IN MANY ways, you've got to love Sir Elton. "We always try to get up to Scotland and play an outdoor gig every summer," he announced, "and we'd like to thank St Johnstone Football Club for inviting us." He then went on to commiserate with the club fo
r their not-quite-promotion last season and wished them luck in making it to the SPL next time around. Watford FC's lifetime president is part man of the people, part football statto, it seems.
He's also a performer of blinding energy and confidence, which is doubly impressive in a man of 61. The above exchange was one of his only chats with the crowd, his usual preference instead being to leap from his piano stool, wipe the sweat from his brow and jab a finger indiscriminately towards the throng, as if accusing individual audience members for insisting he work so hard.
This was the very definition of a greatest hits set: almost every song was completely familiar and quite a few were great. Not all of them: certainly not the crumbly latterday ballad Sacrifice, nor the ever-horrible Candle in the Wind.
Yet, while John's career as a balladeer – bar the splendid closer Your Song – is a bit too Lloyd Webber for all but the most easily-satisfied tastes, the part of him that's a pub-rocking show-off is relentlessly good fun. During the highest points of the show, the dated but enthusiastic I'm Still Standing, Philadelphia Freedom, Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting and Benny and the Jets, it was easy to see how he achieved fame in the first place.
The full article contains 281 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
