Fans flock to Elton John's final farewell show
Emotional but excited fans from around the globe flocked on Saturday to Elton John's final farewell concert, bringing the curtain down on more than 50 years of live performances. The 76-year-old singer and songwriter whose hits include "Rocket Man", "Your Song" and "Candle In The Wind" was playing the final gig of his last-ever tour in the Swedish capital, Stockholm. Hours before the performance was due to begin at 8:00 pm local time (1800 GMT), fans had already started arriving at the Tele2 Arena, bracing for what was expected to be an emotional end to the superstar's glittering live career. "It's going to be very emotional tonight," said Kate Bugaj, 25, a Polish student who admitted she'd delayed her Masters exams to follow her musical hero's tour. Describing herself as a "huge fan", she said it all began the first time she watched "The Lion King", the 1994 Walt Disney film which gave John one of his two Oscar music wins. Fifty-year-old Jeanie Kincer travelled from Kentucky in the United States for the show. "I wanted to be here for the end because I was too young to be here in the beginning," she said. To mark the occasion, she was dressed in red shorts with braces and a red, yellow and brown T-shirt – almost the exact same outfit John wore for his first concert in Stockholm in 1971. For Sweden's daily Expressen, the final show marks "an important chapter in the history of rock 'n' roll which is about to end." Another fan Hans Christian, from Denmark, said he was "curious" to see if special guests would join John for the last performance. Elton John has been winding down his decades-long live career with a global farewell tour. He played his last concerts in the United States in May and brought the curtain down on Britain's legendary annual Glastonbury Festival last month. The "Farewell Yellow Brick Road" tour began in 2018 but was postponed several times due to the pandemic and a hip injury suffered by John. Overall, the tour will have seen him perform in front of 6.25 million fans. (AFP)