Elton John‘s headline set at Glastonbury 2023 broke viewing figures on the BBC, with millions watching across the UK. The legendary singer-songwriter played what seems to be his last ever UK show on Worthy Farm, bringing a hit-packed set to one of the biggest crowds the Pyramid Stage has ever seen.
Now, according to overnights.tv the set was watched by 7.3 million viewers across the BBC, three times that which saw Paul McCartney headline last year and the most-viewed set on television in the festival’s history.
According to a new Spotify round-up of this year’s Glastonbury tracks and artists streams of John’s songs increased 294 per cent in the UK in the hour after his career- spanning headline set on the Pyramid Stage.
If I was to be critical and that will sound harsh against a 76 year old, but I found the lyrics hard to understand at times, he can’t hit the high notes anymore, he was definitely reading the words at some points and unfortunately his knees have gone making him incapable of moving around.
And before you say it, yes I wish I had at least 1% of his talent. On a positive note he is an amazing piano player, he was ably backed by a fabulous band and he did his full repertoire starting with Pinball Wizard and 20 songs later he finished on Rocketman. Every song was loudly sung by the enormous crowd which goes to show how those songs have stood the tests of time.
I thought it was a shame that Dua Lipa couldn’t turn up for their smash hit Cold Heart what else more important could she have been doing? It left Elton singing to a backing track and the crowd filling in the Dua bits.
I fell asleep watching Sundays performance and so watched again on catch up on Monday and dually fell asleep again! Nothing to do with the concert, it’s just my age telling me to watch it in the day time.
Waterford Football Club
Born Reginald Kenneth Dwight in 1947 he certainly has packed a lot into his career. Funnily enough this week in 1977 he became Chairman of Watford Football Club. The highlight I imagine would have been making the 1984 FA Cup Final which they unfortunately lost 2-0 to Everton. In the summer of that year Watford played in the Palma Cup against Real Mallorca at the old Luis Sitjar stadium. Interestingly the previous season Real Mallorca had paid Watford £250,000 to sign Northern Ireland International Gerry Armstrong. In the 1982 World Cup Finals Gerry had scored probably one of Northern Irelands most famous goals against Spain to knock them out of their home tournament. When I interviewed Gerry a few years ago he said apart from the Mallorca fans he used to get pelters everywhere he went for scoring that goal.
Now Elton himself played on the new Real Mallorca pitch in 2010. Not kicking a ball but playing a concert to a packed audience. It was a joint concert with the legendary Italian opera singer Andrea Bocelli. It was amazing to see two such diverse legends of the music world on the same stage.
His life story was made into biopic film in 2019 with Taron Egerton playing Elton. I’d heard that it wasn’t as good as the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody but after seeing it I had to disagree. In fact I actually thought it was better.
Also performing at Glastonbury and hopefully following in Elton’s footsteps was my nephew Ollie Richardson. Ollie is a drummer in a band called The Velvet Fuzz and they’ve been gigging around London. One of the organisers of the smaller stages saw the boys and invited them down to play. They spent the whole week down there and he said, ‘it was mental, the whole experience was a mad one. We played really well and learned a lot.’
I’ll keep an eye on the boys progress.
Finally a shoutout for my youngest sons football team CD San Francisco Infantil. They played in the Mallorca International Cup organised by Vicente del Bosque over last weekend. After finishing top of their group they won their Semi final 4-0 and in a tense final they ran out 1-0 winners against La Salle. A team that they hadn’t beaten in the regular season. His first trophy and I hope not his last.
Take care everybody and enjoy your weekend!