But it’s by no means a bad show: the Captain Fantastic and Rock of the Westies songs are reinvented minus the Cheez Whiz slathered on them in the studio, and Elton alone at the piano, as he was at the beginning of the show, playing some of his earliest songs, is always worth the price of admission. Elton is strong and clear but he sometimes struggles to hit high notes, and he occasionally launches into a painful-sounding falsetto. It is not unusual for a band on the road to require a few dates to warm up, and at this show, the band sometimes comes off awkward and lumbering. The bootleg closes with “Pinball Wizard,” although some shows on the tour ended with “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting.” (I have a bootleg of the October 14 Portland show, and it ends with “Pinball Wizard” too.) He played some deep cuts: “Dixie Lily” from Caribou, “Harmony” from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, and “Empty Sky,” the title song from his 1969 album, which had gotten its first American release earlier in 1975. He played several cuts from Captain Fantastic and two from Rock of the Westies, including “Island Girl,” his new single, which Elton said from the stage had been released just that day. Elton opened with “Your Song,” and the setlist had all the classics Elton fans of ’75 would have expected. ![]() On that night, the band played for nearly 3 1/2 hours (although the show would get shorter as the month-long tour went on). That show, at the San Diego Sports Arena, has been extensively bootlegged, and it recently turned up at the fabulous ROIO. One night in July, as the band finished Rock of the Westies at Caribou Ranch in Colorado, he came on with the Rolling Stones at their show in Fort Collins, and, as he admitted in his autobiography, he overstayed his welcome onstage thanks to loads of cocaine.Įlton’s brief West of the Rockies Tour opened in San Diego on September 29, 1975. On June 21, the Midsummer Music show was his new band’s first live gig, and in Elton’s words to the crowd at the end of the show, “We were shit scared.” Back in the States a week later, Elton appeared onstage with the Doobie Brothers in Oakland. After making Captain Fantastic, he fired his longtime bassist Dee Murray and drummer Nigel Olsson, who had been with him since he was living in his mother’s house. It’s hard to fathom the pressure Elton was under during the summer of 1975. ![]() The summer of ’75 also featured the fabled Midsummer Music show in London, at which Elton and his new band played all of the new Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. I’ve written here before about Elton John’s best year ever-from the release of his Greatest Hits album and bringing John Lennon back to the stage at the end of 1974 to playing the Pinball Wizard in the Tommy movie to a pair of #1-debuting albums at a time when nobody had ever done it. (Pictured: Elton John gets airborne, October 25, 1975.)
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