Elton John has said he will be retiring from touring, 50 years on from the launch of his enormously successful pop career.

In an event at New York City’s Gotham Hall on Wednesday, John announced his Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour, a three-year, five-continent outing that will feature more than 300 concerts, and will be the last of his career. “It’s time to come off the road so I can fully embrace the next important chapter of my life,” he said. “I need to dedicate more time to raising my children.”

Timeline Elton John: his career highlights Show Meeting Bernie Taupin In June 1967, 20-year-old Reg Dwight and 17-year-old Bernie Taupin responded to a talent-seeking ad in the NME, kickstarting a partnership that would within three years spawn Your Song and a Grammy nomination for John’s self-titled second album. John Lennon's last ever performance John Lennon and Elton​ John ​swore that if their collaboration Whatever Gets You Thru the Night became a US No 1, ​they would play live​ together ​at Madison Square Garden. Lennon thought there was no way it would happen; it did, resulting in ​his last ever performance. Oscar for best song In 1991, Tim Rice asked John to write the music to his songs for the soundtrack of Disney’s The Lion King. At the 67th Academy awards in 1995, three of their compositions were nominated for best song​, with a win for Can You Feel the Love Tonight​. Candle in the Wind Following the death of Princess Diana, John paid tribute with a rewritten version of his 1973 hit Candle in the Wind. It remains the biggest selling single of all time in the US and UK (since the charts began). John performed the reworked version for the first, and last, time at Diana’s funeral. Civil partnership with David Furnish John revealed his bisexuality in 1976, and came out as gay following his divorce from Renate Blauel in 1988. He has been with David Furnish since 1993; in 2005, they became one of the first British couples to enter a civil partnership. They married in December 2014 and have two sons.

The name of the tour takes its inspiration from John’s 1973 album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. On the title track, the singer meditated on fame and celebrity, referring to the music as his “back-to-my-roots” phase: “When are you going to come down? When are you going to land?,” he sings in the first verse. With the unveiling of his final stretch of concerts, the singer seems to have finally answered that question.



The tour will begin in Pennsylvania in September 2018, and will visit 10 cities across the UK in 2020.

In the gold-leafed grand ballroom of Gotham Hall, once the Greenwich Savings Bank, John’s name and logo – a giant E with a star in lieu of the middle stripe – shone on the granite walls of the atrium.

His arrival was preceded by a short introduction by CNN anchorman Anderson Cooper, and then a virtual reality installation that guided audience members through the highlights of his storied career. When the video ended and the headsets were removed, Sir Elton surfaced at his piano and began to play two of his biggest hits, Tiny Dancer and – appropriately – I’m Still Standing.

Elton John performing at the press conference for his Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour. Photograph: Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

After his performance, John officially announced the Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, and addressed speculation that the announcement had anything to do with his health, saying, “if you’re going to do 300 shows, you’re not in ill health.” The reasoning, instead, is that the singer would like to spend more time with his two children.

“When I stop, they will be 10 and eight and that’s a very important time in their lives. I don’t want to miss them, and I don’t want them to miss me,” said John, wearing an embellished blazer with the words “Gucci Loves Elton” engraved on the back. The fashion brand, whose creative director Alessandro Michele reminded John of his “dear friend” Gianni Versace, will be designing all of the outfits for the Farewell tour.

“It’s going to be the most produced, fantastic show I’ve ever done,” added the singer. “It’s a way of saying thank you and going out with a bang. I don’t want to go out with a whimper.”

Speaking to The Guardian after Wednesday’s event, John added that the announcement served as the culmination of discussions he had with partner David Furnish in 2015 about the pair’s children. “We had taken them around everywhere when they were little, because they were very portable,” he said. “But then they weren’t so portable and we had to have a big discussion about what I wanted to do with my life, the children and my career. And I said I’d like to end with a big tour and spend the rest of my life with my children.”

John was quick to note, though, that the last leg of his touring career is not meant to signal an end to all creative endeavours. “I’m not stopping music,” he said. “I will hopefully be making more records, writing more music. Mostly I’ll be taking my kids to soccer games. But I’ll be creative, hopefully, until the day I die.”



John joked that the day had “been like D-Day, like a military operation,” and added that he’s “not one to do things by half.” In organizing the Farewell tour he and his team encountered logistical issues they hadn’t before, not least because of the geographical scope of the tour. John said that due to school he won’t be taking his two sons to every date, but that he wants to show them Japan and the Far East in particular.

John’s announcement comes exactly 50 years after he met longtime songwriting partner Bernie Taupin, who wrote lyrics for Tiny Dancer, Rocket Man, Bennie and the Jets, and Candle in the Wind. The 1997 rerelease of the latter, a tribute to the late Princess Diana, is potentially either the first or second bestselling worldwide single of all time, the uncertainty owing to the dearth of sales information for Bing Crosby’s song White Christmas.

Elton John talks with Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, in Davos this week. Photograph: Denis Balibouse/Reuters

On Monday, John appeared at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he received a Crystal award in recognition of his work with the Elton John Aids Foundation, which has raised more than $200m (£140m) since the singer established the charity in 1992. “The world needs to be changed,” John said while accepting his award alongside fellow honourees Cate Blanchett and Shah Rukh Khan. “The inequality in this world is, to be honest with you, disgraceful.”

In addition to the announcement of his world tour, John also recently extended his Las Vegas residency The Million Dollar Piano, adding dates at the Colosseum until May 2018, bringing the total number of shows to 207. John’s Caesars Palace residency began in February 2004 with The Red Piano, which lasted for 248 shows until March 2009 and grossed more than $169m.

In 2016, John announced that he would be releasing his first autobiography, Crazy Life (written in conjunction with the Guardian music critic Alexis Petridis) in 2019, to be published by Henry Holt in the US and Pan Macmillan in the UK. The singer has hinted at some of the book’s contents, calling it a “no-holds-barred account” of his distinguished half-century in music.

In 2014, shortly after the legalisation of same-sex marriage in the UK, he married his longtime partner David Furnish. The pair have two sons, Elijah (five) and Zachary (seven). John is also a godparent to the children of various famous friends, including David and Victoria Beckham, and Yoko Ono and John Lennon.

The singer told The Guardian that fans can expect to hear a medley of his greatest hits, but also songs that he hasn’t played live for decades. “For your own sanity you have to play some things you haven’t played for a long time; chestnuts I call them,” John said, referencing the songs Have Mercy on the Criminal, from his 1973 album Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only the Piano Player, and Street Kids, from Rock of the Westies.

“Most people I know that did world tours would come back and do another one,” John said when asked if he’d renege on his curtain call and tour again years from now. “And, really, you’ll have to shoot me...I’ve done 4,000 shows. I’ve been in a van since I was 17.”

• This article was amended on 30 January 2018. Have Mercy on the Criminal is on the 1973 album Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only the Piano Player, not the 1970 album Tumbleweed Connection as an earlier version said.

