Elton John - Great Amphitheatre, Ephesus, Turkey, 7-17-2001

Recently, guest poster Fabio from Rio posted a couple of albums of the Carpenters stripped down to just piano and lead vocals. That led to a commenter suggesting that a similar album or albums be made for Elton John. That, in turn, got me thinking about how much music is available that just features John and his piano. It turns out not much. But I did find this 2001 concert, with excellent sound quality.

The concert was originally done for a pay-per-view service back in 2001. Then, in 2020, during the pandemic, John briefly released it on YouTube as part of a series of concerts he posted there to make up for the fact that he couldn't go on tour that year. Here's some of the promotional description from that 2020 posting: 

"Elton walks on to the oldest stage he has ever played (built circa 200 B.C.) and invites the audience to join him in one of the most intimate performances he has ever given. Everything about this concert is the opposite of what most people think of when they bring Elton to mind: his wardrobe is sedate, his staging virtually non-existent, no wild spectacles or platform shoes... Nor, for that matter, a band – just the piano player and his instrument, revealing in sublime simplicity that it’s really all about the songs."

Apparently, the people behind the pay-per-view idea wanted a dramatic setting for the concert, similar to Pink Floyd playing in the ancient Pompeii amphitheater in 1972. The Ephesus amphitheatre was built by the ancient Greeks. At its peak, it held about 25,000 people. In recent decades, it has been used for some concerts again. Many stars have performed there, including Diana Ross, Joan Baez, Chris de Burgh, Bryan Adams, Sting, Julio Iglesias, and Luciano Pavarotti, as well as classical concerts. But parts of it were ruined. so these modern concerts only hold about 2,500 people. In 2018, it was closed for three years to repair damage from some of these concerts. 

As far as I can tell, John hasn't performed in a solo format very often, especially considering how often he has performed. He's given well over 4,000 concerts in his long career, more than nearly any other big star, except for Willie Nelson, and B.B. King. In all that time, he only did one solo tour, in 1999. He's also done occasional solo concerts, usually for special events, like charity benefits. This was the only solo concert he did in 2001.

At the time of this concert, his album "Songs from the West Coast" was going to be released in a few months. He played one song from it, "This Train Don't Stop There Anymore." But mostly he stuck to his best known songs.

This album is an hour and 58 minutes long. 

01 Your Song (Elton John)
02 talk (Elton John)
03 Someone Saved My Life Tonight (Elton John)
04 Daniel (Elton John)
05 talk (Elton John)
06 Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters (Elton John)
07 Honky Cat (Elton John)
08 Rocket Man [I Think It's Going to Be a Long, Long Time] (Elton John)
09 talk (Elton John)
10 Philadelphia Freedom (Elton John)
11 Nikita (Elton John)
12 talk (Elton John)
13 Sacrifice (Elton John)
14 talk (Elton John)
15 Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word (Elton John)
16 I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues (Elton John)
17 talk (Elton John)
18 This Train Don't Stop There Anymore (Elton John)
19 talk (Elton John)
20 Burn Down the Mission (Elton John)
21 The One (Elton John)
22 Blue Eyes (Elton John)
23 I'm Still Standing (Elton John)
24 Crocodile Rock (Elton John)
25 Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me (Elton John)
26 talk (Elton John)
27 Circle of Life (Elton John)
28 talk (Elton John)
29 Candle in the Wind (Elton John)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/GDzBMzci

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/uUGfdE5hLOzPUXG/file

The cover image is from this exact concert. I wanted a wide view that showed some of the Roman ruins in the background.

Elton John - Cover Versions, Volume 6: 2008-2017

Here's the sixth and last album in a series of albums of cover versions by Elton John. I had started posted this series back in 2023, but I stopped for a couple of years due to problems with the copyright police. But they seem to be going easy on me lately, so I'm finally finishing off the series.

Only four of the songs here are unreleased. "Back in the U.S.S.R." and "Birthday" are from a bootleg of a joint concert John did with Billy Joel in 2009. (He's done a lot of those over the years.) Unfortunately, the sound quality of those two songs are lower than the rest, despite my best efforts to make some audio editing improvements. "Streets of Philadelphia" is from a 2013 MusiCares tribute concert to Bruce Springsteen that I've posted in full on this blog. "Gravity," a duet with Sara Bareilles, is from a 2014 concert.

Pretty much all the other songs are from John's appearances on albums by other musical acts. Check the mp3 tags for more details. The one exception is "I Love You All the Time," which was released as an A-side in 2016.

This is probably going to be the last album in this series because, rather surprisingly, I can't find any good cover versions he did after 2017. Mind you, he's done lots of songs on his studio albums, but these albums only collect covers that aren't the versions from his studio albums. If anyone knows of covers I've missed from this time period, or after, let me know and I'll probably add them in to this album. 

This album is 45 minutes long. 

01 Joseph, Better You than Me (Killers, Elton John & Neil Tennant)
02 Back in the U.S.S.R (Elton John & Billy Joel)
03 Birthday (Elton John & Billy Joel)
04 Snowed In at Wheeler Street (Kate Bush & Elton John)
05 Oh Well, Part 1 (2Cellos & Elton John)
06 Streets of Philadelphia (Elton John with Raphael Saadiq)
07 The Tracks of My Tears (Smokey Robinson & Elton John)
08 Gravity (Sara Bareilles & Elton John)
09 I Love You All the Time (Elton John)
10 Where Do the Guilty Go (Elton John & Frankie Miller)
11 Alone Again, Naturally (Pet Shop Boys & Elton John)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/5co2GBbS

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/MyoGx6JEfwTVUTa/file

The cover image is from a concert at the Manchester Evening News Arena, in Manchester, Britain, on December 20, 2008.

Elton John - Cover Versions, Volume 5: 2002-2007

In 2023 and 2024, I posted four volumes collecting all the cover versions performed by Elton John that I could find. However, I stopped this series before finishing it because I ran into copyright issues with the fourth volume. But I've had way less of those issues in recent months, so I'd going to try to post the fifth volume. If that works out, the sixth and final volume will follow. But you might want to grab this quickly, just in case.

Tracks 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, and 8 are all unreleased, and from concerts. Out of those, tracks 2 and 3 are from a CMT Crossroads episode with Ryan Adams. Track 9 was also performed live, but it's from a tribute album to Luther Vandross. For all these live songs, I used the MVSEP program to wipe the cheering, so those songs would fit with the studio tracks.

That leaves the studio tracks, all of which are released. Those are from a mix of movie soundtracks, tribute albums, and duets done on albums by other musical acts. If you want more details, please look at the mp3 tags for the individual songs. Like always, I include the source info for each song on every album I post. 

By the way, some of the links in the previous volumes in this series weren't working, but I just replaced them with new links. 

This album is 48 minutes long.

01 Oh My Sweet Carolina (Elton John)
02 Firecracker (Elton John & Ryan Adams)
03 La Cienega Just Smiled (Elton John & Ryan Adams)
04 Makin' Whoopee (Elton John)
05 Moon River (Elton John)
06 Nighttime Is the Right Time (Elton John & Mary J. Blige)
07 Born to Lose (Elton John)
08 Rock This House (B. B. King & Elton John)
09 Anyone Who Had a Heart (Elton John & Luther Vandross)
10 Dreamland (Bruce Hornsby & Elton John)
11 Where We Both Say Goodbye (Catherine Britt & Elton John)
12 Rags to Riches (Tony Bennett & Elton John)
13 Blueberry Hill (Elton John) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/PWY7tZVF

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Tk5ynn7dYAJmOmv/file

The cover photo is from a concert at Wembley Arena, in London, on December 5, 2003. 

Various Artists - Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, Waldorf Astoria, New York City, 1-20-1988

Yesterday (January 28, 2026), Bruce Springsteen dropped a new song about the current problems with ICE in Minneapolis, called "Streets of Minneapolis." It's good to see a protest song that addresses current issues, since there haven't been many of those in recent years. (He wrote, recorded, and released it in four days!) Here's a link, if you haven't heard it already:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWKSoxG1K7w 

Anyway, I wanted to post something from Springsteen after hearing that inspiring song. However, some recent computer problems I've been having have flared up again, which means I currently can't use Photoshop, which in turn means I can't make new album covers until that's fixed. So I looked around to see if I had some Springsteen-related album ready to go, cover and all. Luckily, I did. (I have soooo many albums I could post tomorrow, if only I had the time to finish them off. Sigh!) This one doesn't have a ton of Springsteen content, but it's a really interesting (thought short) concert. So, in a way, my current computer issues have an upside in that they're getting me to finally post this.

Now, finally, to the music. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame started in the early 1980s. In 1986, they had their first induction ceremony, complete with a short concert featuring some of the inductees and other famous musicians. This has become a yearly tradition. Some concerts have been a lot more memorable than others. In my opinion, the ones from 1988 and 1989 were the most interesting, with the biggest star power. I haven't collected the others (though I very may well do so with some of them in the future), but I've made albums of those two. This is the 1988 one.

1988 was a really big year for the Hall of Fame, because their rule is that artists are only eligible for induction 25 years after their first record (be it a single or album). And when they were making their decisions in 1987 for this ceremony, that meant they were looking at the artists who put out their first records in 1962. It just so happens that was the first year of recordings for the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Beach Boys! Those are three of the biggest and most influential musical acts of all time. The Drifters and the Supremes were inducted that year as well, plus some non-performers, like Berry Gordy.

The induction ceremony had a lot of intrigue and drama in it. The Beatles are arguably the biggest (and best, IMHO!) musical act ever, so they were the main focus here, even overshadowing Dylan and the other very big names. Since John Lennon was assassinated in 1980, he was represented by his wife Yoko Ono, and his sons Julian Lennon and Sean Lennon, and each of them gave short speeches. Ex-Beatles George Harrison and Ringo Starr were there, and also gave speeches. 

However, the big no-show was Paul McCartney. He was in the middle of a lawsuit still connected to the break-up of the band back in 1970, so he felt he couldn't attend due to that. He put out a statement: "I was keen to go to and pick up my award, but after 20 years the Beatles still have some business differences which I had hoped would have been settled by now. Unfortunately, they haven't been [settled], so I would feel like a complete hypocrite waving and smiling with [Harrison and Starr] at a fake reunion." 

It turns out the lawsuit, which involved the division of profits from record sales, was settled a year later. So that was unfortunate timing as far as this concert goes. But at least that opened the door to the "Anthology" collaboration between the ex-Beatles a few years later.

Normally, when I post albums like this, I skip long speeches and focus on the music. But I'm making an exception here. I didn't include all the induction speeches, but I thought the ones relating to the induction of the Beatles and Dylan were important enough to include. They're all together at the beginning of this album, and they are about 19 minutes long in total. If you don't want to hear them, or just hear them once or twice, there's still about 40 minutes of music after that.

A big element of the drama involved Mike Love, a member of the Beach Boys. Love is one of the most notorious assholes in rock and roll, something I've discussed in other posts. But he really outdid himself this time. He appeared to be drunk, and used his induction speech to insult various famous musicians in the audience. This led to a funny quip from Dylan during his acceptance speech: when he listed people he wanted to thank, he thanked Love for not mentioning him in his speech!

Anyway, there are lots of interesting stories about what happened during this event. But instead of trying to summarize them all here, I'll just point out to an article from Rolling Stone Magazine that does a good job:

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 

I've also posted a text file in the download zip that has the text to that article.

Regarding the music here, everything was professionally recorded, so the sound quality is excellent. However, I found the lead vocals were rather low in most of the songs, so I boosted that up with the help of the MVSEP program. Also, there was a problem in the performance of "Stop in the Name of Love." Mary Wilson of the Supremes was asked to sing the song (since Diana Ross was another prominent no show). But it was clear for this songs, as well as all the other songs, that there hadn't been any practice beforehand, so everyone was just winging it. For the first chorus at the start of the song, Wilson sang the song in one key, while the band (or at least most of it) played in another key. That sounds pretty painful to my ears. So I erased that, and patched in a chorus from later in the song. That's why that one song has "[Edit]" in its title.

Oh, also, during all the talking between songs, where band leader Paul Shaffer was trying to direct things, one or more people on stage kept playing guitar so loudly that it nearly drowned out what anyone was saying. So for most of those tracks, I used MVSEP to lower the volume of the guitar enough to make the talking more audible.  

The songs "I Saw Her Standing There" and "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" were officially released on the compilation album "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Volume 1: 1986-1991." Everything else here remains unreleased.

By the way, when it comes to the song list below, I only listed the name of the main lead singers. For all the songs, there was one of the most amazing gatherings of musical talent ever seen on one stage together. But it's next to impossible to figure out who was on stage doing what, other than the lead vocals. So that's why I kept the credits in the titles relatively simple. 

However, just as one example, it was Jeff Beck who started playing the "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" riff that led to that song being played, right when it seemed everyone was leaving the stage. Some of the others who were on stage at least part of the time but don't get mentioned in the song titles include: Neil Young, Paul Simon, Johnny Moore, Joe Blunt, Clyde Brown, Tom Fogerty, Les Paul, Arlo Guthrie, Yoko Ono, Ringo Starr, Little Richard, Peter Wolf,  Dave Edmunds, Jeff Lynne, Julian Lennon, Sean Lennon, Little Steven, and Clarence Clemons.  

This album is an hour and six minutes long. 

01 talk (Mick Jagger)
02 talk (Ringo Starr)
03 talk (George Harrison)
04 talk (Yoko Ono)
05 talk (Julian Lennon)
06 talk (Sean Lennon)
07 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
08 talk (Bob Dylan)
09 Twist and Shout (Johnny Moore)
10 All Along the Watchtower (Bob Dylan with George Harrison)
11 talk (Paul Shaffer)
12 I Saw Her Standing There (Billy Joel & Bruce Springsteen)
13 talk (Paul Shaffer)
14 Stand by Me (Ben E. King & Julian Lennon)
15 talk (Paul Shaffer)
16 Stop in the Name of Love [Edit] (Mary Wilson)
17 talk (Paul Shaffer)
18 Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On - Hound Dog - Honey Hush (Elton John)
19 talk (Paul Shaffer)
20 Barbara Ann (Beach Boys)
21 talk (Paul Shaffer & John Fogerty)
22 Born on the Bayou (John Fogerty with Bruce Springsteen)
23 talk (Paul Shaffer & John Fogerty)
24 Like a Rolling Stone (Bob Dylan with Bruce Springsteen)
25 talk (Paul Shaffer)
26 [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction (Mick Jagger with Bruce Springsteen)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/SpmdHRju

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/yv9ChPKPJqpFcYT/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. From right to left: Bob Dylan, George Harrison, and Mick Jagger.

Various Artists- MusiCares Tribute to Neil Young, Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, CA, 1-29-2010

So far, I've posted three MusiCares tribute concerts. I recently got a request to post this one honoring Neil Young sooner rather than later, so here it is. I still have five more to post after this, so look for those eventually as well.

Tons of talented stars showed up to sing their favorite Neil Young songs. There's a lot of great music here. Unfortunately, there's also some that's missing. This comes from a DVD of the event. Generally speaking, only a small crowd of the rich and famous attend these MusiCares concerts, so bootlegs of them are very rare. We know from media accounts that three songs were performed that weren't included on the DVD. Those are:

"Long May You Run" by Stephen Stills & Sheryl Crow 
"Comes a Time" by Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin & Lucinda Williams
"A Man Needs a Maid" by Red Hot Chili Peppers

If anyone has any of those so I can add them, please let me know. I found a video of the Red Hot Chili Peppers song recorded on a cell phone and posted on YouTube, but the sound quality is terrible. I'm guessing a lot of the banter between songs was cut out as well. Actor Jack Black was the emcee, but he's not really heard at all in the recording.

Typically, the person honored in these tributes performs a couple of songs at the end of the concert. But while Neil Young was there, and gave a short speech, it seems he didn't perform any songs. 

Here's a good account of the concert by someone who attended:

https://tinnitist.com/2023/08/11/back-stories-neil-youngs-musicares-tribute-jan-29-2010/

And Rolling Stone Magazine published a bunch of photos from it, here:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/musicares-person-of-the-year-tribute-to-neil-young-210831/red-hot-chili-peppers-2-19005/

This album is an hour and eight minutes long.

01 Down by the River (John Mellencamp & T-Bone Burnett)
02 Mr. Soul (Ozomatli)
03 Don't Let It Bring You Down (Jackson Browne)
04 Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Lady Antebellum)
05 Tell Me Why (Norah Jones)
06 Broken Arrow (Wilco)
07 Harvest Moon (Josh Groban)
08 Revolution Blues (Everest)
09 Cinnamon Girl (Dierks Bentley & Booker T. Jones)
10 Ohio (Ben Harper)
11 Rockin' in the Free World (Keith Urban, John Fogerty & Booker T. Jones)
12 The Losing End [When You're On] (Elvis Costello)
13 Lotta Love (Jason Mraz & Shawn Colvin)
14 The Needle and the Damage Done (Dave Matthews)
15 Heart of Gold (James Taylor)
16 Helpless (Elton John, Leon Russell, Neko Case & Sheryl Crow)
17 Human Highway (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
18 talk (Neil Young)
19 Rockin' in the Free World [Reprise] (Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/BNxSXgS9

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/UhnFSv0eArgOnvZ/file

The cover is from this exact concert. From left to right: Dave Matthews, Jason Mraz, Emmylou Harris, Elvis Costello, Shawn Colvin, and James Taylor.

Various Artists - Music for Montserrat, Royal Albert Hall, London, Britain, 9-15-1997

Here's a really interesting benefit concert from 1997. Just look at the list of big stars involved: Carl Perkins, Midge Ure, Phil Collins, Jimmy Buffett, Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Sting, Elton John, and Paul McCartney. Most of them performed two or three songs together, and all the big names got together with McCartney to sing some of his songs for the finale. All that, and the sound quality is excellent.

Montserrat is a small island in the Caribbean Sea, and it's still a colony of Britain. In 1979, George Martin, best known as the producer for nearly all the Beatles records, financed the building of a recording studio there. From 1979 to 1989, about 70 albums were recorded there, because musicians enjoyed recording in a beautiful, exotic locale. Many of them were by very big stars, such as "Synchronicity" by the Police and "Brothers in Arms" by Dire Straits.   

Unfortunately, in 1989, the Category Four hurricane Hugo hit Montserrat. It destroyed 90 percent of all buildings on the island, including Martin's recording studio. The studio wasn't rebuilt. Then, in 1995, the main volcano on the island, Soufriere Hills volcano, erupted. The island was basically completely devastated again. Martin then led the effort to stage this benefit concert. All the musicians involved recorded albums on Montserrat. Ultimately, about a million and half British pounds were raised. Later, limited edition lithographs signed by McCartney and Martin raised another million and a half pounds. This money went to help people reconstruct their homes, as well as the building of a new cultural center for the island. 

Here's the Wikipedia entry about this concert, if you want to know more: 

Music for Montserrat - Wikipedia  

For this concert, Martin decided that less was more. He even mentioned in his banter during the concert that he turned down many musical acts who wanted to take part. The focus was just on the biggest stars. One exception was Arrow. He only had one minor hit in 1982, in Britain, "Hot Hot Hot." But he is Montserratian, so it made sense he would be involved. Also, "Hot Hot Hot" went on to be a bigger hit by Buster Poindexter in 1987. 

This concert has been released on DVD, but not in any audio format. So I started with the DVD, converting it to audio format then breaking it into mp3s. "Hot Hot Hot," plus "Volcano" by Jimmy Buffett and "Dancing with Tears in My Eyes" by Midge Ure, were not on the DVD. But luckily I found out they were performed by reading the Wikipedia entry about the concert. Then I found YouTube videos of them. Those had very good sound quality, because they were broadcast on TV. 

In addition to adding some missing songs, I cut some things. Mostly, I cut some interviews that were interspersed between the songs in the DVD. Martin plus some of the big stars like McCartney and Sting were interviewed. It's interesting stuff, but it wasn't part of the concert, so it got the axe. If you want to see that, check out the DVD.

Probably the highlight of the concert was McCartney's set at the end. As he said in the interview which I cut out, he had met the other stars in this concert many times over the years. However, he rarely actually played music with any of them. For instance, he said the last time he played with Clapton was when Clapton guested on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" on the White Album by the Beatles in 1968. But McCartney practiced with Phil Collins, Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, and Elton John, and really collaborated with tracks 42 to 46 at the end here.

One final note. This was the last major public appearance for Carl Perkins. He was in fine health at the time of this concert. But he died after a series of strokes in January 1998, at the age of 65. 

This album is two hours and 15 minutes long.

01 talk (George Martin)
02 talk (Carl Perkins)
03 Blue Suede Shoes (Carl Perkins)
04 talk (emcee)
05 talk (Midge Ure)
06 Dancing with Tears in My Eyes (Midge Ure)
07 Vienna (Midge Ure)
08 talk (George Martin)
09 talk (Phil Collins)
10 In the Air Tonight (Phil Collins)
11 Take Me Home (Phil Collins with Ray Cooper)
12 talk (Arrow)
13 Hot Hot Hot (Arrow)
14 talk (Jimmy Buffett)
15 Volcano (Jimmy Buffett)
16 talk (Phil Collins)
17 talk (Mark Knopfler)
18 Going Home [Theme from Local Hero] [Instrumental] (Mark Knopfler)
19 talk (Mark Knopfler)
20 Brothers in Arms (Mark Knopfler with Guy Fletcher)
21 talk (Mark Knopfler)
22 Money for Nothing (Mark Knopfler with Sting, Phil Collins, Eric Clapton & Ray Cooper)
23 talk (Phil Collins)
24 Message in a Bottle (Sting)
25 Fields of Gold (Sting)
26 Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic (Sting)
27 talk (George Martin)
28 talk (Elton John)
29 Your Song (Elton John)
30 talk (Elton John)
31 Live like Horses (Elton John)
32 Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me (Elton John)
33 talk (Carl Perkins)
34 Broken Hearted (Eric Clapton)
35 Layla (Eric Clapton with Mark Knopfler)
36 talk (Eric Clapton)
37 Same Old Blues (Eric Clapton with Mark Knopfler & Phil Collins)
38 talk (George Martin)
39 talk (Paul McCartney)
40 Yesterday (Paul McCartney)
41 talk (Paul McCartney)
42 Golden Slumbers (Paul McCartney with Phil Collins, Mark Knopfler & Eric Clapton)
43 Carry That Weight - The End (Paul McCartney with Phil Collins, Mark Knopfler & Eric Clapton)
44 talk (George Martin)
45 Hey Jude (Paul McCartney, Elton John & Everybody)
46 Kansas City - Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey (Paul McCartney & Everybody)
47 talk (Paul McCartney & George Martin) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/WN5He6az 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/rtae3vnAgivMIJf/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. From left to right: Carl Perkins, Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, and Paul McCartney. Sting is right behind Perkins, but all you can really see of him is his hand on the neck of a bass guitar. In the original photo, the neck of Sting's bass guitar went right over Knopfler's face. In my opinion, it kind of ruined the photo. But there were several photos no doubt taken minutes apart from each other from the same spot. I found one where Knopfler's face was fully visible and the bass guitar neck was lower, and I patched in just that part of the image, using Photoshop. I also used the Krea AI program to flesh out some of the detail.

Various Artists - MusiCares Tribute to Bruce Springsteen, Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, CA, 2-8-2013

A few days ago, I got a request to post the MusiCares tribute concert to Bruce Springsteen. I'm happy to do so, because I've been meaning to post more of these MusiCares concerts soon anyway. So here you are.

MusiCares has been holding annual tribute concerts since 1991. They cleverly have these concerts in Los Angeles, where the Grammy Awards take place, and hold them only a couple of days apart from the Grammies. That way, many musical stars are in town and able to participate. I've only posted one such album so far, the tribute to Brian Wilson in 2005. But I have seven more to post after this. Thus, today I've created a MusiCares Tribute label to help you find them all.

Bruce Springsteen is a very big name in music, and lots of other big names paid tribute to him here, including Elton John, Neil Young, and Sting. This was a particularly long concert as far as these MusiCares tributes go. It's easily the longest of all the ones I've found so far, which is fitting since Springsteen concerts are known for their length. Springsteen himself played five songs at the end, which again is more than usual. 

This comes from a DVD. It hasn't been released on any audio format. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is two hours and 16 minutes long. 

01 talk (Jon Stewart)
02 Adam Raised a Cain (Alabama Shakes)
03 Because the Night (Patti Smith)
04 Atlantic City (Natalie Maines, Ben Harper & Charlie Musselwhite)
05 American Land (Ken Casey)
06 talk (Jon Stewart)
07 My City of Ruins (Mavis Staples & Zac Brown)
08 talk (Jon Stewart)
09 I'm on Fire (Mumford & Sons)
10 American Skin [41 Shots] (Jackson Browne & Tom Morello)
11 My Hometown (Emmylou Harris)
12 One Step Up (Kenny Chesney)
13 talk (Jon Stewart)
14 Streets of Philadelphia (Elton John & Raphael Saadiq)
15 Hungry Heart (Juanes)
16 Tougher than the Rest (Tim McGraw & Faith Hill)
17 The Ghost of Tom Joad (Tom Morello & Jim James)
18 talk (Jon Stewart)
19 Dancing in the Dark (John Legend)
20 Lonesome Day (Sting)
21 Born in the U.S.A. (Neil Young)
22 talk (Jon Stewart & Bruce Springsteen)
23 We Take Care of Our Own (Bruce Springsteen)
24 Death to My Hometown (Bruce Springsteen)
25 Thunder Road (Bruce Springsteen)
26 Born to Run (Bruce Springsteen)
27 Glory Days (Bruce Springsteen)
28 talk (Bruce Springsteen)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/fXM5GV8j

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/B96M5E8MDQxu5O4/file

For the cover, I wanted a photo of Springsteen from this exact concert. But of the photos I saw, he was generally alone or with just one other person nearby, so I went with a group photo from this concert instead. From right to left: Zac Brown, Emmylou Harris, Ben Harper, Jackson Browne and Patti Scialfa. There were some distracting things in the background, so I used Photoshop to remove them.

Various Artists - Gershwin Prize for Popular Song Honoring Elton John and Bernie Taupin, D.A.R. Constitution Hall, Washington, DC, 3-20-2024

Here's yet another concert celebrating another winner of the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. This time, it's actually two winners, because it celebrates the songwriting team of Elton John and Bernie Taupin. 

As I write this in September 2025, this is the most recent award concert in the series. I figure there won't be one in 2025, because they've always taken place earlier in the year than that. And while this award is given most every year, some years are skipped (though I don't know why).

In my opinion, this concert was treated as more of a big deal than many of the others for the award, due to the music of John and Taupin being so beloved. Once can see this by the caliber of the stars who sang the songs here, and compare that to who showed up for some of the other awards concerts. 

Unfortunately, however, note that Paul McCartney only sent some complimentary commentary via video, and didn't perform any songs. On the plus side, I'm impressed Joni Mitchell showed up. She hardly ever attends these sorts of things, especially in recent years with her considerable health problems.

Typically for these concerts, Elton John showed up and sang a couple of songs at the end of the concert. There's no evidence of the lyric writer Bernie Taupin being there if you just listen to this recording. But he shows up in numerous photos, including the one I used for the cover. So his role probably just got edited out. Not by me, though.

As is usual with these award concerts, the music here is unreleased. But the sound quality is excellent. 

This album is an hour and 32 minutes long. 

01 talk (emcee)
02 talk (Billy Porter)
03 Border Song (Annie Lennox)
04 Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word (Garth Brooks)
05 talk (Brandi Carlile)
06 Madman Across the Water (Brandi Carlile)
07 talk (Paul McCartney)
08 talk (Billy Porter)
09 Bennie and the Jets (Jacob Lusk)
10 I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues (Maren Morris)
11 The Bitch Is Back (Billy Porter)
12 talk (Charlie Puth)
13 Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me (Charlie Puth)
14 talk (Stevie Wonder)
15 talk (Billy Porter)
16 Funeral for a Friend - Love Lies Bleeding (Metallica)
17 Skyline Pigeon (Brandi Carlile)
18 Daniel (Garth Brooks)
19 talk (Brandi Carlile)
20 I'm Still Standing (Joni Mitchell with Annie Lennox & Brandi Carlile)
21 talk (Carla Hayden)
22 Mona Lisa and Mad Hatters (Elton John)
23 talk (Elton John)
24 Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting (Elton John)
25 talk (Carla Hayden)
26 talk (Elton John)
27 talk (Bernie Taupin)
28 talk (Elton John)
29 talk (Carla Hayden)
30 Your Song (Elton John)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/EyMoGH37

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/B4Rvyfn0wAHe7K2/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. It shows Elton John playing the piano while Bernie Taupin looks on. I moved Taupin closer to John so both of them could show up larger. He actually was resting on the piano, but much further down it.

Brandi Carlile & Elton John - An Evening with Elton John & Brandi Carlile, Palladium Theatre, London, Britain, 3-26-2025

I have to give kudos to Elton John for not resting on his many laurels despite being 78 years old as I write this in 2025. This year, he has a duet album with Brandi Carlile, called "Who Believes in Angels?" All the songs on it were jointly written by Carlile, John, John's songwriting partner Bernie Taupin, and the album's producer Andrew Watt. It's a pretty solid album in my opinion, and it's gotten good reviews. To promote the album, John and Carlile put on a concert which was broadcast on TV, which I'm posting here. 

This is a good compliment to that new album, because only four of the songs are from the album (tracks 3, 7, 13, and 15), while the others are the best known songs from John's and Carlile's earlier albums. More specifically, there are five covers of classic John songs and one Carlile song ("The Joke"), plus there's a cover of the country classic "Crazy." Carlile has been a huge fan of John's music for her whole career, so I'm sure she relished the opportunity to sing his songs with the man himself.

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 51 minutes long. 

01 I'm Still Standing (Elton John & Brandi Carlile)
02 talk (Elton John & Brandi Carlile)
03 Who Believes in Angels (Elton John & Brandi Carlile)
04 Your Song (Elton John & Brandi Carlile)
05 talk (Elton John & Brandi Carlile)
06 The Joke (Elton John & Brandi Carlile)
07 Swing for the Fences (Elton John & Brandi Carlile)
08 Tiny Dancer (Elton John & Brandi Carlile)
09 talk (Elton John & Brandi Carlile)
10 Crazy (Elton John & Brandi Carlile)
11 Bennie and the Jets (Elton John & Brandi Carlile)
12 talk (Elton John & Brandi Carlile)
13 You without Me (Elton John & Brandi Carlile)
14 Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me (Elton John & Brandi Carlile)
15 Little Richard's Bible (Elton John & Brandi Carlile) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/FiQsxC58

alternates:

https://bestfile.io/en/5NgJmDzJOoo4fB4/file

The cover image is a screenshot I took from a video of this exact concert. The font and color of the text at the top was taken from some promotional material for the concert.

Olivia Newton-John - Hollywood Nights (1980)

Here's a really interesting, entirely unreleased album by Olivia Newton-John. It's an American TV special she did in 1980 called "Hollywood Nights." It features some songs she never recorded on any album, as well as duets with an impressive bunch of guest stars: Cliff Richard, Elton John, Andy Gibb, Gene Kelly, Tina Turner, Peaches (of Peaches and Herb), Toni Tennille (of Captain and Tennille) & Karen Carpenter.

By 1980, Newton-John had become a worldwide superstar, mainly thanks due to her starring role in the 1978 movie "Grease." In 1980, she was due to have her second big starring movie role, in the movie "Xanadu." That movie would get released in August 1980, and it would turn out to be a flop, although the soundtrack by Newton-John and E.L.O. would be a big hit. This hour-long TV special was broadcast in April 1980, and seems to have served as kind of a warm-up for the movie. It featured one song that would be in the movie, "Suddenly," and also featured Newton-John duetting with Gene Kelly, as would happen in the movie, but with a different song. (Kelly, a star from a much earlier era, was 68 years old at the time.) They sang the classic song "Makin' Whoopee," but with totally different lyrics, an update called "Makin' Movies," which was all about the movie business.

But while there were those teasers about the upcoming movie, mostly the special was just a showcase for Newton-John's talent, and especially to sing duets with many musicians she liked. Probably the highlight is a version of Elton John's classic song "Candle in the Wind," mostly sung by Newton-John but with Elton playing piano and singing some towards the end. He also got to promote his new single at the time, "Little Jeannie," the only song here without Newton-John's involvement.

There were some even more unexpected songs. She started the show with a cover of "Hollywood Nights" by Bob Seger, which is a song she otherwise never performed or recorded. She also did "Heartache Tonight" by the Eagles probably for the only time ever, with Tina Turner, Peaches, Toni Tennille and Karen Carpenter all taking lead vocals at various point as well. And "Oh Boy" by Buddy Holly was another song she otherwise never did, done here with Cliff Richard, Elton John and Andy Gibb also taking turns with the lead vocals.

I cut out about five minutes from the special. That was all non-musical stuff, mostly jokey segments with actors Dick Clark and/or Ted Knight. Trust me, that's not the kind of thing with high replay value. But if you feel you're missing out, you can find the entire video of this special on YouTube. 

The special was a mixture of songs performed in front of an audience and songs done earlier in some studio without any audience. I have no idea when or where each part of it was recorded, only that it was broadcast in April 1980. I found out that tidbit from this nice fan website, which includes lots of screenshots from the special, as well as a link to the YouTube video of the whole thing:

Hollywood Nights Special 

This special is unreleased and it is very likely to stay that way, due to the difficulty of getting the legal rights to all the guest performances. But now, here, at least it's available as an audio album for the first time. 

This album is 42 minutes long 

01 Hollywood Nights (Olivia Newton-John)
02 Deeper than the Night (Olivia Newton-John)
03 Hopelessly Devoted to You (Olivia Newton-John)
04 A Little More Love (Olivia Newton-John)
05 talk (Olivia Newton-John)
06 I Can't Help It (Olivia Newton-John & Andy Gibb)
07 talk (Olivia Newton-John)
08 Oh Boy (Olivia Newton-John, Cliff Richard, Elton John & Andy Gibb)
09 Suddenly (Olivia Newton-John & Cliff Richard)
10 talk (Olivia Newton-John & Gene Kelly)
11 Makin' Movies [Makin' Whoopee] (Olivia Newton-John & Gene Kelly)
12 Gimme Some Lovin' (Olivia Newton-John)
13 Candle in the Wind (Olivia Newton-John & Elton John)
14 Little Jeannie (Elton John)
15 talk (Olivia Newton-John)
16 Heartache Tonight (Olivia Newton-John, Tina Turner, Peaches, Toni Tennille & Karen Carpenter)
17 I Honestly Love You (Olivia Newton-John)
18 Hollywood Nights [Reprise] [Instrumental] (Olivia Newton-John)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/7Mv22RSn

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/fdqwk48Vi5S9n15/file 

I made the cover art out of two screenshots from this TV special. I took one screenshot for the words at the top, which were apparently neon signs in front of the building. But at the point in time, Newton-John was relatively small in the overall image, standing on the street. So I went to slightly earlier in the same scene, when her head took up most of the screen, and imposed that on top, using Photoshop. 

Various Artists - An All-Star Tribute to Joni Mitchell, Hammerstein Ballroom, New York City, 4-6-2000

For a few years in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the TNT TV network hosted a few annual "all-star tributes" to some music legends. I've already posted albums of such tribute shows to Johnny Cash, Brian Wilson, and Paul Simon. Here's another one, celebrating the music of Joni Mitchell.

This concert actually featured Joni Mitchell herself, but she had a relatively minor role. At the very end, she performed one song and gave a short speech. Instead, the bulk of the concert consisted of famous musical acts performing her songs. Just look at the cover or at the song list to see the names. There also were some famous non-musicians who talked a little bit between songs, such as actors Susan Sarandon and Laurence Fishburne, and the main host, Ashley Judd. Plus, I never thought my music blog would have a track by Hillary Clinton, but here we are.

If I recall correctly, there was some more stuff to this concert that I edited out, such as testimonials about Mitchell's life and career, narrated by the likes of Goldie Hawn and Rosie O'Donnell. I kept the focus on the songs, and introductions to the songs.

The Stone Temple Pilots were also due to perform at this concert. However, the band's lead singer, Scott Weiland, blew his voice out by performing three full concerts the day before. They were due to perform the song "Woodstock." At the last minute, Richard Thompson stepped up to perform that song instead. That's why he's the only performer here to do two songs, because he also had been scheduled to perform the song "Black Crow." 

Note that the final song, "The Circle Game," faded out before it ended. Probably that's when the TV broadcast came to an end. I extended it a bit by repeating a chorus from earlier in the song and then fading it out. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in its title.

There's an amazing official Joni Mitchell website, www.jonimitchell.com. It has a webpage just on this concert, with lots of pictures and dozens of newspaper articles about it. Here's a link:

Joni Mitchell - 2000.04.06 | An All-Star Tribute To Joni Mitchell Hammerstein Ballroom | New York 

This album remains officially unreleased as an audio album. However, a DVD of it has been released. But this is about ten minutes longer. The sound quality is excellent. 

This concert is an hour and 18 minutes long. 

01 Raised on Robbery (Wynonna Judd & Bryan Adams)
02 talk (Ashley Judd)
03 Carey (Cyndi Lauper)
04 talk (Ashley Judd)
05 Woodstock (Richard Thompson)
06 talk (Hillary Clinton)
07 Chelsea Morning (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
08 Big Yellow Taxi (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter with James Taylor)
09 talk (James Taylor)
10 River (James Taylor)
11 talk (Ashley Judd)
12 You Turn Me On, I'm a Radio (Wynonna Judd)
13 talk (Susan Sarandon)
14 Help Me (k.d. Lang)
15 talk (Laurence Fishburne)
16 The Dry Cleaner from Des Moines (Cassandra Wilson)
17 talk (Ashley Judd)
18 The Circle Game (Sweet Honey in the Rock)
19 talk (Ashley Judd)
20 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
21 Amelia (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
22 talk (Ashley Judd)
23 Black Crow (Richard Thompson)
24 talk (Richard Thompson)
25 talk (Ashley Judd)
26 Free Man in Paris (Elton John)
27 talk (Elton John)
28 A Case of You (Diana Krall)
29 talk (Ashley Judd)
30 talk (Tony Bennett)
31 Both Sides Now (Joni Mitchell)
32 talk (Joni Mitchell)
33 The Circle Game [Reprise] [Edit] (Joni Mitchell & Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/acNAjTY6

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/GVHWLt1ZTKXHMpu/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. From left to right, that's Joni Mitchell, James Taylor (in back), Cassandra Wilson, Shawn Colvin, and Elton John.

Elton John - BBC Sessions, Volume 17: In Concert, Glastonbury Festival, Worthy Farm, Pilton, Britain, 6-25-2023

I truly thought I was done posting Elton John BBC albums. I'd posted no less than 16 of them already! I could have done even more, but some of them were rather repetitious, with similar set lists. However, I found this and decided, okay, one last time. Elton John suggested this could be his last full concert he ever plays in Britain. Even if that turns out not to be true, sadly, he's getting near to the end of his career. I think this is a good way to sum up his many BBC concerts over the years.

It seems Elton John was determined to go out with a bang. The set list was all killer, no filler. The only recent song performed was "Cold Heart," which was a Number One hit for him in 2021. He also had some guest stars to promote relatively new talent: Brandon Flowers (of the Killers), Jacob Lusk, Stephen Sanchez, and Rina Sawayama.

At the time of this concert, John was about 73 years old. But if there were any signs of age, I couldn't hear them. His voice was still in fine form. 

This concert is unreleased. I could only find a high quality video of it. So I converted that to audio and then broke it up into mp3s.

This album is an hour and 56 minutes long.

01 Pinball Wizard (Elton John)
02 The Bitch Is Back (Elton John)
03 talk (Elton John)
04 Bennie and the Jets (Elton John)
05 talk (Elton John)
06 Daniel (Elton John)
07 Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (Elton John)
08 I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues (Elton John)
09 talk (Elton John)
10 Philadelphia Freedom (Elton John)
11 talk (Elton John)
12 Are You Ready for Love (Elton John & Jacob Lusk)
13 Sad Songs [Say So Much] (Elton John)
14 talk (Elton John)
15 Someone Saved My Life Tonight (Elton John)
16 talk (Elton John & Stephen Sanchez)
17 Until I Found You (Elton John & Stephen Sanchez)
18 Your Song (Elton John)
19 Candle in the Wind (Elton John)
20 talk (Elton John)
21 Tiny Dancer (Elton John & Brandon Flowers)
22 talk (Elton John)
23 Don't Go Breaking My Heart (Elton John & Rina Sawayama)
24 Crocodile Rock (Elton John)
25 Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting (Elton John)
26 I'm Still Standing (Elton John)
27 talk (Elton John)
28 Cold Heart (Elton John)
29 talk (Elton John)
30 Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me (Elton John)
31 talk (Elton John)
32 Rocket Man [I Think It's Going to Be a Long, Long Time] (Elton John)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/YMLVfJ3Y

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/7VWVGF5njI638qk/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John - Tokyo Dome, Tokyo, Japan, 11-2-1988

In the late 1980s, lead guitar legends Eric Clapton and Mark Knopfler performed many concerts together. They actually first played in concert together in 1985 while Mark Knopfler was still leading his band Dire Straits. But then Dire Straits was disbanded for a few years, and Knopfler didn't had a band until the Notting Hillbillies in 1990 and then a Dire Straits reunion in 1991. In 1987 and 1988 especially, the two of them did entire tours together. They were basically Eric Clapton concerts, but with Knopfler adding lead guitar to every song and singing one or two songs as lead vocalist.

Things got even more interesting when their joint tour stopped by Japan in 1988. Elton John joined them there, and the three of them headlined four concerts together. One of them, in Tokyo, was broadcast on TV and radio in Japan only. This got bootlegged, naturally, and it makes for an excellent recording, with soundboard quality sound. That's what this is here.

The first portion of the concert only featured Clapton and Knopfler. Clapton sang most of the songs, but one of his female backing vocalists sang lead on "Can't Find My Way Home" and Knopfler sang lead on his huge Dire Straits hit "Money for Nothing." Then Elton John joined them for the rest of the concert. Most of the songs from that point on were John's hits, but Clapton sang three more, and Knopfler did one more Dire Straits song, "Solid Rock." John naturally played keyboards even on the songs he didn't sing.

So all in all this is a really nice and very rare collaboration between three rock superstars. It wasn't the last time the three of them did this, however. They also played together during the Knebworth Festival in 1990. I have posted that already, which you can find here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2024/05/knebworth-festival-knebworth-house_50.html

This album is two hours and 13 minutes long.

01 Crossroads (Eric Clapton & Mark Knopfler)
02 White Room (Eric Clapton & Mark Knopfler)
03 I Shot the Sheriff (Eric Clapton & Mark Knopfler)
04 Lay Down Sally (Eric Clapton & Mark Knopfler)
05 Wonderful Tonight (Eric Clapton & Mark Knopfler)
06 Tearing Us Apart (Eric Clapton & Mark Knopfler)
07 After Midnight (Eric Clapton & Mark Knopfler)
08 Can't Find My Way Home (Eric Clapton & Mark Knopfler)
09 Money for Nothing [Edit] (Eric Clapton & Mark Knopfler)
10 Candle in the Wind (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
11 I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
12 I Don't Wanna Go On with You like That (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
13 I'm Still Standing (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
14 Daniel (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
15 talk (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
16 Cocaine (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
17 Layla (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
18 Solid Rock (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
19 Saturday Night's Alright [For Fighting] (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
20 Sunshine of Your Love (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
21 Percussion Solo (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
22 Sunshine of Your Love (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)

https://www.imagenetz.de/e2iJV

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/873KARqh

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/yKoZ6ps2xz0RPgG/file

The cover image was very hard for me to make. It is of this exact concert, right after the end of the final song of the encore. However, I couldn't find any photos of them together, so I had to resort to taking a screenshot from a video of this concert I found on YouTube. But the video was so low-res and blurry that I had to rewatch that section of the video to even figure out Knopfler was holding something (a towel) in his hands. 

The reason this cover looks like it does is due to the free Krea AI program. I ran the screenshot through that program, giving prompts identifying who was in the image. It was a little bit better, but not much. Then I ran that version through the program. Again, some improvement, but still rough. I did it four times in all! Finally, it ended up like this. To show you how drastically things changed, here's the screenshot I started from. Frankly, I'm kind of amazed at what the AI technology is capable of. Yeah, there's a lot of change there, it's not entirely true to reality, but I think the final version looks a hell of a lot better than the screenshot does.

Elton John - VH-1 Storytellers, House of Blues, New Orleans, LA, 9-19-1997

Next for the "VH-1 Storytellers" series is the musical legend Elton John.

There are two particularly notable aspects about this episode, in my opinion. One is that the entire show was performed just by John at a piano. It isn't very often when he plays solo like that. The second is that this is effectively a double show, since it was twice as long as a typical episode.

Just three days after this concert, he released the studio album "The Big Picture." The songs played from that album here "Something about the Way You Look Tonight," which was a big hit, and " Long Way from Happiness." Otherwise, he generally played classic hits from previous albums.

As was usually the case, most of the first song was cut off. That's especially a shame since it was the all-time classic "Your Song." I found another version from the same year with similar sound quality and merged the versions together. That's what that song has "[Edit]" in the title. There also was a problem in the middle of "I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues," but I was able to patch in some music to cover it up. So that's why that one also has "[Edit]" in the title.

This album is an hour and 15 minutes long.

01 Your Song [Edit] (Elton John)
02 talk (Elton John)
03 Talking Old Soldiers (Elton John)
04 talk (Elton John)
05 I Don't Wanna Go On with You like That (Elton John)
06 talk (Elton John)
07 I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues [Edit] (Elton John)
08 talk (Elton John)
09 Daniel (Elton John)
10 talk (Elton John)
11 Levon (Elton John)
12 talk (Elton John)
13 Something about the Way You Look Tonight (Elton John)
14 talk (Elton John)
15 Long Way from Happiness (Elton John)
16 talk (Elton John)
17 Bennie and the Jets (Elton John)
18 talk (Elton John)
19 Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word (Elton John)
20 talk (Elton John)
21 Take Me to the Pilot (Elton John)
22 talk (Elton John)
23 Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me (Elton John)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17180168/ELTONJHN1997StrytllrsHuseofBlusNwOrlensLA__9-19-1997_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/NnLzFMzv

I couldn't find a good photo from this exact concert. So instead I used one from "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" that took place only three days later, September 22, 1997.

Knebworth Festival, Knebworth House, Knebworth, Britain, 6-30-1990, Part 6: Eric Clapton, Dire Straits & Elton John

The sixth performance at the 1990 Knebworth Festival was a rather unusual collaboration between Eric Clapton, Dire Straits, and Elton John.

Collaboration between these three famous musical forces was rare, but not unprecedented. In particular, Mark Knopfler, leader of Dire Straits, and Eric Clapton became good friends in the late 1980s and toured together a lot in 1987 to 1989. Elton John joined them for at least one full concert, in Tokyo, Japan, in 1988. 

Meanwhile, Dire Straits broke up in 1986, at the conclusion of the tour to promote their 1985 album "Brothers in Arms." They got back together for about five shows in 1988 and 1989, mostly benefit concerts, and usually with Clapton included. Then they did this festival, their only performance of 1990. A full reunion followed, leading to the band's final album, "On Every Street," in 1991. This concert didn't actually include all of Dire Straits. Mark Knopfler, John Illsey, and Alan Clark took part, but Guy Fletcher was missing. Instead, the band was rounded out by Clapton, Ray Cooper, and Phil Palmer. But still, it was considered a Dire Straits reunion.

The first four songs were sung by Clapton. Then Dire Straits joined in. One song played, "Think I Love You Too Much," was an original that never made it onto a Dire Straits (or Mark Knopfler) album, despite being a good song that got played a lot on the Dire Straits world tour in 1991 and 1992. This was the first time it was performed in concert. Elton John joined in for the last four songs, three of which were sung by him.

I don't recall any wind noise trouble with this performance. Also note that it's the longest set of the festival, because it was basically three big acts put together.

This album is an hour and 16 minutes long.

01 talk by Dave Dee (Eric Clapton)
02 Pretending (Eric Clapton)
03 Before You Accuse Me (Eric Clapton)
04 Old Love (Eric Clapton)
05 Tearing Us Apart (Eric Clapton)
06 Solid Rock (Eric Clapton & Dire Straits)
07 talk (Eric Clapton & Dire Straits)
08 I Think I Love You Too Much (Eric Clapton & Dire Straits)
09 Money for Nothing (Eric Clapton & Dire Straits)
10 talk (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
11 Sacrifice (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
12 Sad Songs [Say So Much] (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
13 Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
14 Sunshine of Your Love (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/HoBf13LZ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/4oHFJrfaG2Kgn1R/file

For the cover, I wanted a photo of Clapton, Knopfler, and John together at this concert. I couldn't find any, since they were spread out on stage. However, I did find one of Clapton and John.

Elton John - BBC Sessions, Volume 9: Wembley Pool, London, Britain, 11-3-1977

I thought I was all done posting BBC albums by Elton John. But the other day, I came across a BBC concert from 1977 I'd missed that was posted at a bootleg sharing site. It was too interesting to not post, especially with guest appearances by Kiki Dee and Stevie Wonder. So here it is. 

But note that by posting this, I've had to renumber all the Elton John BBC albums that come after this. So the former Volume 9 becomes Volume 10, the former Volume 10 becomes Volume 11, and so on. I just did all that renumbering, so feel free to redownload those if you don't want two Volume 9's.

This entire concert was professionally filmed by the BBC. Apparently, when this concert first happened, only about an hour of it was shown on BBC TV at the time. But over the years, more of it has come out here and there until this is probably the whole thing. A person named Emmanuel Hercules posted the entire video file, which is where I got this. He stitched it together from multiple sources. I converted it to audio format and then broke it into mp3s. The only critique I'd have of his nice work on this is that the audio from the different sources were sometimes at different volumes. But I think I've evened that out. The sound quality is generally excellent, roughly the same as the other 1970s BBC concerts.

This was kind of the end of Elton John's prime 1970s era. He was feeling burned out (and even attempted suicide roughly around this time). In this concert, which was a special one done for charity, he announced he would stop touring for a while. He was pretty low profile for the rest of the 1970s before coming back with more hits in the early 1980s (and beyond).

Regarding the two guest appearances, Kiki Dee did her usual thing, dueting with him on their Number One hit song "Don't Go Breaking My Heart." 

The Stevie Wonder appearance was rather disappointing, in my opinion. He joined Elton John on stage for the final number, "Bite Your Lip (Get Up and Dance)," which I think went on too long (13 minutes). He didn't do much except play some tambourine (as one can see on the video of this concert) and sing some backing vocals. It was almost certainly a spontaneous thing where he showed up on stage without even knowing the song. But the fact that he showed up on stage at all was a big deal. Wonder was probably at the peak of his popularity, but he was kind of in seclusion for most of the late 1970s, kind of like John Lennon doing the same thing around that time. He didn't play any full concerts in 1976, 1977, and 1978, and only made a few brief appearances like this one.

This concert is two hours and 19 minutes long.

01 talk (Elton John)
02 Better Off Dead (Elton John)
03 Daniel (Elton John)
04 talk (Elton John)
05 Roy Rogers (Elton John)
06 talk (Elton John)
07 The Goaldiggers Song (Elton John)
08 Where to Now St. Peter (Elton John)
09 talk (Elton John)
10 Shine On Through (Elton John)
11 Tonight (Elton John)
12 I Heard It through the Grapevine (Elton John)
13 talk (Elton John)
14 Island Girl (Elton John)
15 talk (Elton John)
16 Candle in the Wind (Elton John)
17 talk (Elton John)
18 One Horse Town (Elton John)
19 Bennie and the Jets (Elton John)
20 Rocket Man [I Think It's Going to Be a Long, Long Time] (Elton John)
21 talk (Elton John)
22 Cage the Songbird (Elton John)
23 talk (Elton John)
24 Levon (Elton John)
25 Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me (Elton John)
26 talk (Elton John)
27 [Gotta Get A] Meal Ticket (Elton John)
28 talk (Elton John)
29 Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word (Elton John)
30 Philadelphia Freedom (Elton John)
31 Funeral for a Friend - Love Lies Bleeding (Elton John)
32 talk (Elton John)
33 Your Song (Elton John)
34 talk (Elton John)
35 Don't Go Breaking My Heart (Elton John & Kiki Dee)
36 talk (Elton John)
37 Bite Your Lip [Get Up and Dance] (Elton John with Stevie Wonder)

https://www.imagenetz.de/eVDcZ

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ELABVJPf

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/5pss76sEXbFmSSK/file 

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Elton John - Cover Versions, Volume 4: 2000-2002

I've been gradually posting a series of non-album cover versions by Elton John. However, when I posted Volume 3 in this series at the end of 2013, I ran into some copyright violation trouble. The link was taken down. Despite that, I'm going to foolishly post Volume 4 anyway. But there will be no direct download link. Instead, look to the comments section for a link to another website. Let's see how that works out.

It seems Elton John was really into performing cover songs in the early 2000s. Volume 2 stretches over nearly two decades, whereas this volume stretches over only about two and a half years. 

Nearly all of the songs were done in concert. There are only two exceptions, which are from studio albums: "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On" and "Teardrops." One more song was done live but has been officially released: a duet of "Stan" with Eminem at the Grammy Awards in 2001. That's from an Eminem greatest hits album. Everything else is unreleased and from concert bootlegs.

During this time period, Elton John was doing many concerts as a co-headliner with Billy Joel. Typically, they played lots of songs together, and sometimes sang each other's songs. Four of the songs here are with Joel. 

There was a glitch in "Piano Man" that I managed to fix. That's why that one has "[Edit]" in the title.

By the way, just a couple of days ago I posted a 2001 Brian Wilson tribute concert. Two of the songs here happen to also be from that.

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 Free Man in Paris (Elton John)
02 Come Together (Elton John)
03 Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On (Elton John)
04 Just the Way You Are (Billy Joel & Elton John)
05 You May Be Right (Billy Joel & Elton John)
06 Stan (Eminem & Elton John)
07 God Only Knows (Elton John)
08 Wouldn't It Be Nice (Elton John & Brian Wilson)
09 Piano Man [Edit] (Billy Joel & Elton John)
10 Teardrops (Elton John & Lulu)
11 Here Comes the Sun (Elton John & Billy Joel)
12 Answering Bell (Elton John & Ryan Adams)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/pCRskgaG

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/PQVMfj2dl8CS8Gp/file

The cover photo comes from a concert in Madison Square Garden in New York City on October 20, 2000.

Various Artists - An All-Star Tribute to Brian Wilson, Radio City Music Hall, New York City, 3-29-2001

Here's something that any fan of the Beach Boys will certainly enjoy. I don't know much about the backstory for this one (maybe someone else can explain?) - I'm guessing it was an anniversary of some sort. But in 2001, a bunch of great musicians got together to celebrate the music of Brian Wilson. That's basically the same thing as celebrating the music of the Beach Boys, since I think all but one of the songs performed here was originally recorded and released by the Beach Boys. (The lone exception, "Love and Mercy," is from Wilson's more hit and miss solo career.) 

In my opinion, most of these kinds of tribute concerts have more dud performances than good ones. But this one is solid pretty much all the way through. It's hard to go wrong with Beach Boys songs, for starters. But also, a lot of big names took part, such as Paul Simon, Elton John, Billy Joel, Heart, David Crosby, Aimee Mann, and many more, and it's hard to go wrong with them as well. Plus, Brian Wilson himself joined in at the end.

Most or all of the performances are unique, meaning these particular artists never did these songs before, and probably not since. They were special versions just for this show.

This concert has never been released in any kind of audio format, as far as I know. But the songs here all come from a DVD that has been released. I edited it down somewhat to remove some speeches praising Wilson. I wanted to keep it more focused on the music. (One section I removed was a talk by Beatles producer George Martin about the song "Good Vibrations.")  However, I did keep all the talking that directly preceded or followed each song that was relevant.

Unfortunately, there was a lot more to this concert that was not included on the DVD, and I can't find it anywhere else. For instance, Wilson sang lead or co-lead on five songs at the end of this album. But in the concert, he sang a few more: "Lay Down Burden," "Do It Again," "Caroline, No," and "Surfin' U.S.A." If anyone has more than I do, please let me know so I can add it in.

This album is an hour and 12 minutes long.

01 talk (Chazz Palminteri)
02 Our Prayer (Boys Choir of Harlem)
03 California Girls - Help Me, Rhonda (Ricky Martin)
04 talk (Chazz Palminteri)
05 Surfer Girl (Paul Simon)
06 Surf City (Go-Go's)
07 talk (Chazz Palminteri)
08 In My Room (David Crosby, Carly Simon & Jimmy Webb)
09 talk (David Crosby)
10 The Warmth of the Sun (Vince Gill)
11 talk (Chazz Palminteri)
12 I Get Around (Evan & Jaron)
13 talk (Chazz Palminteri)
14 God Only Knows (Elton John)
15 talk (Chazz Palminteri)
16 I Just Wasn't Made for These Times (Aimee Mann & Michael Penn)
17 talk (Chazz Palminteri & Billy Joel)
18 Don't Worry Baby (Billy Joel)
19 talk (Chazz Palminteri)
20 Sail On Sailor (Darius Rucker & Matthew Sweet)
21 talk (Chazz Palminteri & Chynna Phillips)
22 You're So Good to Me (Wilson Phillips)
23 talk (George Martin)
24 Good Vibrations (Heart)
25 talk (Chazz Palminteri)
26 Surf's Up (David Crosby, Vince Gill & Jimmy Webb)
27 talk (Chazz Palminteri & Brian Wilson)
28 Heroes and Villains (Brian Wilson)
29 talk (Elton John)
30 Wouldn't It Be Nice (Elton John & Brian Wilson)
31 talk (Brian Wilson)
32 Barbara Ann (Brian Wilson & Everyone)
33 Fun, Fun, Fun (Brian Wilson & Everyone)
34 talk (Brian Wilson)
35 Love and Mercy (Brian Wilson with the Boys Choir of Harlem)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16584567/VA-_2001AllStrTrbtetBrnWlsnRdoCtyMsicHllNwYrkC__3-29-2001_atse.zip.html

I have to admit, the cover is a bit fakey. I found a photo of Elton John, Billy Joel, and Paul Simon sharing the same microphone during a finale at this concert. But since it's a Brian Wilson tribute and he was there, I wanted him on the cover too. So I Photoshopped him in, using a photo that also comes from the finale at this concert. They were on stage together, just not this close. The lighting is pretty accurate. For instance, there's a shadow falling on his body that actually fell on someone else standing there.

Various Artists - Prince's Trust Rock Gala, Royal Albert Hall, London, Britain, 6-5-1988

The Prince's Trust is a charity founded by then Prince Charles, the British crown prince. (He is now King Charles III) as I write this in 2024.) There have been a bunch of benefit concerts for the charity, each with many stars participating. Here's another one.

These Prince's Trust concerts have happened in a very irregular pace. I've already posted benefit concerts from 1982, 1986, and 1987. This one is from 1988. There were more from 1989 and 1990, so it started to seem like an annual thing. However, I think the next one after that took place in 1996. There have been at least five more since then, although I may well be missing some.

This one was similar to the previous two in similar ways. The concert started with some newer acts, like T'Pau and Wet Wet Wet, and they played more songs than one might expect, given the stature of the other acts in the concert. Both T'Pau and Wet Wet Wet actually played four songs each, according to setlists, but I only have two from T'Pau and three from Wet Wet Wet. I can't say I'm lamenting the missing songs, since I don't think one could compare them with nearly all of the acts that came later. Rick Astley and Black were a couple other acts that appeared early, and played the one big hit each of them was known for.

After that, there were many of the same "usual suspects" who played in previous Prince's Trust concerts, such as Phil Collins, Elton John, Howard Jones, Mark Knoplfer, and Eric Clapton. But there were some first timers too, like Leonard Cohen, the Bee Gees, Peter Gabriel, and Joe Cocker. It's frustrating to me that you have someone like Peter Gabriel, whose most recent album at the time, "So," had sold five million copies in the U.S. alone, only getting to play one song. But it is what it is, I guess.

I don't know the exact details, but I believe that many of the big stars backed each other towards the end of the concert, as was the case in previous years. Because people pay extra close attention to Eric Clapton's guitar playing, I was able to find out that once he took the stage with track 26 ("Behind the Mask"), he stayed on stage for the rest of the concert, including playing guitar on songs sung by Knoplfer, John, and Cocker.

Similarly, I was able to determine that Brian May of Queen didn't sing lead vocals on any songs, but he played lead guitar on a bunch of them: tracks 6, 8, 10, 16, 19, 24, 26, and 35. John Deacon, the bassist for Queen, also apparently played on some songs.

Currently, I'm only able to find a few songs from the 1989 and 1990 concerts. If anyone has the full concerts, please let me know. I may try to post the 1996 concert, but I'm probably missing about half of that one.

This album is two hours and two minutes long.

01 Heart and Soul (T'Pau)
02 China in Your Hand (T'Pau)
03 talk (Wet Wet Wet)
04 Wishing I Was Lucky (Wet Wet Wet)
05 Sweet Little Mystery - Twist and Shout (Wet Wet Wet)
06 Dancing with Tears in My Eyes (Midge Ure)
07 talk (Midge Ure & Rick Astley)
08 Never Gonna Give You Up (Rick Astley)
09 talk (Rick Astley & Black)
10 Wonderful Life (Black)
11 talk (Black & Leonard Cohen)
12 Tower of Song (Leonard Cohen)
13 talk (Phil Collins)
14 Doesn't Anyone Stay Together Anymore (Phil Collins)
15 talk (Phil Collins & the Bee Gees)
16 You Win Again (Bee Gees)
17 Jive Talkin' (Bee Gees)
18 talk (Bee Gees & Peter Gabriel)
19 Sledgehammer (Peter Gabriel)
20 talk (Peter Gabriel & Howard Jones)
21 What Is Love (Howard Jones)
22 talk (Phil Collins)
23 I Missed Again (Phil Collins)
24 You Can't Hurry Love (Phil Collins)
25 talk (Phil Collins & Joe Cocker)
26 The Letter (Joe Cocker)
27 talk (Eric Clapton)
28 Behind the Mask (Eric Clapton)
29 Cocaine (Eric Clapton)
30 talk (Eric Clapton & Mark Knopfler)
31 Money for Nothing (Mark Knopfler)
32 talk (Elton John)
33 I Don't Wanna Go On with You like That (Elton John)
34 Layla (Eric Clapton)
35 With a Little Help from My Friends (Joe Cocker)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/cbyrisBH

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/jJV74b5uh8a36UP/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/gP7SW

Just like previous years, there was a group photo taken of the performers. Here are all their names.
Back row: Rick Astley, Howard Jones, Peter Gabriel, Joe Cocker, Phil Collins, Midge Ure
Middle row: Mark Knopfler, Brian May, Elton John, Eric Clapton
Front row: The Bee Gees, Robin, Barry and Maurice Gibb

Various Artists - Prince's Trust Rock Gala, Wembley Arena, London, Britain, 6-5-1987

I just posted the Prince's Trust concert from 1986. This is the 1987 concert. It's the same basic idea, but many of the songs and performers are different. Both are very worthwhile listens.

Like the 1986 concert, this one started with some newer musical acts. With the benefit of hindsight, some were good choices, and others... not so much (cough cough, Curiosity Killed the Cat and Go West, cough cough). But if you don't like all the artists, that's okay, because none of the first few acts lasted more than a single song.

There were fewer big name artists in this concert than the 1986 one. Plus, the entire concert was about half an hour shorter. (If, in fact, this is the whole thing - I'm not entirely sure.) But on the other hand, the finale was probably even more impressive. I'll get to that in a minute.

First though, I want to point out that, like the 1986 concert, for many of the songs, there was a backing band made up of many stars. I don't know which songs exactly, because I can't find the full video of this concert on YouTube. But, for instance, when Ben E. King sang his song, his backing band included Phil Collins on drums, Midge Ure on rhythm guitar, and Eric Clapton on lead guitar.

But the big deal was the finale. In the 1986, the biggest star was ex-Beatle Paul McCartney. But the 1987 concert outdid that by having two ex-Beatles performing together: George Harrison and Ringo Starr! Harrison's appearance was a particularly big deal because he hadn't performed in concert since his 1974 tour (other than a couple of brief appearances in the finales of other artist's concerts). 

I randomly stumbled across a description of the concert's finale in a 2015 article in Guitar World Magazine. Here it is:

"On June 5, 1987, three of the five original musicians who appeared on the classic Beatles 'White Album' track 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' reunited to perform the song live at the Prince's Trust Rock Gala in London's Wembley Arena. George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and Eric Clapton were joined in an all-star U.K. band, including Elton John, Phil Collins, Jeff Lynne, Ray Cooper, and... well, if you're wondering who that understandably happy bassist is, it's Mark King from Level 42. Harrison, Starr, and Clapton last performed the song live 16 years earlier at the Concert for Bangladesh in New York City. What most interesting about this performance is the fact that A., the normally Strat-happy Clapton is playing a beautiful Gibson Les Paul, just as he did on the original 1968 recording, and B., the also-Strat-happy Harrison joins Clapton in the extended guitar solo at the end of the song. The two guitarists trade solos and feed off each other's energy, and their intertwining lines are often pretty damn cool."

In addition to that, someone, I'm guessing Clapton, played a guitar solo for "With a Little Help from My Friends," a song that normally lacked any solo. It's a shame that Jeff Lynne apparently didn't sing any of his Electric Light Orchestra hits. But he sang backing vocals on all three of the Beatles songs at the end. Given that Lynne is a huge Beatles fan, this must have been the closest he ever got to a fantasy of being a part of the Beatles, getting to sing with Harrison and Starr, with Clapton on guitar for good measure!

This album is an hour and 45 minutes long.

01 Running in the Family (Level 42 with Eric Clapton)
02 If I Was (Midge Ure)
03 Misfit (Curiosity Killed the Cat)
04 Don't Look Down (Go West)
05 Invisible (Alison Moyet)
06 Through the Barricades (Spandau Ballet)
07 [Something Inside] So Strong (Labi Siffre)
08 Run to You (Bryan Adams)
09 Hearts on Fire (Bryan Adams)
10 Somebody (Bryan Adams)
11 talk (Dave Edmunds & Bryan Adams)
12 The Wanderer (Dave Edmunds & Bryan Adams)
13 talk (Eric Clapton)
14 Wonderful Tonight (Eric Clapton)
15 Behind the Mask (Eric Clapton)
16 Stand by Me (Ben E. King)
17 talk (Phil Collins)
18 Reach Out, I'll Be There - I Can't Help Myself - Same Old Song (Phil Collins & Paul Young)
19 You've Lost That Loving Feeling (Phil Collins & Paul Young)
20 talk (Elton John)
21 Your Song (Elton John)
22 Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting (Elton John)
23 talk (George Harrison & Ringo Starr)
24 While My Guitar Gently Weeps (George Harrison & Eric Clapton with Ringo Starr & Jeff Lynne)
25 Here Comes the Sun (George Harrison with Ringo Starr & Jeff Lynne)
26 With a Little Help from My Friends (Ringo Starr with George Harrison, Eric Clapton & Jeff Lynne)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/W4HtwzDd

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/6mOchiVwGJ0ZR4P/file

I searched the Internet pretty thoroughly for a color version of the group photo from this concert. All I could find was a black and white version. I tinted it blue. If anyone can find the color version, please let me know so I can upgrade this. There are way too many people in the photo for me to try to make a colorized version.