Elton John has officially completed his ‘Farewell Yellow Brick Road’ world tour in Stockholm, after 333 shows and nearly five years.
Performing in the city’s Tele2 Arena on Saturday night (July 8), John’s final song of the night – and, by extension, the entire tour – was the tour’s semi-title track, ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’. Before performing the song, Sir Elton gave a final speech to the reported 45,000 people in attendance to thank them for their support across his entire career.
“I’ve had the most wonderful career… beyond belief,” said John (via Rolling Stone). “Fifty years of pure joy playing music… how lucky am I? I wouldn’t be sitting here… it wasn’t for you. You bought the singles, the CDs, the albums, the cassettes… [and] more importantly, you bought the tickets to the shows. You know how much I love to play live. It’s been my lifeblood to play for you guys. You’ve been absolutely magnificent.”
Watch the full speech and final song performance below:
‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ was originally released in 1973, and served as both the second single and title title track of John’s seventh studio album. The song reached the top ten on the singles chart in the UK, the US, Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway and South Africa.
Per setlist.fm, John has performed the song live approximately 1475 times over the last 50 years. It has served as the set closer for nearly every performance on the ‘Farewell Yellow Brick Road’ tour, which originally began in September 2018 at the PPL Center in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The tour continued across North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand up to March 2020, after which the tour was postponed for almost two years on account of both the COVID-19 pandemic and a hip injury that required John to undergo an operation in order to recover from.
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The tour resumed in January 2022 at the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans, and would see John back on the road consistently for the next 18 months. His final show in the UK took place as the headliner of Glastonbury, where he was joined by guests such as Brandon Flowers and Rina Sawayama. In May 2023, the tour was officially recognised as the highest-grossing world tour of all time.