When Elton John decided to move his Rock in Rio performance up by 65 minutes on Monday (Sept. 7), many assumed he simply wanted to get to bed earlier. After all, thunderstorms had battered the City of Rock for the previous three days, and a man nearing 80 could hardly be blamed for wanting to avoid a late-night downpour.
But the real reason was different. The British superstar wanted to take the stage early enough to deliver a full concert: 24 songs over two hours and 15 minutes, considerably longer than a typical festival set. Even the rain seemed to cooperate, letting up in time to hear him sing.
The performance surpassed every previous headliner at this year’s festival in both stage time and number of songs: Foo Fighters played 19, Avenged Sevenfold 14 and Calvin Harris 21. John explained that he decided to come to Brazil even after wrapping his Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour in July 2023 because the country had been left off the itinerary.
“I felt a little mean about that,” he said. “I accepted Rock in Rio’s invitation to thank you once again for all the love you’ve shown me throughout my career.”
And the setlist was, in fact, almost an expanded version of the Farewell Yellow Brick Road show: 20 of Monday night’s 24 songs were also part of the 23-song set he used during the final stretch of the tour.
Wearing a yellow blazer and matching pants over a navy shirt, along with blue glasses, sparkling earrings, a pendant and bracelets, John took the stage promptly at 11 p.m. His face may bear the marks of time, his hair may be dyed and his voice rougher around the edges, but his hands remain as formidable as ever at the piano.
Elton John Brings His Farewell Tour Repertoire to Rock in Rio
John’s affection for Brazil was enthusiastically returned. Throughout the day, Los Angeles Dodgers jerseys with No. 1 on the back, oversize star- and heart-shaped glasses, sequins and glitter became increasingly common sights across the festival grounds.
With tickets sold out, the concert drew more than 100,000 people on Monday despite a grim weather forecast. They erupted when Elton John appeared on the massive screen covering the Mundo Stage, which debuted this year with nearly 25,800 square feet of high-definition LED panels across a structure 351 feet wide. In the press room, reporters and critics had already been describing the new screen as a Christopher Nolan-worthy movie theater with a stage cut into the middle.
The Brazilian crowd was singing along from the opening number, “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding,” whose instrumental first half John famously conceived by imagining the music he would want played at his own funeral. With one of pop music’s deepest catalogs at his disposal, he moved effortlessly between ballads and more upbeat hits.
The runs of “Tiny Dancer,” “Sacrifice,” “Honky Cat” and “Rocket Man,” followed later by “Candle in the Wind,” “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” “Sad Songs (Say So Much)” and “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me,” were overwhelming. There are pop stars with fortunes and mansions in the Hollywood Hills who have never written a single song of this caliber, let alone eight of them. John dedicated “Crocodile Rock” to the Brazilian audience, who grinned their way through the song’s “la-la-la” refrain.
For the most part, the arrangements stayed close to the original recordings, with the notable exception of “Cold Heart,” performed in the electronic style of his hit collaboration with Dua Lipa. John was backed by Davey Johnstone, Nigel Olsson, Ray Cooper, John Mahon, Kim Bullard and Matt Bissonette: a group whose combined ages add up to more than 430 years of good services to pop music. The night ended, as it could hardly have ended any other way, with “Your Song.”
If Elton John felt he owed Brazilian fans something, the debt is now fully paid. With interest.
–This article was written by Mateus Campos for Billboard Brasil
