Music's legendary duo unite

Elton John entertains the 300-strong audience at concert
11 April 2012
The Weekender

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One of music's most enduring partnerships united last night at a special concert.

Lyricist Bernie Taupin was in the 300-strong audience to watch Elton John singing his vivid words about their life together and apart, at a filmed show to promote next week's new album The Captain & The Kid.

John and his five-piece band performed nine of the 10 new songs, which revisit his early Seventies stylings in a mostly successful attempt to provide a belated sequel to 1975's Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy.

That autobiographical recording covered the pair's early struggle to become successful songwriters, while this latest documents the tantrums and tiaras that finally followed when the pair cooked up a string of No1 albums.

As the singer put it: "The first album was about coping with failure. This one is about coping with success."

It's a neat idea, creating a strong link between golden-period Elton and the critically reappraised Elton of today — less the cuddly queen mum of rock than a revered elder statesman, still with-it enough to thank "the Scissor Sisters, the Killers, Rufus Wainwright and Ray Lamontagne for inspiration" in his sleeve notes.

Thanks to the former, he even occupies the No1 spot again this week, having played piano on their single I Don't Feel Like Dancin'.

Tonight, though, was all about looking backwards. Opening with two tracks from 1973 classic Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, an epic Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding and then Bennie And The Jets, he was soon detailing his and Taupin's 1970 arrival in Los Angeles in a new song, Postcards From Richard Nixon.

Some lyrics that were too literal sounded rather clunky, but the excitement the pair felt at that time was palpable.

The rowdy rock'n' roll of Just Like Noah's Ark was better, a colourful portrayal of the "cocky young roosters, little chicks" they encountered while travelling the States as superstars.

It wasn't all joy and adoration, however. A stark ballad, Tinderbox, concerned the duo's temporary falling out and decision to work with other people in 1976: "We were kings until the power failed."

Two other long-term players in the same drama were also on stage — guitarist Davey Johnstone and drummer Nigel Olsson, a sticksman so self-confident that he plasters his own name over his kit.

They and their fellow musicians were flawless on other vintage tracks such as Someone Saved My Life Tonight and The Bitch Is Back. But it was the new album's shuffling, country-tinged title track that summed up the whole wild time.

It took a fonder, more detached look at the period, comparing John and Taupin then and now and concluding that while they may be wiser, their relationship is still essentially the same: "An urban soul in a fine silk suit/And a heart out west in a Wrangler shirt."

It sounded a bit like the closing of their long, fascinating book. But in a relationship that has been this fruitful, there should always be more to come. The concert will be broadcast on BBC1 on Thursday at 10.35pm.

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