Elton John: Seventy years old and still very young

Elton John in Elton John: Never Too Late - Photo: Disney+

He sang: "I'm still standing here, after all these years. Do you know that I'm still standing here stronger than ever?".

Elton John's final performance

If we only listen and not look, we would think that this was a performance from a few decades ago when he was young, first came to America and conquered America. However, more than anyone, Elton John knows that time is starting to count, it is time for him to truly "say goodbye to the yellow brick road".

Elton John - Never Too Late - Trailer

The documentary Elton John: Never Too Late , co-directed by his life partner David Furnish and veteran documentary filmmaker RJ Cutlin, is a journey through space and time, telling how Elton John got there, his final show.

How did little Reginald Kenneth Dwight, who looked nothing like a rock star like John Lennon or Mick Jagger, a boy who played her piano, finally play his last notes in a packed stadium, closing a great career.

Elton John has an eye infection - Photo: Variety

Is there anything new in the film? Actually, nothing. For Sir Elton fans, much of what is told in the film has been told before.

It was a lonely childhood where his only friend was the private world in his mind that music took him to, the days when he would play the piano whenever his parents argued with each other.

Madonna and Elton John make up after nearly two decades of discord - Photo: Stereogum

It was a chance encounter with Bernie Taupin through a newspaper advertisement looking for a musician, which led to a strange pair of creative soulmates: the songwriter, the lyricist, each working independently of the other, and then when combined, suddenly creating a masterpiece.

It was the humble days when they lived together in a bunk bed room. It was the memories of old friends, memories of John Lennon when the two Johns wrote a song together and it was Elton John who got the reclusive John Lennon to appear on stage for the last time in his life.

These were the relationships that took Elton to the heights and depths, the constant struggles when at the peak of glory nothing could excite him anymore and he was immersed in alcohol and drugs.

Those stories, which are known, painful, and talked about over and over again, when told interwoven with the current timeline when Elton John is "reborn" in a new, happy life, preparing for his final performance at the very place where his legend began, Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, become extremely touching.

A man who has gone through all the brightest and darkest moments, and is still there in the end, still believing in love, in tomorrow, in hope.

What a wonderful life!

One of his early hits, Your Song , which he sang at that concert, included the line: "Life is wonderful while you're still alive in the world."

This year, the song turns 55 years old. Many details in the song are no longer true.

But if in his youth he sang that song with the certainty of a dreamy artist, now he sings it with the absolute affirmation of someone who has experienced everything to prove the words: how wonderful life is.

Elton John is an English pianist, singer-songwriter and composer - Photo: Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters

And in a beautiful love song to life that he co-wrote with Brandi Carlile for the film, Never Too Late , which was nominated for Best Original Song at the 2025 Oscars, he does not hesitate to sing: "It's never too late." Never too late to do what? "To reach for the moon."

Who else would have the authority to say such a thing without sounding contrived, other than Elton John, a man at an age where death could come at any moment?

He's not being ridiculously optimistic. He knows he's getting old and will have to stop his career to spend time with his children, and he even imagines: "We'll dance in the cemetery." But even so, Elton sings, we can still "keep our balloons."

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Source: https://tuoitre.vn/elton-john-bay-muoi-tuoi-van-con-xuan-lam-20250413082302581.htm