Elton John sings “Holiday Inn” at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Madison. He said he wrote the song in 1970, inspired by all the traveling his band had done.

Sir Elton Hercules John gave the royal musical treatment to a sold-out crowd of over 10,000 at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Madison, Wisconsin Thursday night. Weaving through most of his 30 albums, he played crowd pleasers as well as songs from his current release The Union (2010) treating the exuberant audience to extended interludes demonstrating a mix of showmanship and mastery of the ivories.

With a massive discography, Elton John (and his band) doesn’t need a warm-up act but he found a perfect one in 2Cellos, consisting of 20-somethings Luka Šulić and Stjepan Hauser from Yugoslavia who’s dueling cello video set to Micheal Jackson’s Smooth Criminal caught fire on Youtube last spring and landed them on John’s summer tour of England and now the U.S. The handsome pair bring a youthful energy to this classical instrument, (one I played as a child) and they delighted the Madison crowd with the high-energy Criminal as well as covers of U2’s With or Without You, Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, and ACDC’s Highway to Hell which wound up the crowd and served them on a platter to the Elton John Band.  Continue reading →