Derrick Coyle
Forty years ago, navigating Toronto roadways to high school hockey games in the family’s 1961 Ford Falcon, it was critical to have Elton John’s Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting properly queued and blasting from the 8-track player, just as we pulled into the arena parking lot. The howling voices of Coyle, Wells, and Coyle – three genuine products of the working class – belting out the psyche-up anthem at the top of our lungs, before every Monarch Park contest.
Last week, at Budweiser Gardens in London, Ontario, the 66-year-old piano wizard proved he could still get about as oiled as a diesel train with a slick and energized performance of the rock classic to close the concert and set up the, Your Song, Crocodile Rock encore.
The night opened with a darkened stage and haunting timbre of the pipe organ intro to Funeral for a Friend. Stage lights and audience were switched on simultaneously, as organ gave way to piano and the electrifying Love Lies Bleeding portion of the hit paved the way for an incredible three-hour, 28-song feast of vintage Elton.
by Erin Coyle
Bennie and the Jets, Candle in the Wind, Levon, Tiny Dancer, Philadelphia Freedom, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me, The Bitch Is Back. Great music is timeless and links generations. While the majority of the 10,000 or so fans stuffing the Gardens, hinted – in form and fashion – at having been original witnesses to the 70’s go-round, there was no shortage of next-generation enthusiasts hoppin’ and boppin’ to the Crocodile Rock. My daughter and her fiance were singing and rockin’ with the rest of us. A high school buddy and his daughter picked up the high-energy party when the tour exploded into Toronto, a few days later. There was clearly a shared appreciation of this music among boomers and their successors.
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The energy of the sixty-something rockers is astonishing. While his band mates took one short break in the three hour set, Elton didn’t leave the stage until the last song (before encore). Every hit included heavy doses of piano, most with high-powered, extended solos. How he can keep it fresh and energetic night after night, through 50 years of road tours, is astounding. Sir Elton may have answered that when he addressed the thought with the crowd in London, “the older I get, the more I love it.”
It was a good week for a nostalgic music lover. The CBS airing Sunday of the 50th anniversary of The Beatles’ historic appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show: “The Beatles: The Night That Changed America – A Grammy Salute,” was a nice trip down memory lane. Though, I’d take the original versions of the songs covered by an assortment of talents, any day.
by Derek Ruttan, London Free Press
It seems the bands and music baby boomers grew up with are solidly linked to life experiences, and indelibly etched in the memory. The nice thing about nostalgia, is it’s generally associated with reflections of happy times and places. It’s a powerful connection when the mere hearing of a song, takes the senses acutely back to events from several decades earlier. Pleasantly transported for a few minutes in time travel, to see, hear, and feel the experience, once again.
There are unquestionably modern day talents, but I wonder if Alice in Chains, Queens of the Stone Age, and The Black Keys will be rocking the stage 40 years from now. Or, whether the undeniably popular hits of Katy Perry, Justin Timberlake, Pink, Bruno Mars, and Maroon 5, will conjure up special memories for current fans, a few decades later. Maybe nostalgia comes in degrees, with boomers as a generation, at the high end of the scale.
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Whatever the case, for this baby boomer it was a treat to hear Sir Elton John belting out I’m Still Standing, just as if it were 1983 – Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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