The first album I ever bought, just before my 13th birthday, was Tumbleweed Connection. It was Elton John’s third album (out of 51), and is still regarded by the cognoscenti as one of his best. In his majestic two-hour set at Glastonbury on Sunday evening, Elton didn’t play one song from the album, but I was nevertheless transported back to a time when, as a boy about to enter my teenage years, I discovered on my own the power of music, the pleasure it could bring and the emotions it could stir.
Here we were, 52 years later, and he’s still at it, squeezed into a gold lamé suit, belting out a treasury of hit songs in an astonishing valedictory to his half-century as a live artiste. I will leave the critique of his performance to others. All I know is that, as the sun set over Glastonbury and also on Elton’s live career, I saw my adult life pass before me.
Last year, it was the 80-year-old Paul McCartney, and on Sunday it was Elton, at 76, propelling people of my generation to reflect not only on the ageless quality of their music, but also on the passage of time, and on the relentless march of mortality.
One day we will have to confront a world without these cultural titans. And AI won’t replace McCartney or Elton, or indeed any of the other golden talents that Glastonbury recognised this year, like Debbie Harry (aged 77), Candi Staton (83) and Cat Stevens (74).
We can lament the displacement of humanity by technology. We can rage against the degrading of cultural studies. But for two hours on Sunday night, it was possible to believe in a higher power, the ability of music to magically transform several acres of Somerset countryside into a seething, joyous mass of people, most of whom looked too young to luxuriate in the nostalgic haze into which many of us were conveyed.
I have my own history with Elton. In late 2010, he agreed to guest edit an issue of The Independent to mark World Aids Day. From the moment I first met him for lunch at his house overlooking Nice to the day he came into the office to oversee production of the paper, I found him unstintingly generous (with his time and in his encouragement to others), wise (his world view was informed by an empathy for those who lived much more difficult lives than his) and funny (he was always ready with a self-deprecatory joke).
His edition of the paper included contributions from Bill Clinton, Stephen Fry, Dame Elizabeth Taylor and had a cover image by the artist Gary Hume. He liked it when I called him “Mr Editor” when we met subsequently, but the most striking thing about Elton was that, notwithstanding the tiaras and the Tiffany and the celebrity friends, he successfully cultivated an air of normalcy.
He was an ordinary football fan. Among his five heroes of all time that he wrote about for the paper, alongside Hillary Clinton and Peter Thatchell, was Paul Scholes, the Manchester United midfielder. And consider this, an entry into his diary from 1973: “Woke up, watched Grandstand. Wrote ‘Candle in the Wind’. Went to London; bought Rolls-Royce. Ringo Starr came for dinner.” And if you have any doubt about Elton’s sense of humour, I commend the passage in Rod Stewart’s autobiography that details the exchange of Christmas gifts between the two.
For all the showbiz sparkle, there is an everyman quality to Elton John, which makes his music more connective and his presence more affecting. That’s what came across most powerfully on stage on Sunday. Here is someone who has been writing, performing, campaigning, or just being for virtually all our lives and we have now to reconcile the ravages of age and the depreciation of something on which we could depend.
Even though he was there before us all on Sunday, I began already to miss Elton. It was an emotionally charged experience, full of meaning for many of us. Were those tears? Or maybe just the clouds in my eyes.
