For my next upload, I am going to go back to 1979 and the year that Elton decided to a solo tour with Ray Cooper for the first time. A rare feature of the bootlegs from this tour is that there are hardly any complete recordings so I am going to upload a complete bootleg from the US! Boston 1979! The recording is in excellent quality and Elton's on fire! However, I need to write a little overview of how Elton's life had been before this year as this is a key year

Before 1979, Elton John had been round the world more times than Concorde and had written more songs than most artists write in a lifetime! However having retired once from touring less than two years earlier, he needed to gain some confidence back in himself, so he decided on a world tour with the only man who snaps cockroaches as a hobby! Ray Cooper! 

Onto Elton for 1979. Since 1977 and his last tour, Elton decided to undergo vocal lessons to improve his technique and also learnt he was singing too high! So this is the first tour which sees him singing the songs much better than the previous years! Prime examples include Daniel, Rocket Man, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Tonight, Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word, Bennie And The Jets and Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting! This tour would lead onto better/not so better things from Elton with some of his best shows performed in the next 10 years however this was the beginning on his drug days (not in this year, he just got drunk judging by the picture!)

Onto this show and some of the nuances! We have an excellent version of Your Song to open the show, Sixty Years On sounds a tad rough with some signs towards the next tour it featured on, Daniel which has improved vastly from previous years vocally, Skyline Pigeon which is rarely seen these days but is performed admirably here, Take Me To The Pilot which has a nice piano introduction plus excellent vocals, Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me with nice phrasing, Ego which is at a reasonable tempo, I Heard It Through The Grapevine which is a highlight from this tour, Tonight which is possibly the best version ever vocally, Better Off Dead which is another Elton/Ray classic, Bennie And The Jets with strange piano chords plus Ray Cooper's awesome singing, Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word which has interesting phrasing, Song For Guy which is a nice touch to the setlist, Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting done in a medley with Pinball Wizard is one of my personal favorite points of this whole tour and the rock and roll medley with Crocodile Rock sounds fantastic! Enjoy!

Note 1 - I do feel sorry for Trigger the horse and Bullet the dog!

- Adam, Elton Bootlegs