Concert review: Elton John: Captain Fantastic marching in The Circle of Life

MANILA, Philippines - In days of yore, when the world was young, the traveling jongleur would sing the deeds of men to rally the warriors to battle, as did the unknown singer who chanted the Chanson de Roland to the galloping troops of France’s Duke of Normandy who defeated King Harold of England in the Battle of Hastings. In our time, there lives a bard, named  Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1996, knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for “services to music and charitable services” in 1998 — Sir Elton Hercules John — who rattles the ivory keys of his grand piano to whip us in line to meet the enemy. But our adversary is not an army of strong-greaved soldiers, but a legion of fears and insecurities borne of the hopelessness scourging our age.

This is the battle-scarred warrior, who has survived physical and psychological strains, whom Manila heard and saw in the first-ever concert performed at the Big Dome by the rock ‘n roll icon to celebrate the ruby year of his Rocketman Tour. Garbed in coat tails (emblazoned in sparkling swarovsky with Madman Across the Border, from the title song of the fourth studio album which aficionados consider part of the Golden Age of Rock ‘n Roll and with which the British Broadcasting Company subtitled its docu The Making of Elton John) and bright cerulean shirt matching his eye glasses, he pounded the opening song — the controversial and once censored hard rock The Bitch is Back. It made us wonder if he was sassing this ultraconservative predominantly Catholic country or was simply articulating that though he has been through hell and back, he has never given up the one true thing that he loves — music. The song, originally written in A flat major, but is today performed live a half step lower in the key of G major, is a reminder, too, that Elton’s voice range, at 65, is mellowing.

But with the second song, Benny and the Jets, from the widely-acclaimed Yellow Brick Road album, where he often makes subtle or even drastic changes with his piano solo in the middle (ranging from the original to the wildly extended), he was blatantly saying: “I can and will have fun, and have the time of my life improvising” — hallmark of the musical prodigy that he is.

 His third song, Tell Me When the Whistle Blows, from the ninth studio collection Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, released in 1975, is a paean to his long-time collaboration (since 1967) with soulmate lyricist, Bernie Taupin. The line “And rather all this than those diamante lovers in Hyde Park holding hands,” reminded of our London city tour which included this royal hunting ground famous for its Speakers’ Corner, where open-air public speaking, debate and discussion are allowed. Indeed, the Elton-Bernie separate-rooms tandem (they compose lyrics and music apart from each other) has discoursed on many current issues, including this song’s theme of desperation.

When he sang Candle in the Wind, he had the Manila crowd on tenterhooks. Sitting on his grand piano, then standing for ovations, he shouted, “I believe in love,” and sang his well-loved hits Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Crocodile Rock (from the album Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player). In the former, we hear the plaintive reluctance of the celebrity trapped in the glitz and glamour of intoxicating fame and in the latter, despite the honky-tonk rhythm, the poignant longing for a past that will never be back. Elton once said: “To go forward in my career as a recording artist, I’ve got to go back … revisit what I did. That’s where my heart was… in the soulful, joyful, country, gospel, funky rock ‘n roll… that’s my true spirit.” The Big Dome crowd tried its best falsetto in both songs and swayed and stomped with wild abandon.

In terms of Top 40 hits, Elton was the biggest pop star of the early ’70s, who, like the Beatles, could churn out soul, country, gospel, ballad and rock, and coming later than the Fab Four, disco. His versatility, musical skills and flamboyant stage persona enabled him to traverse the New Wave of the ’80s, the grunge of the ’90s, up to the shifting millennium.

The 1973 hit Daniel, about a veteran of the Vietnam War, brings us back to the role of the minstrel, an ancient commission which John Steinbeck mentioned in his 1962 Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech, to “expose the many grievous faults and failures with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams.”

 Elton has prospered into a mentor, too, including Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding, with a lengthy instrumental, to showcase the individual talents of the band, with his lead guitarist using the mandolin and the banjo. He also allowed his two cellists, who provided his front act, to shine with the lamentation of Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word and the cold war song Nikita.

At an age when most of us are looking at retirement, Captain Fantastic, who was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, is still forward-looking, having learned the meaning of gratefulness. He confided: “I hope I will be able to go back to this wonderful country,” making my husband’s eyes sparkle, since his heart was really set on hearing Skyline Pigeon, which the bus that took him home from UST to Paco when we were college classmates would bide its own sweet time by the Central Market with this haunting hymn from his first album Empty Sky. Elton did not sing Sweet Painted Lady, too, another hit during our coming-of-age years, which we sang when one of our theology professors was not looking, freaked out by her cat woman made-up eyes. But we were both thankful that he gave a brilliant new arrangement to the plaintive Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me, because we relived our angst-filled teen years, as it became a hit in 1974, when we started our AB course at the Faculty of Arts and Letters.

He then wished his Filipino fans love, happiness and health, before singing the Leon Russel original A Song for You, which in a 1975 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, John Lennon praised. His other curtain call, from Disney’s Lion King, where he teamed up with Tim Rice, resonates the living legend’s message: We belong to the community of men, on the endless round of the Circle of Life that…

Moves us all

Through despair and hope

Through faith and love

Till we find our place

On the path unwinding

In the Circle

The Circle of Life

In any debacle that we will face, be it AIDS (Elton’s favorite charity) and the new plague, cancer, climate change or simply the lack of courage to face our issues, the rhapsode Elton will lead us onward with his music. Before the finale, the economic pyramid of Philippine society was caught by the led lights crisscrossing the arena — a flickering kaleidoscope of gadgets swaying to his last song — from the high-end tablets of the haves to the Jurassic non-android mobiles of the almost have-nots. But across the great divide, Captain Fantastic, marching in the Circle of Life, bellowed a timely wish: “May your dreams come true.”