Elton John

Live In Australia (1987)

1.Sixty Years On
2.I Need You to Turn to
3.The Greatest Discovery
4.Tonight
5.Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word
6.The King Must Die
7.Take Me to the Pilot
8.Tiny Dancer
9.Haver Mercy on the Criminal
10.Madman Across the Water
11.Candle in the Wind
12.Burn Down the Mission
13.Your Song
14.Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me

Elton John’s Live in Australia arrived not as a typical greatest-hits-on-tour affair, but rather as a curiously dignified retrospective—an orchestral reimagining of deep cuts from his early years, performed alongside the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. It was his first live album in over a decade, and in many ways, it functioned more as a curatorial statement than a showcase of chart success. If one were seeking thunderous crowd singalongs and extended piano vamping, they’d have to look elsewhere.

The performance, recorded in December 1986, was originally structured in two halves: a standard rock set followed by the orchestral programme featured here. While the concert itself spanned both, the album focuses entirely on the latter—fourteen tracks performed with full orchestral accompaniment, and released (perhaps wisely) in a compact 76-minute format to fit the rapidly growing compact disc market.

What’s most striking is the vintage of the material. With the exception of Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word, there’s nothing here post 1974. The majority of songs hail from the early 1970s, with several pulled directly from Elton’s breakthrough trio—Elton John, Tumbleweed Connection, and Madman Across the Water. This was not an exercise in nostalgia so much as a reintroduction, a reminder to newer listeners of the baroque, piano-driven songwriting that defined Elton’s ascent before the glitter, feathers, and platform shoes took center stage.

That said, this is no hit parade. The only broadly familiar selections are Your Song, Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me, Tiny Dancer, and the tender Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word. The rest—Sixty Years On, The Greatest Discovery, Tonight, and Take Me to the Pilot, among others—are rich in orchestral texture, dramatically rendered with the kind of gravitas usually reserved for film scores. Candle in the Wind, long a fan favourite but until then unreleased as a single in the U.S., was finally issued in its live form and gave the track the wide exposure it had always deserved.

Purists will appreciate the production note that “no overdubs were added.” What you hear is exactly what was performed—warts and all. This honesty is both commendable and, at times, uncomfortable. Elton was suffering from vocal cord nodules during the performance, and the strain is occasionally evident. His once-clear tenor sounds huskier, occasionally brittle, and the urge to clear one’s own throat is hard to resist. It’s not a deal-breaker, but it is a reminder of the physical toll that decades of performing had begun to exact.

Still, that vulnerability gives the album its emotional weight. There’s a real sense of artistry here—an artist confronting the songs that built his career, delivering them not with pop bravado, but with orchestral reverence. And for all its imperfections, Live in Australia captures a unique moment: the close of one chapter, before the voice (and the man) would be rebuilt for the years to come.

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