record she ever bought. When the opening bars of "Funeral for a Friend" played out from the stage, Amanda told me it was like “going back in time” – she confessed that, as a young girl, she was terrified of the instrumental! When I asked her what brought her to Leigh Sports Village tonight, she told me: “I just love Elton. I just love everything about him.” Despite her long-time devotion, this was to be the first time she had seen him live.
Seated ten paces away from Amanda, facing Elton’s piano stool, I met Chris Vobe. If you ever needed proof of how far and wide Elton appeals, look no further. Aged 25, Vobe is a politician (but don’t let that put you off, honestly), having found himself elected to Warrington Council a couple of years back.
If you were to categorise Elton John followers as either the “casual” or the “die-hard”, Vobe is unquestionably the latter; what one might call, in fact, a “professional fan”. At one point, our conversation side-tracked onto fan-made recordings of Elton concerts. Vobe’s assemblage of these, and other assorted archive material, is so extensive that even the most hardened collector’s eyes would water. He is, by his own admittance, “ridiculously enthusiastic” about Elton John, having followed his UK and European tours extensively since he was old enough. Despite having seen him so many times, the gloss hasn’t worn off. Vobe lives ten minutes away from the Leigh arena. “I’ve seen him play the Royal Opera House, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Doncaster, Shrewsbury… and now he’s pitched up ten minutes from my house!” he enthused. (He’s off to Newcastle next week to see the whole thing again.)
Talking to someone who grew up in the 1990s, it’s interesting to hear them cite Elton John as “the soundtrack to my childhood”, but Vobe did; he recalls playing albums like "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" and "Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy" on his turntable (vinyl is his medium of choice because, as he puts it, “the sound is better”) when he was in his teens. He religiously seats himself on the front row, facing Elton, every time he attends a concert. There’s also a definite look of wonderment etched across his face from the moment the show begins until the last bar is played.
What struck me on Saturday night was the appreciation shown even for Elton’s lesser known material. Admittedly, very few in the crowd sang along to "Oceans Away" (the only song from his 2013 album "The Diving Board" that Elton played), but there was a noticeable roar as he introduced the track by paying tribute to the members of the armed forces who had fought for freedom. By this point in the concert, Vobe had stealthily moved from his front row seat to stand by the stage, positioned perfectly so as to never lose sight of Elton, but without being crushed by the melee. As a refrain lamenting the lost soared gloriously from Elton’s lips, the 25-year-old politician sang along without missing a beat, matching Elton perfectly on every syllable. As the song finished, Elton leapt from his seat and turned to face that section of the standing crowd. He pointed at Vobe and grinned, before being beckoned over. Elton raced across and extended an arm across the barriers, which Vobe high-fived and shook. As he started to move back to his grand piano, now gleaming with the reflection of the summer sunlight, Vobe mouthed something I couldn’t decipher to Elton, who responded with a nod, a grin, and by pulling his tongue.
Elton perfectly timed his most lavish ballads. "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" and "Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word" were played to some of the most rapturous receptions of the night, and "Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me" washed across the crowd of thousands as the summer solstice sun sank behind the rugby stadium. Unable to resist a sporting reference or two, Elton joked that when he was young, he “used to watch the rugby league with Eddie Waring commentating.” He didn’t shy away from his views on the World Cup, either, spelling out his views on some of the more controversial refereeing decisions of recent matches.
A return to the UK meant a slight re-working of the setlist, with a couple of the more American-friendly songs being replaced in favour of UK number ones "Are You Ready for Love" and "Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word." Elton left the stage at 10.40pm after a show-stopping "Crocodile Rock" finale. And whilst a performance in Leigh is unlikely ever to be repeated, Elton’s one-night stand here is unlikely ever to be forgotten either. Despite a few minor quibbles with some of the more worse-for-wear attendees, it is also one that can be looked back on as a resounding success.
As the crowds filed out of the stadium, I caught up with Chris Vobe again. I jokingly told him that, from what I’d seen, he hadn’t missed a beat during the whole show. When asked if he fancied joining Elton on stage, Vobe laughed, but then conceded that he’d “jump at the chance”. What would his ideal duet be, I asked him? “Oscar Wilde Gets Out,” he told me without hesitation, but added with a wry shake of the head, “but he’s not playing it on this tour. So maybe "Hey Ahab" instead. Do you think if I asked nicely…?”
Elton John has just played Leigh, enjoyed a crowd as receptive as those who filled Dodger Stadium in the summer of ’75, and brought the ceiling down in a way only he knows how – stranger things have happened!
Scott Johnson lives in London.
Chris Vobe is on Twitter via @ChrisVobe1.
Following is the complete set list of the Leigh Sports Village show on June 21, 2014:- Funeral for a Friend
- Love Lies Bleeding
- Bennie and the Jets
- Candle in the Wind
- Grey Seal
- Levon
- Tiny Dancer
- Believe
- Philadelphia Freedom
- Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
- Rocket Man (I Think It's Going to Be a Long, Long Time)
- Hey Ahab
- I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues
- The One (Elton solo)
- Oceans Away
- Someone Saved My Life Tonight
- Sad Songs (Say So Much)
- All the Girls Love Alice
- Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word
- Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me
- I'm Still Standing
- The Bitch Is Back
- Your Sister Can't Twist (But She Can Rock 'n Roll)
- Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting
- Your Song
- Are You Ready for Love
- Crocodile Rock
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