When Elton John stepped out at Glastonbury he appeared to hundreds of thousands in the expansive crowd as distant and as blinding as the sun. Dressed in a maximum-visibility monochrome suit (in the style of the Queen, or Hillary Clinton) of baggy gold blazer, gold trousers and gold trainers, he shone in the evening light. You had to squint to bring him into focus. A large and dense mass of people had been pulled into his orbit over the preceding hour, eager to catch a glimpse of a star’s last burst of heat and light.
He opened with fireworks, and a string of slick, swaggering tracks from the early Seventies: “Pinball Wizard”, “The Bitch Is Back” (pointing his finger at the crowd as he sang “I’m better than you”) and the mighty, electric “Bennie and the Jets”, one of few songs that can provoke a communal groan of pleasure with just one decisively played chord. John is at his best in this playful, exhilarated mode, hands flying up and down the keys. A triumphant take on “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” was accompanied by a montage of exaggerated fight sequences from films, and a gleeful CGI clip of John sailing through the air to kick an opponent; “I’m Still Standing” came with footage of him in everything from Spitting Image to The Simpsons. This was Elton John at his most fun, an unapologetic celebration of his camp side.
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