Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour
Currently, Elton John is on the Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour which is the last world tour that he plans to do before retiring. The tour started in September of 2018 and is set to end in 2023 after over three hundred performances in five continents.
The Journey So Far
The Farewell tour began on September 8, 2018, with two concerts at the PPL Center in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He performed three nights at New York’s Madison Square Garden shortly after this; it was his 65th time performing at the famous arena in New York City. He performed 157 shows in 2019, traveling from Las Vegas to Moscow and other world corners.
2020 was another highly anticipated year on the road before the coronavirus outbreak stopped the live concert business in March. Before the pandemic started to show its ugly face and the world was forced into lockdowns in early 2020, Elton was able to perform a couple of shows in Australia. Following about a year of touring, he came back in a blaze in early January in New Orleans.
He used most of 2021 to perform dates that were rescheduled in Europe and returned to the US for a fall tour. He performed eighteen arena shows in November and December: two in Houston, three in Chicago, and six in LA at Dodger Stadium. The run of those makeup dates finished just as 2022 entered the calendar.
The 2022 Tour and What Lies in the Future
The Yellow Brick Road farewell tour was resumed in January 2022 with the much-awaited tour across Australia and New Zealand. Elton performed two dozen shows across the arenas in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, and many others.
After the Australian tour, Elton went back on the road for another North American tour that commenced in mid-April. Presenting dates are till early August with venues such as Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, Oakland Arena, Rogers Centre in Toronto, Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, Nissan Stadium in Nashville, and many more.
Following is a list of more European festivals in 2022, as well as the headline shows scheduled for June through August. Stops are planned in Finland, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, Ireland, Norway, Netherlands, and Germany before Elton wraps up his touring year for 2022 with a grand finale at Hyde Park London on September 3.
2023 Finishing Touches
In its current state, Elton still has more than a hundred performances to complete on his never-ending Farewell tour. He will have the European tour again in spring 2023 with shows planned in Manchester and Birmingham in England and Paris, Lyon, and Marseille in France. The summer 2023 schedule then has him returning to Canada for a couple of weeks.
Regarding the yet unabated finale, it is still unclear when Elton will come back to North America – most likely it will happen in autumn 2023 to settle all the scores finally. The grand world tour will come to an end after more than 300 performances in five years.
A Lasting Legacy
Not only has the Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour been setting records for ticket sales at venues all around the world; but it has also played an essential role in reinforcing Elton John’s iconic stature. It has seen him come on stage and deliver exhilarating career-defining shows that included the greatest hits at every show. Of course, it is now as obvious as the daylight that Elton and his magnificent band are enjoying every tour, kissing the road, and letting the curtains fall on a grand note.
By the end of the Phenomenal tour in 2023, Elton John will have performed more than 4000 concerts in 6 different decades. From his debut performance in LA in 1970 as a budding star at Troubadour to commanding an attendance of 65000 plus for the Farewell tour in his seventies. .. It is, in fact, undoubtedly one of the greatest careers ever filled with numerous legendary moments.
It is never a certainty that the end will stick for a band as active as Elton still is now that he is in his fifties and that this is their fourth concert indicates that they are an active touring band. But if this is his last tour and his last waltz through the world, he could not be writing a more tragic and dramatic ending. Catch him live one last time if you still can for a rousing career retrospective from one of music’s greatest showmen ever.
