Revisit Six of Elton John’s Most Iconic Concerts, Streaming in Their Entirety for 72 Hours

Just as Bohemi­an Rhap­sody intro­duced Fred­dy Mer­cury to an unsus­pect­ing gen­er­a­tion of young fans, last year’s Elton John biopic, Rock­et­manhas net­ted its sub­ject a host of fresh admir­ers.

John’s newest fans were born into a far dif­fer­ent world than the one that was astound­ed when he declared, in a 1976 inter­view with Rolling Stone, that he was bisex­u­al.

Now a knight (the first open­ly gay musi­cian to be so anoint­ed), Sir Elton is using his enor­mous pub­lic plat­form to encour­age youth who may be strug­gling with their sex­u­al­i­ty or gen­der iden­ti­ty and to end the glob­al AIDS epi­dem­ic.

To date, the Elton John AIDS Foun­da­tion has raised over $450,000,000 to sup­port HIV-relat­ed pro­grams in fifty-five coun­tries, and is now dou­bling down with coro­n­avirus relief efforts for the pop­u­la­tion it has long served.

To that end, Sir Elton is revis­it­ing six of his most icon­ic per­for­mances over the last half-cen­tu­ry, post­ing a con­cert in its entire­ty to his Youtube chan­nel every week in hope that view­ers will be moved to make a dona­tion at con­cert’s end.

(As fur­ther incen­tive, an anony­mous sup­port­er has pledged to match dona­tions up to $250,000.)

Each con­cert streams for 72 hours, but clips of indi­vid­ual songs linger longer.

Last week the Clas­sic Con­cert Series turned the dial back 30 years to find Sir Elton play­ing a 1st-cen­tu­ry Roman amphitheater—Italy’s Are­na di Verona—as part of his 130-show Reg Strikes Back tour. His inter­play with singers Mor­tonette Jenk­ins, Mar­lena Jeter, and Kud­is­an Kai dur­ing an 8‑minute gospel-tinged spin on “Sad Songs (Say So Much),” above, is a high­light of the 22-song set.

The series kicked off at the Play­house The­ater in Edin­burgh in 1976 as “Don’t Go Break­ing My Heart” was top­ping the charts, and con­tin­ues to the Syd­ney Enter­tain­ment Cen­ter ten years fur­ther on, when Sir Elton defied doc­tor’s orders, per­form­ing despite vocal nod­ules.

On July 24, John takes us along to Rio’s Esta­dio Do Fla­men­go when the release of 1995’s Made In Eng­land prompt­ed his first ever tour of Brazil.

The fol­low­ing week, we’ll enter the 21st-cen­tu­ry with a pit­stop at Madi­son Square Gar­den before the series comes to a close at the Great Amphithe­ater in Eph­esus, Turkey.

Watch Elton John’s Clas­sic Con­cert Series on his Youtube chan­nel, and even though it’s not oblig­a­tory,  seek out the blue dona­tion but­ton that appears on every post. You can also make a tax deductible dona­tion via the Elton John AIDS Foun­da­tion’s web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Elton John Proves He Can Turn any Text into a Song: Watch Him Impro­vise with Lines from Hen­rik Ibsen’s Play, Peer Gynt

Elton John Takes Us Through the Cre­ative Process of His Ear­ly Hit “Tiny Dancer” (1970)

Elton John Sings His Clas­sic Hit ‘Your Song’ Through the Years

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.


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  • John says:

    It would have been so much bet­ter for all of us if Elton and Dylan and the Stones and some oth­ers had all died a few decades ago instead of sub­ject­ing us to he mis­ery of hear­ing how they have ruined all their best songs over and over again all these years and just keep on laugh­ing all the way to the bank the whole time !

  • John says:

    It would have been so much bet­ter for all of us if Elton and Dylan and the Stones and some oth­ers had all died a few decades ago instead of sub­ject­ing us to the mis­ery of hear­ing how they have ruined all their best songs over and over again all these years and just keep on laugh­ing all the way to the bank the whole time !

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